Contaminative Proximity, Your Choice For Freedom

I was woken in the middle of the night with a phrase zinging round in my head: contaminative proximity. I wrote it down (writers have pens and pads beside their beds for just this purpose), having no idea what it meant … and yet, in some small, dark corner of my brain there was a certainty of knowing. I let the words rest on the paper, knowing their meaning would be made clear.

The next morning I read a story in Nury Vittachi’s book, The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics:

In ancient China in the first century, a criminal was caught robbing the emperor’s palace. He was sentenced to twenty days in jail. But the jail turned out to be no jail. There were only white squares painted on the ground. The robber was placed in the centre of a painted square. The only other person there was an old man with a long beard in the next square.

The robber asked, “What sort of jail is this?”

The old man said, “The worst in the world. If any convict steps outside his lines, all the demons of hell come and eat him up.

The robber was terrified. He stayed inside the painted lines for the full twenty days. At the end of that time, the bearded man stepped out of his square.

The robber asked, “Why are you not being eaten by all the demons in hell?”

The old man said, “I am not a convict. I am a jailer.”

Blade of Grass, people think they react to what is around them. But the truth is that they react to how other people react to what is around them. The worst demons live inside our minds.

You see, contaminative proximity has nothing to do with physical proximity and everything to do with how much we allow others to influence us.

And what has this to do with writing?

In a recent Linkedin forum, one writer suggested that anyone who did not use style guides was a fool. So I commented:

“The Road by Cormac McCarthy won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006 … with not a stitch of apostrophes and a whole lot of other style guide crimes. Cormac may find it odd you calling him a fool but who’s to quibble … they’re obviously important if you decide they’re important, like most things in life.”

The other writer replied, “A professional writer, editor or proofreader knows the rules, follows a given style, and is consistent – that’s a service to the reader, which is what matters most to me.” To her, a writer is not professional and is a fool if they don’t do it a specific (her) way. Hmm.

A few years ago, three of us found ourselves in the “party district” of our fair city, something an old man like me doesn’t usually do. However, there I was with two friends in this frenetic cauldron of alcohol- and drug-enhanced hormones. Deafening music was blaring from every pub and club, groups of young people were standing around posing, shouting nonsense at each other and pretending they were blissfully and magnificently coping with their lives. Bottles and cans were bouncing into gutters, boys were playfully punching each other and girls were giggling and competing for Tart of the Night competition. Then, as we ambled amid this heaving throng, sporadic fights started and, eventually, the police arrived to be taunted by those they were trying to protect. Batons and hand-cuffs were waved about and flailing, drunk youths were carted off into the police van, their pride more damaged than their bodies.

Now, strangely, we three bemused onlookers walked right through this war of nonsense as if we were in some protective bubble. A policeman brushed my shoulder while in pursuit of a rebelling twerp but, apart from that, there was no contact or comments.

As we emerged from the throgging masses we looked back and wondered if it had really happened. I realised we had had a choice – join them or not. Though we had close physical proximity, our mental proximity was light years away.

We see people at funerals crying, looking sombre and acting stoically and so we feel we must behave the way they do. We don’t feel like doing it but, if we allow ourselves, we can easily be sucked into something not of our making.

On England’s public transport one is supposed to act as if one is the only person on the planet – no eye contact, no touching and definitely no talking. Sometimes, when I strike up a conversation, the other person is so shocked or brain-dead that no conversation ensues but, other times, I find myself in the most fascinating of conversations. Everyone else has allowed others to contaminate them and so they miss out while I and my fellow de-contaminator have a whale of a time.

Once upon a time, way back in the good old days when men were men and so were women, I was fifteen years old. It was a Maori wedding – the most fun you can have with your pants on – and it was the first time I’d played my saxophone in public, for money. We had the most exhilarating time and I crashed into bed in the wee hours at the band leader’s house. At breakfast the next morning was granddad – 92-years-old with teeth missing, bad hearing, bad breath and a hit-and-miss shaving routine. Everyone was telling him to “shut up and eat you silly old bugger” and other equally dismissive comments. I think they thought they were being funny and I knew I was supposed to be treating him like that too – I was supposed to allow myself to be contaminated by their behaviour.

However, something about that old man drew me in and, again, in a bubble, I sat next to him and asked about his life. The conversation was difficult on account of his hearing and the background orchestra of derision and breakfast clatter but he told me. He had been shanghaied (stolen) from a London street at the age of fifteen and was forced to man (boy?) a square rigger. He’d sailed the world, fought in South Africa, joined gold rushes in Australia and America and, after many other adventures, had finished his working life managing a tea plantation in Ceylon. He then retired to Martinborough, New Zealand, where we all sat that fine morning.

I related his story to everyone there and the clatter and hubbub suddenly died. They were stunned and embarrassed to think they’d ignored such a fascinating man, living in their midst. They’d each allowed the others’ behaviour to contaminate them and had not exercised any consciousness over the proximity of influence. If they had, they’d have been living not with a silly old bugger but an entertaining and fascinating human being.

Which all goes to show that writers and other humans can all benefit from being aware of the proximity of others’ contamination and consciously creating their own behaviour. Such an entertaining and fascinating world will emerge, I suspect.

The Gardener Sifts Words From Weeds

I wrote this memoir for the Fish Publishing International Short Memoir Contest. It’s the first memoir I’ve ever written and, incidentally, the first one I’ve ever read!

Once upon a time there was a boy who lived beside the winding Awhea river, in the shadow of the Wakapuni hill … and many other hills. This was a land of hills, green in winter and brown in summer. So many hills that the 22,000-acre farm this boy was born on was called Lagoon Hills. In that vast acreage only one paddock, two acres, was flat. The rest of the land went up or down, depending on what direction you rode your horse.

This boy had a hero from a flat and distant land, from a flat and distant time. This hero had been given many guises and meanings and the one this boy had was of a man in sandals and a long white robe, walking the dusty miles, giving hope, peace and healing at all who asked. Like any hero, worshippers had built shrines and religions to him and, though his message was of peace and forgiveness, these religions fought with each other and judged each other as sinful. For this reason, mainly, the boy stayed away from these religions and shrines and he stayed with the man – the good man with nothing bad to say against anyone, the man who called all to help all, the man whose greatest strength was his defencelessness … the greatest strength there is.

Being born on that large and lumpy sheep and cattle station in the steep hills of New Zealand’s Wairarapa province, he knew much of physical space and a physical life. During the school holidays and weekends he’d be up at five o’clock to spend the days with his father and other shepherds. Usually on horseback, they’d be mustering cattle or sheep, docking lambs, branding and dehorning cattle, lambing ewes, shearing and killing sheep, shoeing horses, feeding dogs, building fences, repairing saddles and driving the landrover the nine miles out to the back of the property to deliver the twice-weekly mail and supplies. In the summer it was dry and blistering heat and, in the winter, it was wet and chilly. And the wind … boy the wind! He’s seen dogs rush up a hill and be blown into the air as they topped the ridge. He’s seen good riders blown from their horses.

There wasn’t time to play. The manager, his father, was insistent that his own children, especially his eldest, were not seen to have any special advantages. So this gardener had less advantages and more work than anyone else, daylight to dusk.

While his two brothers were playing cowboys and Indians and his sister was reading, he was mowing the two-acre lawns. While they were watching television, he was out in the cold, polishing the family’s shoes.

Then came his defining moment. He was fourteen and his mother came to him in the hallway and said that, from now on, they would provide him with a roof, food and schooling. Anything else he needed, he’d have to work for. The ground opened up and sucked him in. Whatever security had been there was now gone; he was free-falling into the void, the nothingness, and there was no cliff edge to cling to. He was immediately ushered into his father’s office and told he must get a job for the school holidays. His father gave him a list of the neighbouring farmers and their phone numbers and told him to keep ringing till he got a job.

Being painfully shy (excruciatingly, painfully shy) and having no sense of money – he’d never been paid for anything he’d done before – his world, in ten minutes, was shattered and reassembled all wrong. His father left him to the Herculean task. The oak panelled office, the shelves of books, the worn leather chairs, the cool swivel chair, the huge wooden desk with leather inserts and the comforting smell of his father’s roll-you-own cigarettes was no longer comforting. It quickly took on a cold, forbidding and threatening terror. Sweating and stammering, he mumbled his plaintive message of beseech and got no, time after time. He knew no one wanted him and these phone calls confirmed it. The seventh and last call shone a faint light of hope into the cold, desperate pit of his disassembled world.

Against all expectations, the answer was yes. As he tried to register this in a brain well used to rejection, he also detected a strange kindness in the rough voice of this neighbouring farmer. The phone went click and so did his brain. He looked out at the grass tennis court, the rose garden, the pool, the sweeping driveway, the expansive lawns, the miles of hedges – the place he’d had to tend. They weren’t his any more, he realised. He was outside – outside this place, outside his family, outside his normal tasks … just outside with no hand to hold but the unknown hands of strangers who may or may not be welcoming.

He started working for the neighbour that frost-bitten May morning, mending fences, tending stud sheep, mustering and other farming tasks and it was so weird. Whatever he did was “alright mate”. If he did something right, it was “you’re alright mate”. If he did something wrong, it was “alright mate, how about trying it this way”. No reprimand. No beating. No telling others what an arse he was. Just continual encouragement and a happy smile. After fourteen years of being treated differently, it was hard to take in but, after three weeks of approval from a man, he didn’t want to leave. But the forces of adults are not to be denied by young people and so his father gave him his customary branding as an outcast at school – a “short back and sides” haircut that was so not-cool in the late 1960s.

With a head hung in shame from the worst haircut on the planet and missing his neighbour’s manly love, returned to school and applied himself to the task feverishly, hoping to forget.

But he never forgot.

In the meantime the teenager excelled at his school work and at sport, hoping for approval from his father, a father who was always too busy at work to visit the school.

He worked for a builder and making something from nothing was an amazing experience. A nothing spirals up from the void to be captured and held hostage by a mind until it is released as an idea which is then nurtured and manifested as a book, building or a baby as he himself once was. A creation process through which we conceive and manufacture the world in which we skip, play, work and worry … and then unmanifest to return again and again. An endless cycle of beauty in which we are both created and creator.

His father’s employer said he owned shares in the local meat works, two hours away. He offered his influence to get “the boy” a job over the long Christmas holidays. So the teenager was summarily dropped off at the single men’s huts with a small bag of clothes and enough money for two phone calls. His father was blithely confident he’d have a job and money the next morning. As his father left, the fifteen-year-old country lad explored with trepidation. In the common room there was a tattered pool table, surrounded by tattooed, beer-drinking, Maori men playing pool, laughing loudly, swearing profusely and hitting each other in painful camaraderie. Many had scars and missing teeth and none looked friendly. The boy quickly retreated to his room. Afraid to move, he missed out on dinner and didn’t sleep at all that night. Some time later he discovered that, in his room, there had been a rape the week before and a murder the month before.

By morning he knew he had to face this ferocious new world and so followed the men to breakfast. He didn’t have enough money for the meal and retreated to his room, hungry. He waited till he could see them filing out of the canteen and into the massive factory and walked out, jelly-legged, and asked someone the way to the employment office. Through a bewildering mass of corridors, stairs and rooms, asking several others the way, he eventually found himself in a large waiting room at the end of a queue of smoking, swearing, tattooed men. Some asked his name, kindly and smiled. He eventually got to one of the employment clerk’s desk – a clerk who had never heard of his father’s employer and who told him no one could work at the factory till they were sixteen. The boy was shooed out unceremoniously.

He found his way back to his room but not before being shouted at by some ferocious-looking men with knives, white uniforms and hair nets as he took wrong turns.

Terrified by his father’s reaction if he didn’t complete his mission and get a job, he knew couldn’t admit defeat. Being across the road from the Petone foreshore, he spent the rest of the day walking the beach with a grumbling stomach and no idea of what to do next.

That evening, one of the more ferocious of his companions gave him a toothless smile and asked him his name. After nervous introductions the man asked him his story and the boy spilled it all out.

This man, this protector with fists of broken granite and a heart of polished gold, left and soon returned with the rest of the gang. Not knowing whether to stand or run, the boy stood and heard them invite him into the common room for a beer and a korero[1]. He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing but followed them anyway, with his protector’s meaty hand across his shoulder. Plied with beer and smokes, he was told he was OK – they’d look after him and make sure he was fed and got a job. So he joined the gang as an honorary member, having his meals paid for, his beer and smokes supplied and being sent off to the employment office with words of encouragement each morning.

The employment office afforded less encouragement. He was sent away each day for being under age (and a nuisance) and he kept going back, spurred on by his Maori mates and the fear of retribution from his father. Like the New Age publisher (years later), the employment clerk finally caved in, falsified his age and he spent the next three months sweating over hot water, caustic chemicals and the thousands of meat hooks he had to clean every day.

For five years he earned the big money he could get at the meat works, in the freezers. Hard work, freezing conditions, lots of beer and smokes, great camaraderie and the income paid for his way through high school and university.

Excelling at high school, academically and athletically, he came away with a school record that still stands – he represented the school in more sports than anyone else. He also came away being able to play the saxophone and with no idea of what to do with his life. So he went to Massey University, in Palmerston North, where his best friend was going. It gave him another three years to think about what to do with his life.

His girlfriend at school went off to the big city and he enjoyed the free student life – drinking, partying, playing rugby, riding motorbikes and doing stupid dares. One dare, getting a haircut and joining the army, he did for one three-month Christmas holiday. And, occasionally, he studied.

Each non-Christmas holidays he was working physically – pruning trees, cutting scrub, building houses and driving trucks and his ability to survive without having to go home gave him exhilarating freedom.

Then, from university, he ‘fell’ into accounting – a local job offer and away he went, hating it most of the time. He was never a good accountant and, looking back from today’s perspective, it is one of the world’s mysteries … someone who takes up a career in the only subject he hated, didn’t understand and had to sit several times to pass! Anyway, it was economic boom times and when he got bored with one job he’d just take up another, more lucrative one. Stop the boredom by changing the job to another boring one.

Just before the man started his first job, he got married to his girlfriend at school and so it was all excitement – getting his first real job, setting up house, buying a run-down house and starting a family.

Then his son was born and gone was all the pain of the past and the boredom of the present. The euphoria of seeing his little chap arrive and grow into the world was more than he could imagine. Each day was different with a new word, a new skill, a new event and the boy’s growth allowed the man, somehow, to stop running, to stop feverishly working and to experience the present moment.

Then his daughter arrived and his joys increased. With her arrival he realised how little of our upbringing affects us. The same parents, food, house, neighbourhood, schools yet his two children were so very different. The boy, gregarious, confident, adventurous joker and the girl, less confident, more exacting one with two or three really strong friendships. One tidy, one untidy. One musical, the other not. One artistic, the other not. One moody, the other not. Differences and more differences and none could be traced to different treatment.

He had started renovating houses and that wiring, plumbing, painting, roofing, wallpapering, concreting, bricklaying and other building work was deeply satisfying, physically and emotionally.

However, neither the joy of marriage, children or of building could mask the underlying dissatisfaction of an occupation dreaded. The biggest part of this man’s life was his work and, when it was empty, he felt empty.

Desperate to find a way out of this bind, to find another way, he started meeting strange people … people who had similar views and aspirations to his … organics, a sustainable planet, consciousness and spirituality. He did a meditation course and continued with it at home, much to his first wife’s consternation. That’s when the writing started. When he started listening to his quiet inner voice, it spoke through his pen. As his friendships with these strange and fascinating people grew, so did his dissatisfaction for the dreariness of a career without juice, without purpose. As his listening deepened, he began to feel what he called the Hand of God, pushing stronger by the day.

Eventually, his choices seemed to be taken and he just had to leave his marriage. As he set off, car and trailer full of stuff and three crying friends on the balcony, he felt much as he had when his father had deposited him at the meat works all those years ago – excited, fearful and with no control of his destiny. He had nothing to go on but the certain knowing that each small step was taken care of.

Deciding to make this new experience as rich as he could, he chose to rid himself of his most limiting factors. The scariest thing he could imagine was speaking to a group of people so he went into the local polytechnic to see if they wanted an accounting lecturer. Interestingly, the previous one had been sacked the day before and, without any training, he was immediately plunged into his greatest fear. He remained petrified for over six months but knew he must keep going. Soon after, the fear subsided and he really began to love the teaching and being part of his students’ successes.

He didn’t start writing, this gardener of words; the writing started him. It may have looked as if he planted the words but, in reality, the words had always been there; they just needed him to hear their call. He heeded their call, eventually, uncertainly and, when he saw the tender shoots pushing through the tough soil, he suspected he was the one needing the fertilizer, water and sunshine.

Each day he’d wake with an emptiness, a deep longing for something indefinable, and it was only assuaged after his pen had murmured lovingly to several blank pages.

He couldn’t not write and so he did, strangely oblivious to the words he scribbled. Then, many months and a million words later, he decided to see what had flowed from his pen. Surprised and a little shocked, he saw memories he’d carefully hidden away – memories of weekly beatings and daily abuse and that constantly embarrassing, frustrating and terrified feeling of not being listened to, not being accepted, not even existing, somehow.

The words his pen had written were not words of self-pity or blame but words that might help others trapped in seemingly uncontrollable lives. The words were advice to himself – how to deal with oppression, entrapment and inescapable terror. As he read these reassuring and constructive words he surmised he wasn’t alone. Without knowing how he knew, he just knew there were many, many people feeling trapped in their relationships, bodies, careers, poverty, anger and/or sadness. He had the words that could help – words that had sprung from somewhere deeper than he knew.

He leapt up from the breakfast table, from his writing, and told his second wife he wanted to help people release themselves. How was he to do it?

She suggested the local school where they ran evening classes for adults. The minute school opened for the day the gardener of words timidly rang the administrator of those classes. Ten minutes later he was in her office. The administrator told him that all their classes were two hours a week for eight weeks. If he could design and present to her an eight-week course, she would consider it. Back at home the courses mysteriously wrote themselves and, two hours later he was back in her office with a plan. With little experience of such things, he nearly fell off his chair when she read it and immediately said yes. Several years later she confided that she hadn’t been able to refuse – despite his lack of experience, his bouncing enthusiasm and passion had lit up her office and she knew that’s what the students would experience.

These courses ran for eight years, in New Zealand, and the grapevine (of which he was blithely unaware) sent out its shoots around the planet and he was asked to run his classes in Australia and South Africa as well. He was also asked by a South African lady he didn’t know to co-facilitate AIDS workshops in the townships and to speak at an international AIDS conference. He knew as little about AIDS as he did about teaching and counselling but he did it anyway.

All the while, his hand was prompted to write something most days and several books (along with his regular magazine articles) appeared before his eyes on his computer screen. He started getting the books printed by a photocopy shop, a dozen at a time. Eventually, encouraged by happy readers and friends, he got two of them printed. One was a flop and one sold around 2,000 copies in New Zealand and South Africa. And then he published the books of several other people and knocked on the doors of every book store in New Zealand – great therapy for the world’s shyest boy!

Amid all this, he became involved in the men’s movement and then ran men’s groups for several years.

His courses were based on what his pen had written and, as the courses developed, strengthened and deepened, the courses created a series of books on personal development.

Full of the joys of his new craft – writing and teaching – he approached a New Age magazine publisher, suggesting she needed a man’s viewpoint. Her no meant no just now (to him) and so, every month, he reminded the publisher of her need to have a man’s viewpoint. A year later she caved in and accepted an article, an article that started his career as a regular columnist for that and other magazines in three countries. Some years intervened and then he became the editor of that magazine.

Then, with his new girlfriend, the man took over a small, provincial, free newsletter and they turned it into a paid, national magazine. It was fun working side by side with his help-mate and best friend with words of inspiration despite the necessary inflow of money. They walked away from it after two years, got ‘real jobs’ for a year to pay off those debts and then emigrated to England, ten days after their wedding.

Then, somewhere amid the planting and reaping, the man paused to look back down the road of his life and realised he’d cured himself of oughtism. He smiled at the achievement but was gently haunted by how much less anger and resentment there could have been.

The man is older but not necessarily wiser, living near the winding Windrush river, in the shadow of no hills, for the Windrush meanders through this English flatness, green and laden with trees. This man is a gardener; a gardener of words which grow in his fertile mind. Great words, silly words, helpful words, serious words, funny words … they all grow there in profusion both beautiful and untidy.

The time has come, thinks the man, to start weeding, to set the plants in line, in patterns, so they can be more easily enjoyed by himself and others. So many words, so many stories, but the man is determined to set his garden in order … his many gardens in order. Some gardens are small ones, songs and short stories, to be enjoyed on a quick walk. Some gardens are larger, novels, to linger over with smiles, sadness, laughter and insight. Each garden is different and so this gardener must decide which to tend to first, which to prune and hoe and water first.

This man is a good gardener – some say a great gardener of words. However, he’s a brilliant starter and not prone to finishing projects. A book, a garden or any other project takes time and, at times, seems never-ending. It’s easy for a starter-of-projects to not finish them and it’s difficult to live with a dozen unfinished projects. His soul yearns for a finished project.

The planting and fertilizing are done. This man of dozens of occupations, of fourteen published books and of a deep need, still, to know that white-robed, forgiving friend of the desert and a desire to know his God within, now has weeding and pruning to do. Along with more planting, more experiences, he feels a need to sort his works into a more tidy, more coherent heap. Not because he ought to – he cured himself of what he ought to do, his oughtism, many years ago – but because he feels it’s time. Time to stop. Time to listen again. Time to return to the hills, perhaps. Time, certainly, to return to his roots, to his beloved New Zealand where it all started … where the next phase of his and his third wife’s adventures might begin.

There is uncertainty, admittedly, but what is certain is that this gardener of words will be growing many more songs, short stories and books. The ideas and words will not stop, especially when he does. And so now he must stop.

Amen

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[1] Maori for a talk

Flying, Writing and Being Off Course

Have you ever noticed that aeroplanes don’t always take off in the direction they want to go? They need a head-wind to give them lift and so they head off into the wind, get up in the sky and then turn in the direction they actually want to go in.

Then, when they’re happily up in the sky, flying towards their destination, they’re off course at least 80% of the time. You see, they don’t fly in a vacuum – if they did, birds would fall out of the sky for want of air! They are constantly buffeted by winds, updraughts and downdraughts and the pilot has to adjust, adjust and constantly adjust to stay on course.

We might look different from aeroplanes but we behave similarly. We often take off in the wrong direction to get where we want to go – starting in abusive families, wrong occupations, wrong relationships, wrong behaviours and/or wrong aspirations. We might not think so at the time but these “wrong” take-offs often give us the lift we need to get up into clear sky. Only then can we get to where we want to be.

With writing, so many people are immobilised by two things:

1. Can’t get started.

The comments are sadly consistent: “I don’t know what to write about”, “What if no one likes my writing?”, “How do I know what it is that I should be writing about?” and all those other complaints that hold people back from starting. Hey, it doesn’t matter where you start or what you start writing. Just get started.

The aeroplane doesn’t care where it’s going, initially – it starts out using whatever it can to get up there and worries about direction later. So, right now, if you’re stuck, I’d suggest you ride the horse in the direction it’s going, use whatever wind that’s blowing and just start writing. Write what comes easiest, what takes least effort and research and just get revved up and spin your wheels.

2. Being constantly off course.

Many writers (including me) worry that they don’t have a particular niche, a genre, that they fit into. One week they’re writing a play, the next week it’s poetry and the following week it’s a horror novel. We’re told by all sorts of well-meaning people that we should focus and get clear about what we write about. People ask us what we write about as if it’s supposed to be one darned thing. Some people are built that way but most aren’t. Paulo Cuelho, who has sold over 100,000,000 books, was a successful song-writer and wrote (unsuccessfully) about black magic and he kept on writing till his truly successful writing emerged.

So, like the aeroplane that you are, keep a distant destination in mind and do not be surprised if you find yourself off course most of the time.

You see, I don’t know if you noticed, but over 90% of our aeroplanes (and Paulo Cuelho) get to where they want to be. However, they don’t get there by sitting on the tarmac worrying that the wind’s in the wrong direction today.

So, rev up, spin your wheels, move your pen, write some words and, on this rock I stand, the winds of fate will have you off course 80% of the time and will, eventually, bring you into land with a gentle rush and a happy pilot. Happy flying!

Communicating to Confuse

For the Authors, Writers, Publishers, Editors, & Writing Professionals group on Linked In, the rules state: “There are only four rules. No spamming, no flaming and no discussion regarding politics, social issues, and/or religion”. I asked what flaming meant and, after much discussion, found that it has a multitude of meanings, including the one meant here – being offensive. Bringing all the different meanings of flaming together, it actually means an extremely drunk, flamboyant, gay male who is insulting and confrontational.

I asked why they didn’t use the word offensiveness and the writers of these rules blamed the internet and the growth of a whole new vocabulary, intimating that they had no choice but to go along with using the same obscure words that others do.

The point of communication, I thought, was to make things clearer, not more ambivalent. As writers, it behoves us not to take a back seat, using what the lowest common denominators use, but to take the steering wheel and practice what we preach by actually communicating – simply and clearly.

Then I picked up a booklet advertising the exhibits at the North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford, UK, for spring 2012. One of the artists was described: “Ruth’s artistic practice investigates the convergence between contemporary art and the sciences … explores ideas of complexity, abundance and man’s perception of the nature … she explores how apparent randomness belies the organic patterns contained within the intricacy of life and traces the harmonics hidden in the detail, as she examines the simultaneous  simplicity and complexity of the universe.”

Lots of exploring and tracing but little sense.

Now, the writer and/or the artist are either laughing their heads off at the gullibility and stupidity of art connoisseurs – or those pretending to be – or they have no idea what they’re talking about. No matter how many times you read that, no sense will arise.

There will always be those who choose to obscure what they’re saying – if, indeed, they’re saying anything at all – but none of us needs to follow them.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Leaving Excuses Behind – Sitting Still Ain’t Moving Forward!

A Course in Miracles tells us that the course (itself) is both simple and difficult to do.

Its simplicity is that all we are asked to do is change our minds about everything and everyone in our lives – from fear to love, judgement to acceptance, anger to peace, hate to liking. Simple.

The difficult part is that we must do it in every moment of our lives; with every event and every person we come across – people at work, on TV, on the bus, in our homes, in our dreams … every single person and event. It is difficult to maintain that consistency of thought, that diligence of direction, and we appear to forget. However, the course tells us that we do not forget. We consciously choose not to remember because we fear the benefits of doing the simple work: we are afraid of our light, we fear the greatness we are and we stop ourselves losing the fear and judgement that we have identified with for so long. We consciously hold ourselves back from our greatest potential because we’re more comfortable in our littleness, our self-pity and our pain. Fearing the discomfort of being bigger, we ‘forget’.

On a Linkedin forum, recently, a writer said he had started his fist novel but he was unhappy with the beginning. Having written some way past the beginning, he didn’t want to continue until he got the beginning right. He wanted to know how he could improve the beginning so he could continue with the rest of the story.

I suggested he forget the beginning and just keep writing, allowing the beginning to take care of itself – it could be changed at any time and a better one would probably present itself as he continued with the rest of the story.

He’s no different from the rest of us who find ourselves progressing in some area of our lives (relationships, career, finances, health, etc.) and that progress becomes fearful:

• What if I don’t have these complaints any more? Who will I be then?
• What if I don’t have this poverty any more? Who will I be then?
• What if I don’t have this struggle any more? Who will I be then?
• What if I’m finally a published author? Who will I be then?

And so we find some small, irrelevant detail to focus on, something that must be ‘fixed’ before we can continue, something that holds us back from the uncomfortable light and greatness that we are.

I’m currently writing a novel and have writers block. I can’t see where the story should go next so I asked my wife to read the 20,000 words I’ve written it to see if she had any ideas. To date, she hasn’t finished reading it and so I’ve stopped … then I realised I’m using her as my excuse not to carry on.

On the other hand, I recently tried to copy Paulo Cuelho’s idea of getting poets to send in their poems so I’d compile and publish them into a book they could then show publishers, agents, book shops, family and friends. No one sent in their poems and so, instead of giving up, I knew I needed to do something different. I took a friends advice and changed the system and, suddenly, nothing happened, However, I remembered my friend’s and wife’s advice to do it in an area I’m passionate about. I woke the next morning admitting to myself that I’m not passionate about poetry but I am passionate about helping people reach their full potential. It’s what our magazine was about and it’s what I mainly write about.

So, another change in direction and Extraordinary Miracles was born – a blog, Facebook page and an email address to which people can send their inspiring personal stories.

It’s been a week and there has been little interest in Extraordinary Miracles but that’s no reason (like waiting for my wife to finish reading) not to carry on. I can let the details – the lack of interest in Extraordinary Miracles or the lack of interest from poets – to stop the project … or I can just keep going and, as I do, the little details that need to be fixed will be fixed sometime. However, they do not need to hold me (or any of us) back.

There is power in movement, in starting and continuing. You can’t steer a stationary ship and God can only steer us to our rightful goals when we get up steam, whatever the weather and the seas.

I know I don’t forget. I know I choose to hold myself back and, knowing that, I find it easier to move forward and to experience miracles. I know that I don’t always move in the right direction but, if I keep moving forward – in any direction – the right one opens before me.

The persistence, persistence and bloody persistence of Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is probably my favourite writer. I haven’t read all his books and I haven’t enjoyed every one I’ve read. There are, however, two things I like about him:

Firstly, his writing. He tries to weave personal and spiritual growth messages into his stories – not text books or non-fiction books but interesting novels. That’s what I try to do.

Secondly, I like him as a man who never gave up. Ever since he was a wee bitty lad he wanted to be, in his words. “a writer who is read and respected worldwide”. He got there but it was one mammoth struggle.

Paulo suffered incarceration in mental homes by his parents, torture and imprisonment at the not-so-gentle hands of the Brazilian police and he chose to live it all through the fog of massive and continuous doses of drugs, nicotine, black magic, rejection and a multitude of relationships. Despite the myriad self-imposed and other distractions, he kept his eye on the page and, eventually, smiled to see over 100,000,000 of his books sold around the world.

I don’t know if the achievement of his dream has made him happier but he did it – he set a target and he hit it … and he continues to write, to the delight of his millions of fans.

Writing is not like welding, teaching or nursing where you get a qualification, find a job and live happily ever after.

With writing, there is no school that will give you the most important skills of persistence, persistence and bloody persistence … and a rhino skin to deflect all those rejection slips. No school anywhere in this universe can give you that. It’s got to come from inside you and no one can show you where inside it sits. That’s your job to find it and you usually find it (or not) when that first rejection slip arrives – you’re either flattened by it and then you start running and stop writing forever or it enrages and emboldens you and you stop and you write more furiously, more creatively, more plaintively or more beautifully. However you write, that rejection slip will get you writing more of it, if you choose.

If you find that tiny compartment in your brain (or wherever you keep it) marked Bloody Persistence and Thick Skin and you get it out and use it, you’ll probably succeed.

However, the really difficult part is that no one on this good earth can tell you when all that persistence and thick skin will pay off. You see, it would be so easy if someone told you that, if you keep writing and writing and writing and submitting and submitting and submitting you will be accepted by a publisher in twelve years time. You’d just plan your life, get a day-job for twelve years, get writing and submitting for those twelve years and then you’d be in writing heaven.

But it doesn’t work like that – we’re not welders, teachers or nurses. We start writing and we have no idea if it will be two, five, twelve, twenty or thirty years before we get that magic Yes from an agent or publisher. It could be today, tomorrow or never … we never know from one day to the next.

For Paulo Coelho it was about thirty years and, along the way, there were many near-misses – times when he thought he’d hit the target only to find his hopes dashed again. So, up he’d get and write some more.

And that’s what I admire about him and that, above all else, is probably why he can write about personal and spiritual growth so eloquently – he’s been there and done it all.