Take a Trip

A couple weeks ago I took a trip to an area in central Utah where you can do some rockhounding. It's called Topaz Mountain and is about 25 miles west of Delta.

I had been been there years ago when my kids were young. I didn't find anything at the time, not knowing exactly what to be looking for; naively expecting crystals like this to just be laying around:

In case I didn't find anything I planned to get there early enough to photograph the sunrise so the trip wouldn't be a total bust.

I went with my youngest daughter who took the day off from work. She had no recollection of being there as a kid.

I know, nice pics and all, but what does this have to do with writing? I wondered if I could paint the experience with words and get close to the same feeling.

I opened the car door and looked around at my purple-tinged surroundings thirty minutes before sunrise. I walked around the CRV and popped open the back, opened the passenger door to get my camera bag. 

If it was a movie you'd expect to hear a breeze, the clichéd scree of a hawk, various subtle but unidentifiable animal noises, maybe a rabbit running through the brush, little birds taking off. But there was none of that. Complete silence, except for a slight hi-pitched tone of tinitus. Completely alone. 

The first sounds I heard were my boot-crunch on the dried sticks and rocks as I wandered among the dried parchment flowers of the fourwing saltbush, and brittle, twisted, frayed-silver sagebrush roots.  The plastic click and aluminum slide of the tripod legs and various soft button presses as I got my camera ready for sunrise. 

Then it was just waiting. No wind, so the 24-degree temperature didn't feel cold at all. Slowly pacing and wandering around until moments before sunrise I saw a better view for the picture. I ran back to the camera, slipping in the sand, grabbed the tripod and ran back to the better spot just as the sunlight grazed the mountain.

So did I capture the feeling? Whether I succeeded or not doesn't matter. It's the attempt. I had to slow down and quiet my racing mind enough to re-live the experience and try to put it into words.

So here's your challenge. One of these weekends coming up, take a solitary day trip and try to capture it in words as well as pictures.

Capturing Memories (Without Digital Cameras)

A Record That I Was Here.

Last weekend when I went to the Corner Bakery Cafe in Draper to write, I also took a few minutes and painted my empty plate and napkin.

When it's so easy to snap a photo and post it to Facebook and move on, picking up a pen and notebook puts the world in slo-mo, and pause even. The same thing happens when I draw and paint. For these few moments I stopped my mind from constantly grinding through all my worries and concerns and focused on the napkin on my plate, the way the light reflected off the different textures.

I stopped and observed the people around me and tried to describe them in a combination of words that was meaningful to me. Out of all the moments that will make up today, all the moments I give to others, that dribble away watching something on TV, running errands… I have these few moments that are mine. I have a record of my attempt to capture these moments in words and images.

Writing at the Corner Bakery Cafe

I went to the Corner Bakery Cafe in Draper this morning. After a toasted sourdough panini breakfast sandwich I uncapped my pen and took a few minutes to write in my notebook.

There's a lady in one of the stuffed chairs in front of me. Laid back, reading and looking at pictures on her Kindle in the landscape position. Her fingers held thoughtfully to her lips, gripping a stylus that she never uses. Black windbreaker, matching stylish black cap, bright fuchsia shirt. Her blond hair in a faux wind-blown style sticking out from under the cap, narrow reading glasses, olive capri shorts. All the pieces in place, but the sum is less than the parts. In spite of all the effort it still feels like she's in a house dress with curlers—if anyone still wears curlers in their hair.

A couple tables away sits a soccer mom with her teenage son and his friend. They're in their high school soccer uniforms, she's pulled out knitting needles and a ball of dark grey yarn and is furiously knitting away while interrogating the friend. They're silently chewing and texting except for the occasional barely-audible grunt replies and barely-visible eye contact while she desperately pecks away at their teenage ennui.

After a few minutes to myself writing, I take a deep breath and the world feels right, at least for a little while. Not the best writing, not the worst. But at least I spent a few moments capturing my observations.

The Secret To Writing

After our last writing practice session, it came to me, the Secret To Writing.

The Secret To Writing is to let the tip of the pen actually make contact with the paper, then flex the muscles of the fingers, wrist, and arm in such a fashion that words begin to form.

Sounds easy? Now comes the tricky part. You have to do it every day. Or at least so often that it feels like every day.

The amazing thing is that by forcing the pen to move, whether you have thoughts behind it or not, writing happens. Words place themselves in that unique combination that is yours. It's only with daily practice that the words start to feel comfortable enough that they're willing to tumble out of your head to the paper.

You just need to put the pen to the paper and get out of the way.

The Leaky Pen, Vol.1 Issue 2, September 1998

Re-Thinking Natalie

I did something this morning I haven't done for years. I blew the dust off my fountain pen, put a new ink cartridge in, opened a notebook (the paper kind) and wrote.

June 23, 2013

Words are nothing really. I mean you can't see them when they're spoken. Remember the last time you heard people nearby speaking in a foreign language? Those are words, floating around with no meaning. But when we write them down we give them shape. In some way they take form, give form to our thoughts.

I remember buying Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" from a book club back in the '80s. Holding it in my hands, the answers. Here's a way to write, a way to get those tangly words out of my head and onto paper. That's all I was looking for. At least now 30 years later, that's what I think I was looking for. For many years I treated that [book] like the gospel for writers. Good news, yes. Truth crystalized and given form. I could hold it. Read it. And every time I read it, opened it, it told me the same things. It became a comfort.

Then I heard a recorded version of it. Natalie was reading her book. I could hear the same words I was familiar with. But then unexpectedly at the end of the chapters she had some new things to say. Things that have given me much to think on ever since. For example, she had said to buy a fast-writing pen. She said she uses a cheap Shaeffer fountain pen, the kind you can buy at a corner drugstore. So that's where I went, and that's what I bought. In fact, that's what I'm using to write these words with right now. Buy a college-ruled notebook, cheap, so you're not afraid to write stupid, crappy words, whatever comes to mind. I did that. I've got a box full of those notebooks.

Then the surprise came on the tape. She said she doesn't use fountain pens now. At least not exclusively. Just use whatever. As long as it's fast. I laughed. One of those times when your perspective shifts. And you see things sharper, clearer. Things about yourself. I realized what a trap the written word can be. The fact that it's tangible gives it importance. It's more important than any thoughts or words that I've ever thought or written. Because nothing I've ever written exists in as exquisitely tangible a shape as a book. If it's in a book it automatically has weight, in both senses of the word.

She talked about that. Lighten up people. Nobody has all the answers for you. Only you do. And the way you find out what those answers are for you is to put the pen on paper. Of course I'm paraphrasing. I don't remember what she said exactly. But I do remember how my own perspective on writing shifted. One day I cleaned my pen, put it in a cup on my desk with some other pens, and didn't touch it for thirteen years. I guess I needed some time to figure out if I had anything worth writing about.