Tags
blogging101, Creative Writing, Henry David Thoreau, Journaling, Quotes, Reflections, Writing 101
Since having done my Sandbox Challenge review on Thursday, I’ve been pondering the “creative” process I go through when I’m “spelunking” in my “heart and soul cave.” My pondering has led me to the realization that perhaps I make the “digging” a 
bit more, well, ponderous, than it needs to be. My mind goes in a million directions when I’m contemplating or ruminating over things that are on my mind.
It occurred to me it would be really helpful to have a centering premise (for lack of a better word) from which to focus my “research.”* Interestingly, I think I ran across such a thing this morning reading the next quote in Daily Calm: Photos and Wisdom to Lift Your Spirit. It’s a quote by Henry David Thoreau.
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Simplify the problem of life: distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.
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I’ve been “digging” willy-nilly in so many different places in my “cave” that sometimes I find my excavations confusing. There are a lot of “artifacts” I find that really mean nothing special to my life, aren’t defining moments or feelings, yet I want to assign them some significant importance. I wonder if this quote would be the perfect guiding principle for knowing what to keep and work with and what to throw out…
I’ve been so busy doing two challenges in a row (89 days’ worth) that I haven’t picked this book up in a while. This has been a serendipitous “find” for me this morning. Now I’m going to have to rethink and refine my process so I don’t get stuck in a “hole” like I did when I was just journaling. I think it’s going to be a good day to go “spelunking!”
Oh! Before I forget, Percy says “Hey!”
*(Maybe I need a glossary of excavation terms in my sidebar so I don’t have to keep putting the bloomin’ things in quotation marks so folks know I didn’t use a wrong word? …rolls eyes)
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Picture Credits:
girl on road — www.udemy.com
heart cave — yellowairplane.com
artifact — members.bib-arch.org
Percy — moi
Impromptu Promptlings 
A very interesting post, and I love the Thoreau quote. ‘Roots’ is a regular theme for me, and one I like to revisit occasionally. For sure I think such a reflection can be a way of identifying what’s really necessary/helpful amid the myriad distractions of modern life, from the viewpoint of what truly feeds us, what helps us grow? The other route is to reflect on who we are and trace it back to where those talents/qualities/patterns come from and either cultivate them into greater ripening, or let them go if they’re not helpful. Hmmm – yes, I can revisit this again…. 🙂 Thanks for the inspiration! Harula xxx
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Thanks! Can’t wait to see your take on it! That’s interesting, btw, about tracing it backwards. I should think about a post for that…
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This caught my attention: “There are a lot of “artifacts” I find that really mean nothing special to my life, aren’t defining moments or feelings, yet I want to assign them some significant importance.”
My first thought was, every moment, every experience has brought me to where I am today. Without them, I might not be here, but elsewhere. The significance is that it is part of what makes us whole! 🙂
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Hm… Gonna have to think about that. I think I was thinking of events that really had no consequence in my life, I just remembered them.
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But we may not know if an event was significant on a ‘Soul’ level, because our thinking mind is not the part of us which communes with our Higher Self?
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I suppose that’s true, yes. I can see what you mean.
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There is a fine distinction between simplifying and focusing. When one goes to a therapist with serious intent, the goal is not to simplify. Yet usually one has 50 minute sessions once a week. If one is going to make best use of those precious moments, the client needs to focus although there are a thousand threads of thought and feelings wrapped up with each other. The therapists, if he or she is good, will work to have the client focus on one (or two) of the plethora of threads, to make some sense of them. This gives one a ground (however tenuous and valid) upon which to explore the the other threads one or two at time. Thus over time, the ground becomes more solid, one’s understanding becomes more enriched.
There are infinite number of ways to explore our inner world. Yet no matter what the approach, we need some framework of thought, grounded so to speak in the concrete world to offer us analogies and metaphors which can, like a great poem, express some inner truth, maybe even a universal truth.
Using excavations as an analogy is a good as any of which I can think. It provides a consistency of terminology, of analogies that can be understood by our conscious minds that are connected to the concrete world. The “excavation” analogy provides a tether that offers safety of falling into the indecipherable sea that is our inner subconscious and memory realm.
For the heck of it, I looked up some web pages with terminology for “excavations and engineering,” “archaeology,” and “spelunking”. So many wonderful ‘prompt’ words. I’ll send over some links in another post (in case your site is set up to send posts with one or more links to the spam section).
A passage from Herbert Blau’s “Take Up the Bodies” which speaks to the dangers when we seek without a focus:
In a letter to Jacques Riviere, written in 1924, [Antonin] Artaud describes a nervous breakdown, a “focal collapse” brought on by “a kind of essential and fugitive erosion of thought,…the impulse to think at every stratifying endpoint of thought, by way of every condition of thought and form…”
Without focus, we are in danger of that focal collapse ( a condition I unfortunately know too well).
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The links:
http://www.pskf.ca/publications/c-glossary.html
http://www.jobmonkey.com/archaeology/terminology/
http://wasg.org.au/glossary.html
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Very interesting comment. I think I’ve struggled to find a focus to keep moving me forward. Blogging has helped, but perhaps just saying I want to integrate all these pieces of me in the end isn’t concrete enough to serve the cave’s purpose. I’ll have to do some thinking about what I had really hoped to gain from all that spelunking once I’d dug up a bunch of artifacts and had them sitting in front of me.
I’m curious to check these links out. Thanks ever so much, Doug, for taking the time to do that. I might have to think about using those words as a prompt or something.
You said: Without focus, we are in danger of that focal collapse ( a condition I unfortunately know too well). If you get a minute and don’t mind sharing a bit more about what you mean, I’d be interested to know. You could drop me a note on my note tab at the top. {{{Doug}}}
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And why do I think you might re-think this post in a few days?
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Hm… What do you think I would rethink?
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Simplifying, I think that’s not really you thing and I love you for that. You think in 100 directions at the same time and that makes you …you. As much as I believe in simplifying our lives, when we get rid of things to make things easier, I don’t believe in simplifying it when it comes to our personalities and our character.
As for the roots. I think we all start out like little trees, with small roots, and with every storm our roots get stronger and root deeper.
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Much as I hate to admit it, I think you’re probably right. I just have a busy mind! I love the analogy of the tree. I always liked the Tanya Tucker song “Strong Enough To Bend.” 🙂
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I think you can probably put most artifacts to good use if you’re creative – the important thing is not to over-embelish them – or if you do, to be ready to remove a few bits of ribbon and lace later on.
An example of this messy metaphor is the way I feel about my dad. When I realised the the extent to which he had damaged me I was really hurt, and angry. Today I noticed that I’m letting go finally, after all these years, forgiving him.
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So glad to hear you say that. Time does heal in some respects, doesn’t it…
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So it would seem – I even feel I am a long way along the (long) road to forgiving Laura and Paul’s father. My older daughters want me to – although they hope never to see his face again.
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Perhaps they instinctively know that the forgiveness isn’t for HIM, it’s for YOU.
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I excavate my mind, Cheryl! You should see the artifacts I come up with!
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I wonder if I have some of the same ones… We are of an age you know. 😉
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Hiya Percy!!!!!! Your predicament sounds a lot like multi-tasking….lol Some people are better at it than others….I haven’t quite got it down myself……
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You may be right. And for that reason — that my mind goes all over the place — I shouldn’t be doing that. I’ve already confessed to having “in the moment” issues… 😦
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Meditation has helped me,,but only to a point…I’ve still got a helluva monkey mind!!! 🐵🐵🐵 LOL
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