Natalie Goldberg - Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writers Craft

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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

Allen Ginsberg (19261997)

who started me on the path of writing and the mind

and

Toni Burbank

who helped me to refine that path

I HAVE NOT SEEN WRITING lead to happiness in my friends lives. Im sorry to say this, I, who just fifteen years ago published a book telling everyone to grab their notebooks and write their asses off. No high like it, I said. I meant itand it was true. Now Im past fifty, and I have given everything to writing, the way a Zen master watches her breath and burns through distraction. Was I a fool to do this? Did I choose the wrong path?

I once told my great teacher Katagiri Roshi, If I put the effort into zazen that I put into writing, Id be sitting where you are.

Yes, yes, he beamed.

But I didnt. Whatever small insight I eked out, whatever breakdown of illusion I realized or moment I stepped outside egos poisons, I dedicated wholeheartedly to illuminating the writing path.

Eight years after my first book came outId written three others in that timeI was sitting a Zen practice period in California. For eight weeks we woke up at five AM, meditated for several hours each day, worked in the fields, studied, chanted, listened to lectures. Every week we had an individual meeting with the abbot, who was Norm Fischer, a friend of mine and also a serious poet. During the third week, when it was my turn to go in and speak with him, I said, Norm, when I sit a lot, as Im doing now, what comes up, way down at the bottom, is that my heart is still broken from bringing out Writing Down the Bones. Ive done therapy, Ive learned good professional boundaries

But you handle your success, youve helped so many

I cut him off. I want you to hear me. Below all that, when Im in this zendo day after day all I feel is an aching. I was so innocentI didnt know what it meant to put my heart in the marketplace.

A long silence. I knew this time hed heard me.

You know, he said, what Ive seenand this comes from my own close observationsis art leads to suffering. I have a lot of poet friends. The ones whove made it seem miserable. And the ones who haventwhen I go to visit them they whip out a newly published anthology and point out a poem: See, this isnt as good as mine and hes getting published. Luckily, you have a foot in another world, Zen, so you wont get swallowed up.

I wasnt so sure. I had been certain art would save me. I knew all my writing friends felt the same way. After all, what could be better? I thought back to the first poem Id ever written, about an Ebingers blackout cake. In the shine of the icing, I saw God. Id never felt so complete as I did that afternoon writing on my bed in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I poured my soul out on the page and it shimmered back at me.

And now this? Art leads to suffering? But it was true. Id seen it again and again. Why hadnt any of us realized it? Why hadnt we put on the brakes? All my friends had tasted the sweetness of writing. Aflame with longing to make our mark, we didnt know what lay ahead: dislocation, isolation.

Months later back in Taos I called my friend Eddie, who was diligently working on his second novel. Yeah, he sighed. I dont know any writer whos happy. But what else is there to do?

I know what you mean, I said. If theres any clear steering in this life for me, it will be through writing. But knowing what we know, how can I encourage people any more? I wanted my work to help people, give them clarity, not make them sad and desolate.

We laughed and then I told him, I was reduced to going to Space Jam with Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny last Sunday for some inspiration. Im trying to start a new book.

Well, you seem to be following the right leads, he chortled.

I told him how I loved Sir Altitude and that I thought maybe the greatest athlete in the world could make me believe in writing again. You know, when I first saw him play I thought that Jordan had everything to do with Zenone-pointed, alert, present, alive. Years later when I was on a book tour in Chicago I went to the hotel bar after my reading. Everyone was crowded around the TV. Master Air had just returned to basketball. It was his second game and he broke his scoring record. The next day they had a poll: should Michael Jordan be declared King of the World? Reading the newspaper in the elevator, I blurted out, Absolutely!

Well, did Space Jam inspire you? Eddie came back to the point.

Not really, I said.

That night after talking to Eddie I couldnt sleep. At three AM I got out of bed and went into the living room to sit zazen. I said to myself, OK, Nat, every cell in your body gets it nowsooner or later youre going to die. Youve made a lot of foolish mistakes, maybe writing was a dumb dream, but so what. Being a doctor, a rock star, a mother would have led to the same thing.

Then I paused and asked myself, Nat, are you depressed? I sat with moonlight streaming through my big windows and filling the mesa with a silver light. I saw a jackrabbit dash through the sage.

No, I thought, Im not depressed. I hesitated: Im the most peaceful Ive ever been. It was true. I felt a vast acceptance of everything.

A small voice then asked, Well, now do you think you can write this book?

The title Thunder and Lightning had come to me two years earlier as I stood in awe at the foot of Arenal, an active volcano in Costa Rica. It was a perfectly clear day; then across the sky flew dark clouds, flashes of light, tremendous sound as though rock cliffs had exploded, followed by a downpour that abruptly turned the jungle slate-gray. I stood under my black umbrella near the protection of a cinder-block wall and watched. Wind howled through trees, and the rain, twice changing directions, first pelted the sides and then the front of my legs. Suddenly everything became soft, quiet, dripping, drenched, thick and muggyand cracks of blue appeared in the sky overhead.

I thought, some divine structure has just whipped through here. That which manifests from nothing, changes everything and then is gone.

Wasnt that how I had created book after book in the past ten years? Where did they come from, how did I figure out how to build them? They presented themselves, I was absorbed; they were finished and I was left empty-handed.

My eye caught another fast movement outside the living room windows. Was it a coyote?no, my neighbors white dog was prowling near the big pion. Last week hed dug up my compost heap. I took a deep breath. I remembered a Sunday a month earlier when my friend Frances had driven up from Santa Fe to see me. Sundays in Taos can be the worst days, especially in late fall with no tourists on the streets. The place looks deserted, a ghost town with nothing moving. I can settle into a deep desolation on those days. When I met Frances behind the Caf Tazza I could tell she felt as bad as I did.