b e c a l m e d (2)

Some more notes from my Krakow notebook (if you can bear any more narcissistic self-examination and mixed metaphor sundaes...):

07.06.05. 08:10 -- sitting on my hotel bed after breakfast, waiting for digestion, rest and reflection to do their things and bring me to a state of energetic jump off.

I've noticed that my handwriting has settled down this morning, into something neat and measured, something more thoughtful and careful, suggesting precision, thought, accuracy, seriousness, authority. A divergence from my usual frenetic scrawl. Suggestive of calm and control, those fugitive conditions that haunt me so rarely.

This makes me think about sitting at a cafe table under a parasol, looking around me and writing down wise, insightful, witty, pithy thoughts. Seeds for short stories. Novel-founding images and character insights. The third cup of coffee arrives: you feel happy and contented despite the caffeine frazzle -- in touch with your true self. The waitress is attentive and sympathetic, and you are doing what you love to do, and it shows in your absorption, calm, and confidence. You've 'found yourself' -- talent, discipline and inspiration have folded into each other, merged, made something whole and robust. And you've got the time and energy you need.

You crumple up the old soft, pliable, thinly-sketched you and put that scrunched-up paper napkin-like self into the ashtray. The balled paper gives one last suggestion of life (it decompresses a little), then settles back into forgettable immobility. It's like an old skin that you've shed: you've scraped your way out of that outdated chrysalis, and your fully-formed self is released at last, ready to fly, and buzz, and alight, and feed, and move on -- self-sufficient, self-propelled, unafraid of what's on the other side of the next patch of undergrowth, the next thicket, the next field. So different from that soft, anxious, creeping thing that -- just yesterday -- moved slowly and repeatedly through the same rotting leaf litter on that same small patch of well-covered ground.

And the next day, towards the end of my train journey:

08.06.05. Interesting journey, especially in terms of the effect that 11-plus hours on these trains have had on my focus, looseness and creativity. ('Looseness' in the sense of being relaxed, being myself, feeling able to follow wherever my creative thoughts take me; that sense almost of being 'outside time', where you don't have any of the usual prompts of duty or of habit -- this feels like a space where my brain can do that unconstrained free-association work that's essential for my creativity, and for my belief in that creativity, and for stamina in keeping at it.) It's as if the fact of being 'captive' on a train, without options, communicates itself to your unconscious and says, "go on then -- here's your opportunity, get stuck in." And doing so gets you into that 'flow state' where one association/image feeds the next, and sets up a pattern/dynamic where they start to come thick and fast, freely and richly, and where you stop doing that 'conscious policing' thing...your thoughts outstrip the censor and just break through however they like.

The lesson here is to create the space where this can happen: forgetting about the time- and space-provision necessities of writing/creativity has helped me become stagnant/arid/boring/A. N. Other metaphor for uncreative and dull.

And another thing (with the warm evening sunlight flickering through the trackside trees and onto the faces of the passengers, on the seat shoulders, on the sheened edges of the luggage racks...) -- er, another thing: this session of thinking and creating has really lifted my mood; I feel completely different from how I did first thing this morning, and all because of this amazing thing I've been doing with my pen, hand, wrist, arm, and brain. How cool is that?

I'm going on about this so much because I'm trying to drum these lessons into my brain: transcribing these notes is part of my project of retraining myself to write daily, to do it for the sake of it, for the simple enjoyment of it, to find that place where your fingers move over the keyboard almost without you thinking about it, your fingertips microseconds ahead of your conscious mind. The dart and flow of creativity, emerging almost on its own. Even if you're churning out turgid crap that no-one else wants to read, the act of writing is pleasure enough in itself when it comes like this.