Day 23, the spirit of writing

From James Mooney's report on the Ghost Dance Religion, 1896

"The remote in time or distance is always strange. The familiar present is always natural and a matter of course. Beyond the narrow range of our horizon imagination creates a new world, but as we advance in any direction, or as we go back over forgotten paths, we find ever a continuity and a succession. The human race is one in thought and action."

Today I am going to seek this strange remote.

There are the moments before I begin to write. I shall try to describe them. First off is the desire to write. This is experienced like a message, a feeling that something wants a voice. To begin I need to quiet my mind, to make it open to expression. When all is quiet and still, often some detail that connects 'me' with my surroundings begins to shine. I will describe such an instant because it was the first time I had experienced this. It was the late afternoon sun hitting my arm, and I could feel the difference in temperature, in all its grades from where the light hit, and the shade where it did not. By looking at the sun, then at my arm, while thinking of the warmth on my skin, I was given 'permission' to describe what asked to be articulated.

Next is the relationship between what is not me, the pen I hold and the paper upon which I place my marks as taught to me by my first teachers...... A B C D, through Z, and their various combinations. I believe that most things are connected, and that while there is an 'me', my responsibility is also to respect and honor what is not, and that any act of creation I may issue must respect this, and strive for merging my self with what is not me, not so that I may usurp or command, but rather that many voices could become one.

Being in this desert is the closest thing I have experienced to what Eternity might possibly be. There are voices swirling in the winds, laying at rest in the rocks of the mountains, gazing at the clouds pass from the skin of a clear pool of salt water. A coyote stood on the side of the road yesterday afternoon. As I slowed down, the animal looked me in the eyes, spoken here, just like that.