Last fall I
took a memoir workshop at Kripalu with Natalie Goldberg. I had written pages and pages according
to her “keep your hand moving” method, but could not find a shape for the
material. I hoped she would impart the spark of wisdom and insight that would
propel me into the first “real” draft of the memoir. To me, this was a Big,
important question, and I imagined that my progress depended on her Answer.
I had two
opportunities to tell Natalie how much her books had taught me over the years
and ask her what I should do with my unstructured mass of writing. The first was after a class, and she
said that she was tired and we could talk later. The second was when she sat at a table signing books for a
line of people; I mumbled something, and she thanked me, distracted as she autographed
the book I handed her while she talked to someone else.
That missed
connection with a teacher from whom I hoped to receive an Answer to a Big
Question has happened enough times now that I understand the message: look
inside for Answers to Big Questions. I find answers from books or the words of a teacher, but the
Answers come from within, usually
only when I’m quiet and/or at my desk with keyboard or pen. And then they just come to me, and I
Know, which is different from knowing facts.
I wrote last
night about the difficulty of trying to isolate ten years of my life within
a single narrative. In the course of writing, I’ve had
insights about my childhood, romantic relationships, the way things might fit
together, causes and effects, and I’ve written a sentence or two that allude to
the past. I don’t get away with
just alluding. Lynne writes in the
margin, MORE ON THIS, and I know I will have to dig deeper.
During the weekend of yoga with Seane Corn two weeks ago, I had a flash of memory about a person from my childhood, a person I mentioned in passing in the memoir. In the past few days, completely unrelated to me and my insight, the person has come up again in another context. What happened thirty-five or forty years ago? What is the story? I remember the stories I’ve always told, and very little else. But I think I am in the process of Knowing.
Even though I
didn’t receive Words chiseled on stone tablets from Natalie, I got something
more important. She asked in one
of her fast-writing exercises what we could give up knowing. I wrote that I could not live without
“knowing.” At the time I was
obsessed with figuring out what happened with my ex-husband, what he really
did, where were the lies and where was the truth.
In the course
of this year’s writing, I am sure that I can’t know for sure everything that happened. But I would
say now that I could not live without the internal Knowing that comes in the quiet and in the writing. So even though I don’t have
the all the facts, I have Knowledge, and I trust it, and I use it to direct my exploration of the facts, my pursuit of knowing.
