The oven’s on, warming up. I have six bananas looking a bit past it. That equals two banana cakes by my grandma’s recipe. If you’re in close enough vicinity, pop on over later for a slice with a nice cup of real English Tea.
The heating’s on too, and I’ve got chilly fingers. It’s not so easy to type today, or to think. That’s because I’ve overloaded my brain with information and ideas. It happens frequently to me. I’m so greedy for inspiration and stimulation, that I gorge on internet indulgence until I feel sick. And so it’s time to stop and bake a cake.
But before I do, I want to share a couple of things from my smorgasboard this week.
1. Entrepreneur Chick wrote a post for me, and I even got my name in the title. And not just “Sam”, but the whole real thing, “Samantha” …. which frankly never get’s used enough, but that’s my fault for telling people to call me Sam. But isn’t there a wonderful, magical power to your fully given name? It makes me stand a little taller. Maybe that’s because it’s so often saved for formal or official purposes. So, read her post here. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with what I’ve just mentioned, but is related to my ongoing efforts to find a way to make a million pounds out of doing what I love and what I can uniquely do best.
2. Obviously, what I love to do is write. The Artist’s Way group is over now, but I’m still working with the gems from Cameron’s book, along with another one that always inspires me, called Writing Down The Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. In an early chapter, Goldberg makes reference to Kerouac’s rules for being a writer. She mentions 4 things; two of which have been completely stuck in my mind for months now: Accept loss forever, and, No shame or fear in the dignity of your experience, language and knowledge. It felt like Kerouac had written these specifically for me. No shame? OK, let’s get the shame secrets out in the open and turn them into Art. No fear? That’s a little harder, but it’s not going to hold me back for long.
Not being familiar with Kerouac’s advice, I did the usual thing and slammed it into Google yesterday. Look what the search turned up ….
****Belief & Technique for Modern Prose****
List of Essentials
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr wife
5. Something that your feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement of yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr monrning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In Praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazzier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
as ever,
Jack
[By Jack Kerouac, excerpted precisely as published [sic] from a letter to Don Allen 1958]
from Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox Press, San Francisco 1994
It’s just a little food for thought, which I may come back to later.
Enjoy, my lovelies.
Bright Blessings
