The Nature of Nature
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
The last few weeks, I’ve been researching different philosophical writings, from Thoureau’s cabin ponderings to Nietzche’s thoughts on artistic expression. But the idea that impressed me the most I found in a book on my bedside bureau, where it was promptly buried in drawings and library check outs.
I bought Gary Snyder’s A Place in Space earlier this summer in a discount bookstore the same size and dimensions as an airplane hanger. The book is a collection of the poet’s assorted writings, including articles, essays, speeches and book prefaces. The following quotation is from the essay Language Goes Two Ways:
“Wildness can be said to be the essential nature of nature. As reflected in consciousness, it can be seen as a kind of open awareness – full of imagination but also the source of alert survival intelligence. The workings of the human mind at its very richest reflects this self-organizing wildness. So language does not impose order or a chaotic universe, but reflects its own wildness back.”
I’ve found, as others have when writing, that the mind brings its own natural order to thought, prioritizing and arranging the events and details of a story as they rank for you. Sometimes the end is the beginning and the beginning is somewhere near the middle. Achiveing this automation, though, requires freeflow of thought – or wild writing – so that the mind can sort itself out. This process eliminates supernumerary revisions and frustration.
To stem a bout with writer’s block a couple of years ago, I enrolled in a junior college writing course. The session lasted only one night, but it was immensely beneficial. At the end of the three-hour class, I approached the writing instructor – an adjunct professor and graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Kansas – and told her I was having trouble starting my stories in the wrong places. She asked, “How do you know where the beginning is?” I was cured. I knew where the beginning was all along … it was where my mind started, where the thoughts were still wild and untamed, and all I had to do was reflect the moments back to paper.
