Lately, I’ve read a book of Buddhist wisdom by Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, poetry by the Northwest’s James Bertolino, essays by the Northeast’s Philip Simmons and memoirs by the Southwest’s Laurence Shames and by Timothy Doyle, who has lived in India for years.  In each of the author’s performances, I am reminded that when we pay attention to our world and offer this attention to our readers, our readers experience transformation. It doesn’t matter what genre we are working in.  It doesn’t matter if we are writing about the present, the past, or wondering about the future. As we write, we inhabit our lives with all of our senses and in doing so we arrive at a kind of grace, a grace reflected in the words we leave behind, a grace that brings much to others’ lives.

In no death, no fear, (Riverhead Books, New York), Hanh is writing to help Westerners understand Buddha’s lesson that when conditions are sufficient things manifest and when conditions are no longer sufficient things withdraw and wait until the moment is right for them to manifest again.  With this lesson in mind, Hanh writes about finding the “reality that goes beyond ideas.”  We must, he goes on, “pay attention to all the leaves, the flowers, the birds and the dewdrops.”  In grieving, he says, “If you can stop and look deeply, you will…again embrace the joy of life.”  He entreats us to hold the hand of someone skilled in this practice and take a walk to look deeply and to “touch the earth.” Then we will see manifestations everywhere.

Writing, too, is a way of locating the joy of life.  I think that when I read skillful writers, I am taking the kind of walk Hanh speaks about.  The men whose poems, essays and memoirs I’ve been reading lately are, I believe, helping me “touch the earth.”  In their work, I notice again how through writing we find what we are looking for– the ability to be thoroughly alive.

In Pocket Animals (Egress Studio Press, Bellingham, WA) which contains 60 lyric poems, James Bertolino describes it this way:

Wingbone

I ask no heaven but this raven’s world.
–Richard Nelson

I want to open everything
and pour myself

into the world, but am unable.
So I drip what I’ve become

 through the wingbone of a loon.
Only then do I hear the calling

that mends my heart, that forgives
my distance.

Looking at the particular, writing the particular, Bertolino becomes part of the whole.  Reading his particulars about the moment of transformation, we are included in his transformation.  In transition, we give up the distance we so often create between ourselves and the rest of creation.  We experience the dripping of ourselves into creation, like steeped tea. We experience how we can’t transform without focus. The whole is too large, but if we tune our perception, we can ride inside the wing of a loon.

In Going to Dolpo, Imperfect Music and Literature, Milwaukee, WI, mid-western photographer Timothy Doyle writes about mountain climbing in Nepal:

Hours later, well above the monastery, snowflakes, like fine points of white light, pierced the air and flew diagonal in the direction of the river that hurled down over gray boulders and fallen pines. Climbing through a pine forest we kept slipping on the steep wet trail.  Higher up the pines gave way to snow cover and rock formations. We crossed the river over eight-inch wide logs covered with snow and ice and entered a small clearing.

Six Dolpo people of Tibetan descent sat licking tsampa out of tiny wooden bowls under an overhang of rock.

The simple rhythm of these words as they deliver their particulars puts us in the action of the writer’s now.  We face rugged nature and then find a clearing. We are moving and part of what is moving, and then we are settled and part of what is settled. Language does this for us when we attempt no more than to deliver what our senses take in during moments of great involvement.  These words are a good reminder that when we write, we must not judge the experience we are having. We must immerse ourselves in it, simply, and momentum will build.

In “Choosing the World,” an essay in Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life, from Bantam Books, New York, Philip Simmons writes:

One evening this spring, I sat at the dinner table with my children, Amelia and Aaron, ages 7 and almost 9. The first flies were hatching and, drawn to the light of the house, gathering on the window pane near us. Struck with a sudden enthusiasm, the kids got pencils and paper and began to draw…
Now my son, the older of the two, had had some practice at such things, but my daughter’s drawings had so far been limited in subject to standard if charming flowers and rainbows and butterflies and little brown-haired girls. She had never tried drawing a tiny white fly, or in fact to draw anything at all that was actually before her in the world rather than summoned from her imagination. And sure enough, her first sketch of the fly looked suspiciously like those brightly colored butterflies that had flown beneath so many smiling suns in the works that until then made up her principal oeuvre….
She looked, she looked again, she pressed her nose to the glass, she returned to the table. Erasing what she had drawn before, she first got the antennas right, then went back to the window to study the legs, Each time she came back to the table, her paper got more smudged with erasures, but she managed to get the right number of legs in the right places and bent at the correct angles, then to tackle the wings, the body, the head.

Our responsibilities to the world are many and complex, yet they seem to begin here, in this simple yet arduous act of seeing the world and responding–renewing our promise–to it. I sometimes imagine that if the creator of the universe wanted to take another shot at communicating what was most important, she might replace all of the sacred scripture with the words “Pay Attention!”  To choose the world means first to of all to see it clearly, to shed fantasy and habit, to look, and look again, to let ourselves be broken open by its intricacy and its mystery. It’s fitting that one source for the world religion is a group of words meaning “to read again,” for we must return to the book of the world for a closer reading. Only when we have read and reread with open mind and heart can we fruitfully carry on god’s work. Then, picking up our pencils we continue the world’s unfinished text.

In Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived by Laurence Shames and Peter Barton, Rodale, New York. Laurence Shames chooses the world even as he is dying of stomach cancer when he invests in the lives of others.  In the early stages of his disease, he concentrated on helping his children and their friends explore the world in a meaningful way:

Every outing had a theme.  …

One of my favorites was called “Luggage,” There’s a Samsonite factory in Denver; we went to it and saw the bags being made, heard the honest clank of rivets. Then we went to a retail store and asked a lot of questions:  Who decides how things would be displayed? How did you figure out how many to keep in the warehouse? Who bought more luggage–men or women?

Then we drove out to the airport, having gotten permission to go “backstage” with the baggage handlers. We watched them, with their back-support belts and their elastic wristbands and their boots. Bend and jerk; bend and jerk. We saw how many suitcases they lifted, how heavy the bags were, how they just kept coming down the conveyor, relentless…

Sometimes at the end of our outings, there’d be the strangest sound in the van:  silence. How rare was that? Ten or twelve kids, thinking something over…
If I still had the strength and luck to accomplish anything at this stage, it wouldn’t be reported in Who’s Who or the Wall Street Journal. But maybe it would be scrawled here and there in a child’s notebook, or etched in to a young and open mind.

Whether we are present with nature or present with others, present out of physical need or present out of emotional need, when we describe things simply, we are struck with richness.  We have done what Simmons advises in his essay:

We must love the world as new lovers do one another, as if to be in the beloved’s presence is to walk through a world made newly luminous, finding that every ordinary gesture–the way he drops his car keys on the table, the way she raises a cup to her lips–is holy and part of a sacred dance.  Mystic vision is a lover’s vision and despite the pain love brings, to see the world through a lover’s eyes is already to have chosen it.

Born of the world, we give birth to the world in every moment.  Beloved of the world, we are every moment in its embrace.

Our writing, so many have said, is smarter than we are.  I believe it is because when we are faithful to noticing, faithful to images, we write the world.  We extend our hands. The act of writing becomes an act of love. That is where wisdom lives.

****

To practice the lesson of being present in your writing, try these exercises inspired by the authors I’ve been reading:

As James Bertolino
Go outdoors, even to your own backyard. Be sure to physically inhabit the place that you choose.  Write a short lyric about your experience in the yard.   Think of an intangible quality that is deeply important to you but is also elusive–gratitude, connection, forgiveness might be such attributes. Now notice what is outdoors where you are–write down what you see, hear, smell, touch and even taste if you put your tongue to the air or a fresh picked fruit.  What you discover may not be beautiful in the usual sense of the word, especially if you live in an urban area. Traditional beauty is not what matters here.

Next, make a statement about what you want concerning the attribute you have selected:  Bertolino wants to pour himself into the world.  Do you want to beg forgiveness?  Thank the world?  Wed the world?  Make a big statement.  Then choose a way to accomplish the task on some small level using something from what your senses connected with in the outdoors.

As Timothy Doyle
Take on a physical task that you don’t really find easy–a walk in the rain, pruning thick branches, scrubbing the floor, or making sewing repairs, for instance.  After you have accomplished the task, sit down and write description of yourself in the think of doing it.  Concentrate on what you saw, smelled, touched, tasted and heard.  Once you have that on the page, give us an image from the moment you completed your task.

As Philip Simmons
Think about a time that you observed the natural world closely. Were you a child sitting in clover, a teenager wondering about what was over the horizon at sunset, a new parent looking at freshly mown lawn?  Write a vignette about noticing and getting it right.  What did you see in the world? How was it different than what you expected or had usually seen before?

As Laurence Shames
Invent a field trip you to take others on.  You are creating this in your mind, but make sure it is a trip to a place you know well enough to guide others through. Who are you taking? Where are you taking them?  How will you get there? What will you observe?  Imagine the group’s silence after the day.  What do you suppose they are thinking about?

Doing these exercises, you may start or create poems, essays, vignettes and short stories that choose the world.  Whatever form the writing takes, it will invigorate you as well as the people who read it.  With some pure attention to the details, you may effect the kind of transformation these authors have.  Your writing will ground your readers in direct experience. It will help them “touch the earth” and become filled with the beauty and wonder of life, so often veiled by notions and expectations.