Written: in various locations
Powered by: sunlight
Inspired by: a writing prompt on voice from the Start With This podcast: “Find a piece of writing you like. Sit with that work and think about what grabs you. Find the DNA of that work and what it is you identify with. Now write a 200-400 word story in the style of that piece of writing.” I chose Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, a work of autobiographical fiction and the book I’m currently reading.
“What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind.” I find myself wondering when it was that I last talked, and really spoke, with anyone about anything important. Not important like “what’s new?” but important like “what’s best?” So much of my time and the time of everyone around me is spent skimming on the surface of it all, both the routine and the exciting, without even realizing it or in fact thinking that we are all doing just the opposite. We ask each other about what’s going on in our lives, how we are doing, and we mean in all sincerity to discover the answers to those questions, but I suppose I’ve never been much interested in the recent developments of life. I find that the real questions are the ones we have been asking all along, that the real answers lie in the things we have always known, and that the more I can stay here, now, in this stream of consciousness way of being and thinking and talking about just one thing at a time, I’m able to go much deeper to the real heart of the thing. We spend too much time being broad, sweeping over everything. The real heart of it is in the depth, in disrupting the stillness and dislodging the silt that has settled into the ruts of our being and then—as the dust settles—discover what is left.