Perseverance and H20
Water has always been a driving metaphor in my life, and a practical tool. H2O has a lot to do with the novel I’m working on now, literally and symbolically. My father taught me to swim when I was three years old. My mother learned to swim just so she could jump in and save me if I was drowning. I draw a lot from those early memories of going to the pool as a small child, both for my novel and for some of the essays I’ve been working on.
Over a decade ago, I swam for an hour a day. The exercise was good for me, but it was more than that. I started out swimming each early lap for someone I loved—a prayer in motion. About half-way through the hour, I moved into more inward directed meditation, the zone. Nothing existed by my body and the water and the sound swimming makes to the swimmer: the strokes, the bubbles, the breath, the water humming in your ears. I need to swim again. I see that on my horizon.
One of my already-stated resolutions is to hydrate. Remember what I said about themes and messages collecting around a single theme? I stopped at a bookstore in Cookeville, TN on Sunday on the way home from a workshop in east Tennessee. I knew there was a book in there for me, one I was meant to have, but I didn’t know what it was. I just knew I needed to look for it until I found it, and I knew it wasn’t fiction. I browsed several isles until the book caught my eye: Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron.
I am a big fan of Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. I’ve worked through the exercises in that book twice, and each time the results were different because I was in a different place in my life. I have also used: The Artist’s Way at Work: Riding the Dragon, which Cameron co-wrote with Mark Bryan and Catherine Allen. There are lots of other Artist’s Way books available now, but I haven’t felt the need to use them.
I reached for Cameron’s book. Perseverance. Yes, that’s just what I need. There are several areas of my life where perseverance is key. It was that need calling my name, calling me to find a kind of solace in what I love, books. Find solace in that powerful symbol and substance of water. I quickly walked to the register and then headed home.
What this book does is call me back to some foundational tools for creative practice, and to my belief in where creativity comes from. The tools are Morning Pages, Artist Dates, Walks (not the speed-walking variety). I’ll say more about these tools and Cameron’s approach to creative practice in future blog posts. But what these tool ultimately do is open the mind and heart to possibilities.
Emily Dickenson wrote, “I dwell in possibilities.” For me, that translates as, “I dwell in God.” I’m comfortable with the word God for this source, as is Cameron. And like Cameron, I’m receptive to the many names for this unnamable source. You may have other vocabulary: Universe, Tao, unidentified higher power—all aliases for infinite possibility, infinite creativity, infinite receptivity.
Here is a Scene Storm Word List plucked from the pages of Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance by Julia Cameron, (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2009):
trim
market
unspool
jonquils
grappling
squander
cheat
guardrails
sidewalk
strung
Darnell, It’s like you doused for the book! I’m adding it to my list.
I needed these positive water associations. This month I’ve been “under” it (or that’s how I’ve been feeling). But now I’ve come up for air in a “motel writing retreat” for a couple of days and just gave myself permission to catch up on these great blog posts.
I recently changed my screen saver to the ocean, which seems full of possibility.
Laurel, It is like I doused for the book! I hadn’t thought of that! Water is such a powerful symbol and metaphor. All that emotion under the surface, and all that power. And then there’s that wonderful image of the drop in the ocean and the ocean in the drop.