Awkward, like my writing.

Sometimes not writing is just as important as writing, and when I don’t want to write I remind myself of this simple and profound Buddhist principle: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” There is value in embracing emptiness rather than just trying to fill it with random available crap. Of course sometimes I’m just deluding myself and procrastinating….screwing around with half-strangers on Facebook. But sometimes something really is working inside of me that isn’t ready to take form quite yet, and if I try to tell it what its form is supposed to be then I don’t like the result. It’s false. Forced. Awkward. Like trying to shove a 20-pound cat into a 5-pound box.

I just got back from an amazing retreat on a beautiful nature reserve. I do these retreats twice a year, and normally I use them as an opportunity to write my brains out. I have no t.v., no internet, no phone….just me, myself and nature and all of the ideas swimming around in my head. I used to put immense pressure on myself to “get a lot done,” even if I wasn’t feeling it. I would clench my brain as if I were putting it in a vice and then shackle myself to my laptop/notebook/journal, convinced that the trip was worthless if I didn’t leave with something to show for it.

After passing many retreats in this way, I started experimenting. I decided to find out what would happen if I tried to be gentle with myself. I stopped attempting to dictate what each day was supposed to be and instead let the magic of my surroundings guide me. And let me tell you something: Thoreau knew what was up. That Walden Pond business was the shit. I wholeheartedly agree with Thoreau that, “We can never have enough of Nature.” Once I released the death grip on my frazzled brain and relaxed into nature, the simplicity and majesty of my environment embraced me. And then it somehow felt safer to embrace emptiness. During this last retreat I barely wrote a lick….but it felt like one of the most important retreats I’ve ever taken. Much was moving through me energetically, and I know I will reap the benefits of that retreat for years to come.

But at this point I must be honest with you: I am forcing emptiness into form right now. I have been putting off writing this post because it feels crazy to write about things like being patient with one’s own process and embracing emptiness when today I feel like I am doing the exact opposite. I am getting through this because I must. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe I’m a hypocrite. Or maybe I’m just a writer writing because it’s my job and my muse went down to the bodega to pick up some milk and I have no clue when she’s coming back but I still need to get things done in her absence.

Because there is value in embracing imperfection, too. Sometimes when I sit down to write and I discover that I’ve put my brain in a vice again, I just start writing out my inner monologue: “Shit, shit, shit, all I write is shit….blah blah blah blah I wish someone would walk through that door and shoot me dead.” Etc.

So I guess what I am saying is that I have no answers. Wait, maybe I do have one answer: all living creatures are affected by their environment. Plants, animals, humans. We are profoundly affected by environment, and I don’t think that means we’re weak. It means we’re alive. If Thoreau had tried to write Walden in a studio apartment in Brooklyn, it wouldn’t have been Walden. When I attempt to impose my Type A personality and usual New Yorker mentality in the middle of a 500-acre nature reserve, the result is dissonance. So when the seed of an idea is floating out in the middle of nowhere and seeking its form, maybe its form is emptiness. Maybe those are the moments that it’s best to relax into your environment (whatever that environment may be) and live with the silence and the empty screen or blank notebook.

Or maybe that’s the very moment to embrace your imperfection and write a bunch of crap that no one is ever going to see until you just happen to stumble into the perfect form.

Or maybe you tear out your hair and throw your computer through the window and go get drunk.

All of these are options.