I haven't really written anything in a week or so. I'm kind of disappointed in myself. I have this amazing writing room I created. I made it all inspiring and intimidating at the same time. It has one of those big wooden desk's with a big wooden captain's chair. Tall book shelves filled with all the great classic Literature that leaves you feeling like less of a writer in comparison. I even have the dog who curls up at your feet while you write, how great is that?
For the first few days after the room was created, I could have lived in there. I didn't want to emerge. I felt like Poe when he would lock himself in a cellar and get drunk and write like a mad man, except I had less wine, more pretty stuff around me and I also have a computer. I wrote some really great stuff. Lately, I've been writing some really great amazing crap. I've learned that most of the things you write on a daily basis is nothing but muck, and sometimes you have to sift through it until something rare and great emerges. I put emphasis on the rare.
In the meantime, I have turned my writing room into a reading room. I picked up "Nothing Special" by Charlotte Joko Beck during my state of writer's block. In the week I've had it, I've read it three times. There has only been three books, in the nonfiction category, that I have read in my lifetime that have altered my existence, my reality, my consciousness, this is one of them.
I really can't honestly give an accurate summary, because the message is too entirely complicated (but also not so complicated) to put in words. Joko herself tells us that in her writing, living a Zen life is something that you can't really define or summarize or even give accurate guidance on how to achieve. Also, once you make enlightenment your goal or chase after it, it is an illusion. While that is difficult to contemplate for most people, she offers us a great chapter called "Dorothy and the Door", which gives a metaphorical look on how to practice, or essentially how not to practice.
All in all, it was a great book. Hey, maybe this non-writing thing will help me to become a zen master? Oh crap, that's already trying to achieve something, which is outside of the zen practice. I must repeat, "I am perfect as I am, perfect as I am, perfect as...".
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