I like to keep quotes in an 8 by 5 inch blue-cloth covered three-ring binder. I write down or tear out quotes that strike my fancy.  They come from books and magazines, affirmations I wish to repeat to myself, fortunes from cookies, remarks during a lecture, writings in a program, overheard dialog or something a friend or family member says or writes to me.  Sometimes I copy the quote onto the loose-leaf pages in my binder.  Sometimes I paste, tape or staple a quote in that I’ve found in print or have hastily scrawled on a napkin or deposit slip.  If I don’t paste or staple them in, sometimes I just stuff them between the pages thinking I’ll eventually get back to keeping the notebook neat.  I page through the notebook when I want to feel inspired to write but don’t know quite what I’ll write about or how to write about something I want to write about.  I’ve been doing this for years, so the notebook is fat and I have developed the habit of selecting three to five of the quotes at once and seeing if I can construct a piece of writing that holds them all.

Recently, leafing through my notebook of quotes, I selected the following five from throughout the notebook:

l. Human beings are made noble—indeed immortal—by their unselfish compulsion to pass on their acquired knowledge to succeeding generations.  –William Arnold, Seattle Post Intelligencer Film Critic

2. For true partnership can only be achieved by separate and whole beings who retain their separateness even in unity and uniting. Remember to let the winds of Heaven dance between you.  –A description of the Rune Gebo

3. There is another heaven and / Earth beyond the world of men.  –Li Po

4.  People would love it, and defend it with their lives because they would somehow know that their lives would be nothing without it.  If the Earth were only a few feet in diameter.  –Joe Miller

5. Once you are happy by yourself, nothing is ever lost or gained by any particular relationship. They’re just different ways of expressing this feeling you have.  –Inspirational Bookmarks #4

Just as I finished typing them on one page, the phone rang.  My aunt had the results of medical tests and now knew that she faced surgery, six months of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer. As I set to writing, her news was in my mind and writing with the idea of using these quotes worked to help me absorb the sadness and alarm I was feeling about the treatment my aunt would face in the coming months.  The task I’d assigned myself to use the quotes in one freewrite helped me bring to life the connection I have with my aunt:

 I am freewriting now after talking with my aunt in Florida who has just returned from seeing a gynecological oncology surgeon because a sonogram picked up a mass and fluid in her abdomen.  This must be what has been making my aunt so uncomfortable with an upset stomach for no particular reason she could think of.  I sit here after speaking with her, writing and accomplishing what I must to keep on schedule with my work, though my heart is with her and a large portion of my head, too.  She sounds confident in her surgeon and confident that treatment will work for her—six weeks of chemotherapy and then taking Taxol after that with another anti-cancer drug as well.  On her way out of the doctor’s office, she met one of the doctor’s patients who has recovered nicely from exactly what my aunt may have and has been cancer free for over three years now.  I ask the winds of heaven to dance between us and bring her health and me the separateness I need to be able to offer her my being, my prayers, my strength.

My aunt was the one who called me when my own parents were so upset with me for pursuing a divorce that they weren’t speaking to me, except in anger.  My aunt, who had been divorced many years before, called to tell me she wanted to be my friend, offer me whatever she could, whatever that might be.  To this day, my aunt never hangs up the phone without saying she loves me.

My aunt writes me often that she wishes she could write and be creative.  I write her that she is creative in the way she mentors so many others, especially young women whose families are unable to encourage them in their strides.  My aunt is someone to whom many feel thanks because their lives are so much more because of her encouragement and enthusiasm, a sphere of love we protect because our lives depend on it.

What can I share with my aunt today, my aunt who has buried both her brothers, and both her parents and is here for so many of us now, alone, holding up the family tree, imparting the family history, heritage and lore to her four grandsons in particular?  What heaven and what earth are beyond this one that I may contact and pray inside to have her cells come once again to order?

I will pass on what I know. To live is to create, to create is to grow, to grow is to live.  Lousie Hay suggests in her book You Can Heal Your Life that we make a list of all that we love about ourselves.  “I love myself; therefore…,” she says to say and to work if we can in partnership with someone in doing this.  I will send my aunt my list and ask her to send me hers:  I love myself; therefore I take the time to watch the hummingbird visiting the impatiens blossoming outside my window.  I love myself; therefore I sit down and write my book with joy.  I love myself; therefore, I remember the curly blond-haired freckled little girl I was. I love myself; therefore, I don’t worry too much that I am short.  I love myself; therefore I will cook a dinner tonight lovingly.   Louise Hay suggests we hold hands with our partner as we alternate doing this, so I stretch my hand across these United States.  I close my eyes.  I see my aunt.  I squeeze her fingers. She has listened to me and I am ready to listen to her.  We are noble in the way that we encourage each other and teach each other what we know.

My aunt knows what she has to do to face this crisis.  She will have the operation and the medical therapy and she will stick to her guns about not being ready to die.  She has more to live.  And in her company, her grace, her love, we walk with the winds of heaven.  And I will teach her to write!  We will start with Louise Hayes exercise because it calls forth images to write from, because when we do our list, even by email and our fingertips type past the tops of the keys, we will witnesses ourselves for one another.  We will have begun to put ourselves and our cells back in order.

It is amazing how the need to make meaning, unite heart and mind, the inner and outer world, the past and the present, ignites writing.  Although I felt the freewrite was forceful, I knew it most likely needed editing.  And so I did edit it before I sent it to my aunt.  Perhaps expectedly, many of the lines I took right from the quotes are gone now. Although they were vital stepping-stones in my thinking, they seemed in the end to interfere with the flow or be over written:

My aunt in Florida has just returned from seeing a gynecological oncologist surgeon because a sonogram picked up a mass and fluid in her abdomen.  This must be what has been making my aunt so uncomfortable the last week or so with an upset stomach for no particular reason she could think of.  I sit here after speaking with her, writing and accomplishing what I must to keep on schedule with my work, though my heart is with her and a large portion of my head, too.  She sounds confident in her surgeon and confident that treatment will work for her—six weeks of chemotherapy and then taking Taxol after that with another anti-cancer drug as well.  On her way out of the doctor’s office, she met one of the doctor’s patients who has recovered nicely from exactly what my aunt may have and has been cancer free for over three years now.

My aunt was the one who called me when my own parents were so upset with me for pursuing a divorce that they weren’t speaking to me, except in anger.  My aunt, who had been divorced many years before, called to tell me she wanted to be my friend, offer me whatever she could, whatever that might be.  To this day, my aunt never hangs up the phone without saying she loves me.

My aunt writes me often that she wishes she could write and be creative.  I write her that she is creative in the way she mentors so many others, especially young women whose families are unable to encourage them in their strides.  My aunt is someone to whom many feel thanks because their lives are so much more because of her encouragement and enthusiasm.

What can I share with my aunt today, my aunt who has buried both her brothers, and both her parents and is here for so many of us now, alone, holding up the family tree, imparting the family history, heritage and lore to her children, nieces, grand nieces, and grandsons?  What heaven and what earth may I contact with my prayer that her cells come once again to order?

I will pass on what I know. To live is to create, to create is to grow, to grow is to live.  Louise Hay suggests in her book You Can Heal Your Life that we make a list of all that we will do because we love ourselves.  “I love myself; therefore…,” she says to say and complete, telling us to work if we can in partnership with someone in doing this.  I will send my aunt my list and ask her to send me hers:  I love myself; therefore I take the time to watch the hummingbird visiting the impatiens blossoming outside my window.  I love myself; therefore I sit down and write my book with joy.  I love myself; therefore, I remember the curly blond-haired freckled little girl I was. I love myself; therefore, I don’t worry too much that I am short.  I love myself; therefore I will cook a dinner tonight lovingly.   Louise Hay suggests we hold hands with our partner as we alternate doing this, so I stretch my hand across these United States.  I close my eyes.  I see my aunt.  I squeeze her fingers.

My aunt knows what she has to do to face this crisis.  She will have the operation and the medical therapy and she will stick to her guns about not being ready to die.  She has more to live.  And in her company, her grace, her love, I will teach her to write!  We will start with Louise Hay’s exercise because it calls forth images to write from, because when we do our list, even by email and our fingertips tap the tops of the keys, we witness ourselves for one another.  We will have begun to put ourselves, our cells, back in order.

I hope that my essay is the beginning of an instructional series that I write for my aunt and that I can help her create the writing she wants to.  I also see how starting with other people’s words allows us entry into our own; and by the time our writing is complete, the others’ words that may have sparked it are mysteriously glowing embers.

So start keeping a notebook of quotes.  Choose what you write down because it makes you laugh, or intrigues you, or sounds smart or resembles what you think.  Write down who said it, when and where because you never know when it will be useful to attribute the quote. Then once you have some pages filled with them, take a look through the quotes from time to time. Select three to five of them and begin a freewrite with the intention of filling all the quotes in.  Watch your mind travel and gather before it knits everything together!