Fingers
poised over the page or screen or phone—nada, nothing, zilch, never again—give
up. Sometimes, when writing a journal, there comes The Wall.
Runners “hit the wall,” also known
as bonking—when they feel as though they just can’t take another
step. But then magic happens, if they
can stay with it—a surge of adrenaline—endorphins kick in—and the runner
finishes the race on a high.
So, too, with any writing. So, too, with the modest act of meeting your
daily journaling goal. Over and over,
sometimes at the beginning of writing, most often on the last of my three-page
allotment for the day, I hit a wall. The
end of the entry is in sight. And I don’t
have any words left—I’ve ranted, I’ve planned, I’ve expressed gratitudes, I’ve
told myself a difficult truth. I’m
done.
But just at that point, my Wall, I
know to stay with it. Keeping my commitment
to my journal always helps me to come back home to myself. Especially in the
last few lines of an entry—when I think I have nothing more to say—a new insight,
idea, image, plan emerges—the final fruits of the entry—a surprise, a
bonus. Filling up my quota for the day brings
gifts that quitting would have denied me.
In the post on Spiraling In Spiraling In,
I call The Wall The Portal. The
well of all our hopes and memories and sensory impressions are the 99% of our
minds that is The Unconscious. But if
all we’ve known and all the sensory impressions in our environment were to
flood our conscious minds, we would—literally—lose our minds. We would be inundated—we would be blinded. I suspect that this is what happens at the
point of death—the tunnel of light that is our unconscious minds. The Wall is
where the filters are between the conscious and unconscious minds. When our conscious minds are spent, we are
presented with The Wall that protects us from being overwhelmed.
But patience and presence will loosen
a brick here, a brick there—and sun will pour through.
And a
story: When an elephant is guided
through a farmers’ marketplace, she is likely to reach for a cantaloupe, a
stalk of bananas, a bunch of carrots in the stalls to slam dunk into her
mouth. Elephant trainers in India or
Africa know to put a stick into the elephant’s mouth to keep her focused and
walking on through.
Similarly, our minds will reach here
and there for any distraction—any mind candy—and get stalled. To walk—to write through—to follow the linear
path of writing one word after another—we need to keep focused. There are many strategies that meditators use
to keep the balance between the conscious and the unconscious mind. These some ways I keep my commitment to my
journal pages when I hit The Wall:
SENSES: I return, literally, to my
senses. I record the sounds that I hear right
where I am—the rumble of the refrigerator ice maker, the egg cracking into a
pan, the instant sizzle as it hits the heat.
The sights—the way the winter trees vein the blue sky, the hourglass
shadows cast by a lamp onto (hm) a wall, the spidery reach of the Twelve
Apostles plant on top of a dresser. The
bodily sensations—the ache behind my ears from having a good laugh, the warmth
of my tongue on my palate, the itch on my mosquito bite.
REPETITION: I simply repeat the same word over and over
again. This functions like a chant—calming
the chatter of the conscious mind so that there’s space for insight.
NOTHING: Since the mind hates to be still, sometimes I
just sit there, and wait it out. Inevitably, some of my best ideas pop out,
fully formed, when I do nothing.
Patience, presence, commitment,
trust—writing from the NOW—are what lead to major Breakthroughs for me. Sometimes the last half page fizzles out—no worries. But many, many poems, blog posts, stories, songs,
musicals, books have had their birth in that last half page of my daily
journaling.
© Susanna Rich, 2020
Works Cited:
Cover Art Brick Wall
Elephant Art: Elephant Art
Because I Can Teach:
Elephant Art: Elephant Art
Because I Can Teach:
Journal for Authenticity Series:
Ahh, The Wall! Don’t you just hate walls and what they represent? The fact that something good, inspirational, important, etc. want to come into your mind and create a masterpiece, but it can’t because a stupid structure is preventing those creative fairies to make their magic and produce something extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, it’s a love/hate relationship. I love ‘The Wall’ because when I’m stuck, it forces me to take time for myself to gather my thoughts and ideas again and properly plan without word vomiting all over the page and trailing off into the unknown. On the other hand, I hate ‘The Wall’ because I will usually be on a roll and I can’t stop writing away and I feel the inspirations pouring out of me, but then my brain comes to a sudden stop and that momentum is gone.