tazo zen tea

it is quite late, say 12:00 in the... morning. Well I'm sorry about that mistake, I meant it is quite early. You see I wanted to stay up because I found a little green packet of Tazo Zen tea in my bedroom, which I have such a heart-tug for, even though I've never tried it before tonight. I think my friend Amy sent it to me. And I drink tea sip by sip, very slowly, so it has taken me a long time since I made it an hour ago. I am about halfway done with the cup.

I am considering staying up the entire evening, to see the sunrise and write of it. There is something so special about staying up, waiting and waiting for the sun to rise. Unfortunately it is difficult for a person such as me. So I may fall asleep on the living room couch if I cannot make it.

Dr. Greene said I'm trying to live a 26-hour day, which I think is so funny. He also said he is not concerned about my caffeine intake, which is "only" four shots a day. I am relieved.

I can see the moon from here, behind a pine tree, and it is white.

Great book, by Ms. Julia Cameron... "The Artist's Way". Yes, go get it from your library, it is very popular and you should be able to find it. I am going through the 12-week course. It is these kind of books--the open, dreamy ones--that really get my heart pumping to write. And they are the only ones that actually encourage me to write better, and in my own way.

Nothing is more important than that. If you don't write like yourself, you'll never be original. Think Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stephen King, James Joyce, Ray Bradbury. Completely different styles. What if Fitzgerald wanted to write just like Hemingway? or Stephen King wanted to write just like Ray Bradbury? You would just have books flat and dull and untrue stocking the bookshelves. Not that there aren't already millions of books like that out there, but we would really miss the true gems. The long, waltzing, fantastic sentences of Ray Bradbury... the bold starkness of Hemingway.

And,
to leave you with something of Ray Bradbury's to chew on,
from his incredible book "Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity",

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."

"Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down."

phoenix from the ashes

I hate to say it but this morning I was obsessed with dying the death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man whose writing I greatly admire, and yet a man I have sympathy for because of his van-Gogh-like death. You know, the hurting, sick alcoholic, struggling to turn out typewrit page after typewrit page; alone after dozens of failed relationships and many affairs... yes, this morning I woke up and it felt like someone had prophesied my life to be like that. It was a weird, not very comfortable feeling.

However hard my life is right now, I feel as though I am rising up through it all. I'm writing like mad, accomplishing dozens and dozens of things in a day, scraping away at papers that fly about me; I am doing more work and chores than ever, and drinking more espresso than ever. I have started to take Vitamin B halfway throughout the day, just so I can get through without falling asleep.

Then at 10 o'clock PM, I have an espresso in my bedroom, so I can stay up till midnight and write. Oh, writing. What I would do to write. It is my life, it is the very cord that connects me to my sanity. Or perhaps insanity, depending on your viewpoint. It opens me up. I must admit though, that true writing is very painful, oh damn it is. It hurts like hell. But if it does not hurt, there is no truth in it, there is no meaning and no self in it... it is all fluff, nothing worth keeping, nothing worth publishing. You might as well have been doing cleaning or such.

Oh tut! I'm starting to sound like Brenda Ueland. (Though that may not be such a very bad thing.)