As soon as the school bus released me at the foot of our drive on long age winter afternoons, I’d race for the house. Once inside, I’d drop my books, trade my school clothes for woolen layers and grab my skates, then, with my Collie for company, I’d head out across the road from our property where a frozen swamp waited.
I’d kneel on the ice and strip off my mittens to lace up my skates. By the time I’d finished, my fingers would be clumsy, struck dumb with cold. Then I would rise to glide along the length of the stream that traversed the swamp. I would weave in and around the clumps of marsh grass, skating on and on, racing against time as the December sky darkened toward late afternoon.
Eventually, driven by thirst, I would sit on the frozen surface and, using the rear point of my skate blade as a pick, I would chip away at the ice, chopping until I had created a hole large enough for water to rise up through. Then I’d flop prone, legs splayed behind me, and drink.
This is what I remember: The shock in my chest when the frigid liquid hit, then, on my tongue, the wild taste of untamed water, fertile with hidden dangers, unknown life. This bog water was far removed from the purified, odorless stuff I was used to. It was alive. As I drank, rather than feel apprehension, I felt profoundly connected to the earth and to this particular spot where much later in the spring I would return armed with a Mason jar to scoop up pollywogs. I felt strengthened by the primeval taste of nature.
As I grew up I was weaned away from wildness. I became restrained, fearful of wild things and more careful of what I was willing to take in. But I have never forgotten the jolt of the icy swamp water and how it satisfied something deeper than thirst, some nameless desire that is the urge to taste essential life.
Writing can be like that. If it comes from Wild Mind.
“Wild Mind,” writes Natalie Goldberg is “raw, full of energy, alive and hungry.”
A hungry mind is a necessary thing for writers. Like my long ago winter thirst, it drives us to go for primal sustenance. It calls for us to lose control and frees us of the grip of our cautious editor mind. Of course, it also makes us nervous. It gives rise to a litany of fears. We fear that we will look foolish. That we will give offense. That we will expose hidden parts of ourselves. That we will estrange those we love and repel strangers. And so we rein it in. We write a scene that sings about a mother dancing drunk. The writing is raw and alive and we feel its power in our belly. Then a grim voice breaks in. Someone might think you are writing about your own mother. Better change it. Tone it down. Be safe. Better have her drink tea. Better forget the dancing altogether.
Safe mind always urges us to conceal the real heat and energy. It calls us to stop short. It is then we must muster the courage to go deeper. Go further.
“Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of the beginning,” Goldberg says in “Writing Down The Bones.” “Probably that is why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down into something real.”
“The crust of the everyday must be broken through,” wrote Delacroix.
I like that phrase. The crust of the everyday. It speaks to me of the loss of wonder and of the layers we take on in the futile hope of protecting ourselves from hurt, from revealing too much, from seeking truth, which is, after all, the aim of all true writers.
Like the skate blade I used decades ago, Wild Mind is a tool that we can use to break through crusty barriers. It leads to the rich material. It connects us to the fecundity of life.