"I never know what I think about something until I've read what I've written on it."
--William Faulkner
On Thursday I went to an amazing night of poetry writing in Santa Monica that I'm dying to tell you about. It was facilitated by Maya Stein, whom you may know as Papaya Maya from the old days. Can I just tell you how freaking awesome! it was to sit in a room full of fearless goddesses, sharing their post-it note vulnerabilities round after round, searching eagerly all the while for what Maya calls, "a way in".
This idea of "finding a way into" the work resonated so deeply with me. Of course when one takes a shamanic journey, you use a portal that is generally the same each time, but sometimes a prompt or any other influence can grab you and carry you off trancelike into the otherworlds, too. So I felt that her instruction to use, for example, a piece of food that you feel a connection to or opposition to, was a very useful prompt for writing because there are *feelings* there that help to serve as a diving off point-a portal to enter the unconscious realms.
Here are some of the mundane notes I made (from detailed bits of my day) to uncog the wheels and see where I could be led:
*Home Savings Bank. Since 1889.
*The black hillside on fire, being sprayed by firemen in hot suits, as cars stacked up routinely on the highway.
*His scratchy five o'clock shadow- forgetting to make his way over the king sized covers for a goodnight kiss, as he also neglected to turn off the bedside lamp.
*The moon upside down on it's flat edge.
*Muesli with hot water poured over it because I'd run out of their favorite packet oatmeal.
*The tube of moisturizer crammed and rolled up still sits on the countertop-why can't I throw it away?
*The mockingbirds eat all of the cat kibble and leave crumbs of it all over the porch, which I step on resentfully.
*Dead hawk? Owl? And me without my rubber gloves. Shit.
*Shiny Happy People, and each time it comes on, they dance and make giggling laps around the kitchen island.
At one point, I held the potato I'd brought, and wrote on and on about how I felt about it and what it represented to me. As it turned out, an unseemly potato was my ticket into some deeper issues that wanted to be written about rather desperately. It told me a story about my family and my relationship, and about my feelings around that which is bland and unexciting. The writing revealed that I struggle with some aspects of the ordinary. That there is something in me that seeks out the different, the colorful, the passionate, the risk-takers. All of these things which, for me, Potato is not a poster-child for. Not brand new revelations, but from the pov of a potato, there was a freshness about it that I enjoyed mucking around in.
The evening was LOADS of fun: Maya is grace, stunning words, and a very effective teacher. I felt absolutely plumbed by the end of the evening. I highly recommend, even if you don't consider yourself a writer, that you find where she is and go to her.
Catch Maya on her Tour De Word this Fall, and see if a vegetable can uncover your hidden depths...
