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Writing, Zen Koans, and Just Sitting

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emptyredchair
The great modern American Zen master and photographer John Daido Loori once said, “Shut up and sit!” Of course, the late Daido was referring to Zazen, the Zen practice of seated meditation. I was reminded of Daido’s words as I read a recent post in The New Republic, “Screw Your Standing Desk! A Sitter’s Manifesto.”

To the Zen Buddhist, the act of sitting is an essential practice. Much like the Taoist concept of Wu-Wei, the action of non-action, the simple act of sitting can be the most active thing one does. Daido makes this point in a Dharma talk on the Koan “Dongshan’s Essential Path,” saying, in essence, that when we allow for things to happen, happen they do, and often times the outcomes are fantastic. In sitting, in moments of reverie, things open up, they emerge and move in “unanticipated directions,” to quote Donald Barthelme. This is where writing begins.

Similarly, in The New Republic piece, the author quotes Jonathan Franzen who once told the Guardian that “you see more sitting still than chasing after.”

But, what about not sitting, or—gasp!—writing while standing up? Philip Roth does it. So did Virginia Woolf and Lewis Carroll. In fact, more and more people, in more and more offices, all around the country, are doing it, too. Welcome to the era of the standing desk. As we work more and spend more time at our desks, someone took a stand, literally, against sitting.

Yet for Ben Crair, the writer of the New Republic piece, “sitting is one of the true rewards of writing.” And I agree. But the kind of sitting a writer does is more than sitting, right? It’s not the same as couch potato sitting or channel surfing sitting, or all-you-can-eat buffet sitting. Our sitting is intentional and bears fruits. It’s where we become architects of the fictive dream, John Gardner’s induced state of oneness between reader and story.

Can we, however, be good catalysts for this dream while standing around? Well, Roth, Woolf, and Carroll clearly could. But, for what it’s worth, Rodin’s “The Thinker” is doing his thinking while seated.

I like doing my sitting and writing in coffeehouses, soaking up the collective energy and taking in the lively hum, which has been linked to increased levels of creativity.

While Crair is clearly in the sitting camp as well, and makes a compelling case for it, there is still Truman Capote to consider. Capote was, after all, a brilliant writer, and he neither sat nor stood, but instead, considered himself “a completely horizontal writer.”

Now it’s your turn. Pick a posture—sitting, standing, walking on a treadmill, laying down, even—then get comfortable, and write. There are stories to be told.

 

 

 

Discover The Secret Bookstore

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Welcome to New York’s Brazenhead Books, the not-so-secret, secret bookstore, hidden away in a man’s apartment in Manhattan. After he was forced out of his storefront thanks to the obscene costs of New York real estate, rather than close shop and box up his dream, the owner found an alternative that you have to see to believe.

Beautifully shot and scored, I am moved every time I watch this wonderful documentary. It captures everything that is beautiful about books.

https://vimeo.com/26293855

 

The Space Between “A” and “The”

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I happened upon this old radio interview with William Carlos Williams today. About three minutes into the broadcast, William recites his famous “Red Wheelbarrow” poem, but he makes a small in size, large in implications mistake. Take a listen to the early portion of this video:

http://youtu.be/3mLzU3dF6gY

(Do take the time to listen to the whole interview. Though for our purposes today, we need not listen any further than five minutes in or so.)

Williams says:

so much depends
upon

the red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

But the poem is actually about “a red wheel barrow.” (Allow me to pause here to mention the word wheelbarrow has no hyphenation in the poem, a both frustrating and fascinating mistake or decision.)

So what is the difference between a red wheelbarrow and the red wheelbarrow? To some, I imagine there is no difference. The scene is so compact and discreet, it might as well be the red wheelbarrow because there are no others presented, no rival wheelbarrows.

However, I think the red wheelbarrow is different — if only in slight degrees. The red wheelbarrow implies there are multiple wheelbarrows. It implies there is something singular and specific about this certain red wheelbarrow, in this certain location. It in some ways turns our focus to the dew and chickens and the color red, the distinguishing elements of the wheelbarrow.

The word the in this instance carries a degree of undertones, a subtext of something peculiar or even sinister. By specifying the red wheelbarrow, it suggests there are other wheelbarrows. And since it would not be the working red wheelbarrow or something to imply it is the only usable wheelbarrow (as the original poem suggests) makes me wonder if perhaps there is something even more important than the wheelbarrow’s farm-related duties. Perhaps there is dried blood at the base of the wheelbarrow. Suddenly the pastoral, slice-of-farm-life poem contains a whiff of murder mystery.

Is that drawing a bit much from the difference of a single article? Yes, probably, maybe. It was the natural path my mind wandered when I first considered the difference between the two words, so maybe it is not so radical? Or maybe, if the poem had always been the, I would have never trod down that line of thought.

But we can at least suggest this: When a poet has only twelve words to convey a meaning or scene, so much depends upon the space between a and the.

What 26 Minutes of Twilight Silence Can Teach Us

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Clearly, the Twilight Saga, with over a hundred millions books sold, does some things right — does them well, even. Elements about the characters connect with the readers. The story is enjoyable for at least a few million people. We — non-Twilight-enjoyers — berate the series quite a lot, perhaps too much. But there is just so much rate to be.

Take, for instance, this wonderfully edited selection of scenes from the Twilight Saga movies. Compiled by the YouTube channel Screen Junkies — the channel that produces the ever-popular Honest Trailers series — the following clip contains about 26 minutes of Twilight characters staring at each other:

A drug for Hollywood directors, “meaningful stares” make it into nearly every Hollywood movie. These scene anchors often mean nothing to the viewer. They can sap a plot’s rhythm and insert unnecessary punctuation for more necessary dialogue and actual physical action.

But this is not just a Hollywood problem. This is a first draft problem. Too often in my own writing, I return to a scene and find it rife with boring action. “Jason looked at the parcel in Stef’s hand.” Or: “Williamson watched the leaves swirl away.” Or: “I studied the veins in her hand.”

A little bit of this kind of writing can be okay. Sometimes we, as authors, need to discretely communicate that a particular character noticed an event or visual characteristic somewhere. But more often than not, especially when writing from first person or third-person close, the readers intrinsically assume any descriptions are noticed or at least obvious to the main character or speaker.

So instead of describing “her hand,” I can more efficiently apply a verb to the description and keep the passage more efficient. “The veins in her hand throbbed blue.” Or even better, I could have those vivid hands performing a plot-pushing action: “The veins in her hand throbbed blue as she squeezed my throat.”

Now we’re talking! Which is more than Twilight did in those 26 minutes.

*Zing!*