December 06, 2003
Blogging in spurts? How about creatively living?
by Liza Sabater
Blog block: cyclical? @ Radio Free Blogistan
My fellow blogistani Rayne asks if blogging is cyclical. I want to pose the question a bit deeper? Is creativity cyclical? Is creativity something that can be turned on or off or is it something more remote, mysterious or even mystical?
My apartment is a mess these days. I'm in a feng shui dry spell. It takes a lot of energy to maintain a space of less than 800sq that is used for living, learning, creating and work. If I want to do anything other than homeschooling and writing, feng shui'ing the apartment will not be on the top of my list.
Same with cooking. My last cooking day was Thanksgiving. Granted, we still have leftovers of the damned turkey. I am a chef though, I should be more inspired. This is a wheat-free, egg and cow dairy-free household: I should be baking more, doing more from scratch. I am not.
There is, then the blogging.
Blogging to me is a miracle. I endured 7 years of the writer's block myth. I truly believed I could not write. I was so committed to that belief that I wrote incessantly about it. Notebook after notebook I have pages of fits and spurts about how I could not write. Well, I was not writing 50 page essays on neo-baroque aesthetics but I was writing.
Then one day it hit me:
Kafka wrote in fits and spurts.
Nietzsche wrote in fits and spurts.
Julio Cortázar wrote in fits and spurts.
Montaigne not only wrote in fits and spurts but wrote like a painter: in fits and spurts that would have years (as much as 10) in between them FOR A SINGLE ESSAY.
I can live with that. I can live with fits and spurts. It's the normal flow of creativity. It's normal flow of life. It's the normal flow of the universe.
During my alleged dry spell I read the Tao Te Ching over and over again to immediately forget it. Some things resonanted like being still, the softness of water and quiet. As I look for a passage to end this post --just as I would during my 7 years of not-so-blocked writer's block, I find this:
Passage #23
Express yourself completely,
then keep quiet.
Be like the forces of nature:
when it blows, there is only wind;
when it rains, there is only rain;
when the clouds pass, the sun shines through.
If you open yourself to the Tao,
you are one with the Tao
and you can embody it completely.
If you open yourself to insight,
you are at one with insight
and you can use it completely.
If you open yourself to loss,
you are at one with loss
and you can accept it completely.
Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.
Posted by Liza Sabater in Media
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