Folks, I’m changing my focus… My writing needs to be a lot more organized and on the down low for the time being. I’ll be reorganizing the Little Writer and probably won’t post here until I have a body of work to share. The more I let writing take it’s own course, the more I enjoy it. Once I started focusing on my main passion, my spiritual work, the writing got freed up and interestingly… it’s finding its feet again. (smacks forehead~)
In the meantime, I’ve started Shadowplay and am focusing on Carl Jung’s emphasis on shadow work for the forseeable future. Hope to see you there!
by alicepopkorn
It’s time for reevaluation and renewal. The Little Writer will be taking a hiatus – however I will continue to visit you all and to share in your explorations.
I see a new blog, a new focus for the future… I’m just not quite there yet. Until we meet again…
photo by mindfulness
What happens when all concepts are stripped away? Or maybe a better question is… how do you survive the process of getting to such a place?
From the spiritual literature I’ve read, lack of concepts is highly desirable. It takes you to the “I don’t know” mind. Buddhists call it Emptiness, Tolle calls it Space Consciouness (I always liked that one…), and Byron Katie puts it like this: Who would you be without your story?
What’s left when you aren’t strategizing, manipulating, orchestrating, stressing, hoping, fearing?
For the second time in my life, I’m exploring this question. The first time I was at a retreat and we were asked to step out of our comfort zone… WAY out. It was one of those times when you are so committed, so passionate about knowing the truth that you’re willing to sacrifice your life. Kind of how I imagine those folks who jump out of airplanes feel… shared shitless but damned if they will play it safe one second more.
My experience taught me I could trust the process… that I could trust life. Out in the middle of Knoxville, Tennessee, eating a bologna sandwich and eyeing a plastic covered mattress in the middle of a stranger’s living room… I found courage. Courage to smile and accept a meal. Courage to walk to the apartment door and leave. Courage to navigate the transportation system back into the center of town, find a library, and gratefully collapse knowing I was safe again. Maybe even realizing I had been safe all along.
I can’t go much more into the details of that experiment because we were asked to keep the specifics private… I will say that at no point were we asked to put our lives in danger… however a hefty percentage of us did do some outrageous things in the name of testing reality to the limit. Oh the stories of that day!
Here I am again, what almost ten years later? This time I’m doing this trust thing, this testing reality thing, sans a group of committed others. It’s just me baby. Well, my partner is along for the ride by default, but the inner journey is intrinsically a solo one.
So what do I mean by “this trust thing”? I mean… getting to the place where concepts no longer save the day or distract or comfort anymore. I mean…getting in touch with the shadow … and seeing how far the rabbit hole goes.
What happens when you are out of luck, out of options, and out of hope? Where does life take you next?
It’s been a hard month of losing stories… They’ve been unravelling like bolts of silk, sliding through my fingers. I don’t know what’s in store, I don’t know where this will lead.
I am entering “I don’t know” mind. And it’s nothing like I thought.
photo by alice popkorn
You can speak now
I am ready; I will drink your scorpion tea.
Even this axe in my heart is
Beautiful in the mist.
Your knowing smile makes me wonder…
Have you come to offer me solace
Or to lead me astray
Again?
No matter: I have found my center
Alone, I see what I did not see before.
Strength steals through my soul
This fog has taught me a thing or two.
(With this prompt, I am continuing to explore the phenomenal nature of ego…)
I’ve decided to put the horse in front of the carriage. As my new tagline says… I’m putting enlightement on the front burner. Self-Realization as my focus. This doesn’t mean I’m heading to an ashram or will start to wear ochre robes. But it does mean my focus via the Little Writer is changing a bit. Well, quite a bit.
As I said in my post, Detour or More, if fiction or other forms of writing blossom from this inner emphasis… brilliant. If not… I have my priorities straight and I’ll be fine. Hope to see you all along for the ride – or at least on some of the stops along the way! :)
Namaste.
This came to me a few days ago, almost auditory in nature… Listed via the Writing Exercise page, it part of my journey toward finding my writerly way. My soul’s way. (More thoughts on that later.) This is a fictionalized conversation – not all events portrayed are my own.
Direct link here.
(this is long… perhaps read over a cup of tea or perhaps in more than one sitting… it is probably the only true thing I’ve written on this blog regarding my writing)
I’ve been contemplating the nature of dreams – not the kind you have at night, more the kind you follow with all your heart. The kind you proudly pronounce as your “bliss” and then pursue no matter what the obstacles, no matter if poverty is involved, no matter if it takes your entire life…
Some people call this having a life’s purpose.
Whatever you call it… it’s been something I’ve searched for and until recently, thought had seriously passed me by. In fact, I’ve contemplated the simple truth that perhaps I have no purpose waiting to be fulfilled. No meaning dying to be expressed.
That, as Deepak Chopra says, the purpose of Life is… life.
It’s funny because until just today, it never occured to me that my passion existed at all. I never considered that it has always been with me. Plain as the nose on my face and just as easy to dismiss as “oh that. that’s just my nose. big deal.”
For the longest time, I thought I wanted to be a writer – specifically, a romance writer. Yeah, I know, I’ve seen the rolled eyes and heard the snide comments… made a few of my own about it. But, growing up in a dysfunctional family, romance novels saw me through some tough times. Some of them were so horrifically bad though, I often thought… “Geez. I could write better than this!” And somehow in that moment, this idea of being a writer kind of blossomed and stayed.
Whenever life got tough or I ended up hating my current job… my mind would wander to, “When I write that book…”
It made me feel better to think I was more than my pathetic circumstances seemed to suggest. And as to why I hadn’t written that book… well the answer was simply that I wasn’t ready. Needed to experience more, needed to learn more about the craft. Needed to get other things out of my system.
This last year and a half, I’ve finally had the time and opportunity to write. To seriously write just about everyday without distraction or fear of a total financial meltdown.
Yet I haven’t written anything. Oh, there are writing prompts I’ve done. Lots of those. And lots of starts, partially completed outlines. And lots of crazy, inspired, ridiculous ideas. No shortage of those! But as to acutally writing out the rest of the story… zippo.
So now a year later, or so, I’m asking myself… is this really my passion? Is fiction writing “it”? It’s been very difficult to admit this – a ton of expensive creative writing books deny the very thought – but I don’t think it is. What flows the easiest, what makes me excited, is writing from the heart, so to speak. Laying it on the line. I love a process of self-inquiry called The Work by Byron Katie because it asks one to go within and answer four questions about any troubling thought.
I do that and find incredible clarity. My mind can easily, seamlessly access my emotions and put them to paper. I’m making a big deal of this because I know some people have a hard time with that. They know they’re feeling something – misery or depression, but they have no way to pinpoint it any further. They can’t get a read on their thoughts at all. I can.
But I am also realizing that that is not the same as stellar fiction writing. And it’s not the same as writing poetry… which uses delicate metaphor and soaring description. I don’t have that subtlty really. I say it like it is and similies be damned! I wish it was different but there you have it.
I’m not sure I enjoy fiction writing. Most of the time, it feels like drudgery to me.
So where in the hell does this leave a Little Writer that Could?
Well, to make this post even longer… it leads me back to my nose. To that thing I’ve always carried around that has seemed so ordinary as to be non-existent. And that is a passion to know my Self. To reach for the very deepest, experiential understanding of who I am.
To go within, to seek the inner guru, to follow that injunction: Know Thyself.
And if the writing follows… brilliant. If not… brilliant.
My Little Writer blog is going to be taking a detour. Going to be heading into new territory. It may not survive the journey; it may transmute into an some altered version. In the meantime, I will continue to support my co-blog, The Self-Love Project with Shraddha (link under the blogroll). I post there every other week or more depending. Most of you visit anyway, but I wanted to give a shout out for where I’ll likely be in the coming weeks if you don’t see posts here. I need to go within, to access inner realms, to ask myself the hard questions. To meditate.
To write the way I was meant to write as opposed to how I once dreamed I should write. There are dreams and psuedo-dreams, I’m discovering. I want to know the difference.
Listening to “Songbird,” today I felt my heart open… Almost as if I was hearing a love song to myself… And there’s absolutely nothing like that. Nothing like self-love. It’s what makes it possible to love at all. Thank you Eva – I wish you could have been here longer.
For you there’ll be no crying
For you the sun will be shining
‘Cause I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right
And the songbirds keep singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before
<instrumental>
To you, I would give the world
To you, I’d never be cold
‘Cause I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right
And the songbirds keep singing
Like they know the score
And I love you, I love you, I love you
Like never before
Like never before; like never before.
This is the famous Nepenthe… alien?… that I always love to photograph whenever we’re in Big Sur. We just got back from a camping trip to Pfeiffer and on the way back we had to have lunch at our favorite place. So often the sun casts this guy in shadow, but hopefully you can see the blue. If anyone knows the history of this fellow, do tell!
Here’s just a few more shots cuz I can’t resist. 
… The good news about camping is that our son has learned how to pee in the woods. The bad news is that now he wants to pee on any flora/ fauna he comes across, including the flowers in front of the house.
For a chance to post about the blues visit Rebecca for directions. Easy peasy! 
This was my first time visiting Three Word Wednesday. I had a lot of fun with this. For this week the words were:
Fracture
Noise
Vanish
by longhorndave
I can’t write for you…
You understand, don’t you?
The silence is deafening, the tension so high. I’m drinking tea, looking at each passing face from this salmon painted chair. Yet all I see are images with no story. Blurred faces vanishing into the next scene.
I would welcome the noise if I could hear it. You told me how you needed me to say something. You beamed me your frustrated longing – yet all I can do is sit here, fractured, drumming my chipped nails against this perfect porcelain plate.
Perhaps you will vanish now. Annoyed. Frustrated.
And I will be left with this perfect chocolate donut. My tongue loosened, moist with the words that come from each velvety bite.
A caress that you could never offer.
