Wild Mind

Now it is September, several months later. I understand something now that I didn’t then. Success is different from love. I mixed them up. I thought if I wrote a book I’d get the attention I had wanted a very long time ago from my parents for just being alive and being myself. That wasn’t the only reason I wrote. I wrote because I never felt so whole and alive as I did when I wrote my first poem. I was complete. I created something from myself and nothing was want

. That was the original flame. It was good enough, but along the way I mixed it all up. I thought it could heal the world; it could heal me; it could do everything, because I felt so good when I wrote. I took one step ahead of the ordinary good act of writing. I wanted to become successful, noticed, famous, so I could finally get the love and attention I didn’t get as a child.

I took writing outside writing. I took my life outside life. I wanted to throw it way ahead of me, thinking it would cure something way behind me. “If I get famous, then... ,” “If I get this book finished, then... ,” “If I win this grant, then... ,” “If I get published, then...”

We need to let writing be writing and let it give us what it gives us in the moment. If we connect with anything in the moment, it frees us of the past, present, and future. We are just there. If we are chopping wood, we are chopping wood; brushing our teeth, brushing our teeth; walking, walking.

have to be willing to be uncomfortable and poor, maybe for the rest of your life. You have to have a big vision and enter the sangha [spiritual community] of writers all over the world, past, present and future, for eons. So keep your well-paying job while you test out your commitment.”