Let wabi-sabi take a brushstroke to your frugal poet life

Second in a series

What does wabi-sabi have to do with being a frugal poet? Wabi-sabi, though quintessentially Japanese, can be applied to any culture’s poetry and is, in fact, an integral part of the poetic nature at large, whether we realize it or not. Published writing is usually rewritten, edited and polished writing, set in symmetrical fonts and printed in uniform order and quality.

Poetry, in its early creation, is composed of our raw thoughts or emotions, scribbled down in an unsteady hand on a commuter train or a dimly lit kitchen. Perhaps the pages are occasionally smudged with ink or stained by drops of coffee. Entries may be heartfelt and passionate, but can simultaneously be random, incomplete, unconventional and bold, without needing to please an audience.

I wish more of my poetry writing and creative writing students would take this approach. You need to get dirty digging a foundation before building a lofty structure. The idea is to let creativity unfold naturally, even when flawed. Get the ideas and images down on paper, and leave all the formal tweaking, rewriting and readjusting kept for later.

And while we work to fix part of a piece, we most likely mar another, however slight the blow. The imperfection in nearly any process we undertake only shows how human we are. It is human and perfectly natural not to be perfect! And writing is no exception.  

The process of writing a poem may ultimately add up to a complete picture or an epiphany of revelation. But most often, our trips toward a poetic destination most often start as a modest journey. We follow a foggy pathway with no promise of reaching a clearing. But we have faith.

At its most distilled, wabi-sabi exemplifies a sense of faith -- in yourself and in the promise of what you strive for, whether it’s poetry or any other creative discipline. According to poet Wallace Stevens, “The imperfect is our paradise.” We try, we fail, we pick up again and find new revelation. If you expect creativity to be a perfect journey, it’s a delusion.

As humans, and frugal poets, we must accept our imperfections, though we consistently struggle to be the best we can. One of my favorite quotes acknowledges human frailty in the midst of writing a poem. French critic and poet Paul Valery said, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” I can work and rework a poem many times over, but the moment finally arrives when I must let it go, let it be where it is, and allow it to find a landing place (or not) in my sheaf of collected works.
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The above excerpt is from my reference, memoir and creativity guide Frugal Poets' Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren't a Poet

In parting, consider this Bible verse:

2 Corinthians 12:9-11 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

9 And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

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Let wabi-sabi take a brushstroke to your frugal poet life

What makes a dream journal different from a waking journal?

Just as creative greats and average folk from the past and present have done, you can use dreams to inspire your own poetry, fiction, painting, jewelry making, music, solutions to global issues – or to simply help understand your personal life and others. Some basic questions remain. How can you better remember your dreams, then interpret them and use your dreams as inspiration or as a tool of insight? One of the best ways to better experience, savor and reflect on your dreams is by keeping a dream journal.

If you already maintain a “waking” journal, you might want to start a separate “dream journal.” Why separate? According to the experts, it’s best to record dreams in a different manner than you would your waking hours in a journal.

In daytime journals, what stands out is the exploration of the “why” of things, centering on what you’ve done or could do, what you feel or hope to feel, and how you respond to others. In your daytime journal, you need to build on the reasons you act and feel the way you do.

On the other hand, since dreams are so weird and wiley to begin with, it’s vital to write them down in a factual, journalistic manner rather than begin analyzing them right away. In dream journals, simply capturing “what” you dream should be the goal, before the dream images slip away. In dream journals, you need to deconstruct, not build.

Focusing on the “what” will help you both gather and organize those loose and far-flung dream images that played in front of you the night before. Your dream journal is first a record of the “what,” and also the “where” and “when” of your dreams. Save the “why” for later, as I’ll explain below.

Dreams, on an ever-flexible time frame, can jump from past -- to future -- to present all during one dream. But surprisingly, you are always right there, in the moment. Your dreams may careen across the spectrum. Again, that’s reason to rivet your journal focus to simply recording your meandering path and not trying to explain it. In the midst of an actual dream, you are not looking back on yourself and saying, “Why am I dreaming this?” Instead, you are totally involved as an active participant in your dream, no questions asked.

In a waking journal, you want to break out of the chronological world of seeming step-by-step reality, by add creative asides, ongoing insights, ironies, memories of the past and anticipation of the future. You want to ask yourself questions, to cross-examine yourself to dig deeply for the “why” or “why not” of things.

Such self-analytical questions should arise in regard to your dream journal only if and when you’ve recorded a good 20 dreams or so. Since you’ve kept your dreams together in a separate journal, it’s now easier to go back and skim for recurring symbols laced through your several weeks or months of dream notes.

After you’ve logged this score or so of dreams, go back to circle or underline repeated images. Do you find two or more symbols that seem to stand out in your dreams? Are they trains, children, stairways, dogs or flying? What are they? Are they things or people – or are they emotions or feelings such as nausea, fear, sexual excitement, confusion, thirst?

Then look at the context in which these symbols occurred. Is there a pattern? What do these symbols mean to you personally? What emotions do they evoke? Do they relate to anything going on in your waking life? Do they represent something from the past you still need to deal with? Do they have any implication for the future? What images give you that “a-ha” moment, that spark or nugget that might serve perhaps to launch a new creative work?

Only you can answer these questions as you become more involved in remembering, recording and making use of your dreams. Your emotions can boil over like a heated caldron of water, can split your world in two like an earthquake, can wash away past hurts like repeated waves rendering a shoreline smooth. Your dream images may relate to something that has or can actually happen, or to an emotional or sheerly symbolic condition. Know that by merely starting a dream journal, you automatically give your deeper self a signal to pay more attention to your dreams.
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What makes a dream journal different from a waking journal?

How to Heighten Your Five Senses: Smell

The best writing employs the use of the five senses to explore metaphor, to show instead of just tell. In the book, "The How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci Workbook," the author Michael Gelb poses this self-assessment test to help you become more aware of your sense of smell:
-- I have a favorite scent. (What is it? Why do I like it? What does it remind me of?)
-- Smells affect my emotions strongly, for better or worse.
-- I can recognize friends by their scent.
-- I know how to use aromas to influence my mood.
-- I can reliably judge the quality of food or wine by its aroma.
-- When I see fresh flowers, I usually take a few moments to breathe in their aroma.

Gelb also suggests making "smells" a theme for a day. This could be a perfect journaling "date." Record what you smell and how it affects you through the course of a day. Spend a half hour at your favorite florist. Inhale the aroma of ten different perfumes or essential oils and describe your reactions.

Others have suggested smelling a crayon, chalk, a rubber ball or other simple items from childhood. How does smell affect your mood or memory? Write down your observations. What does each scent remind you of? Comparing sensory reactions to real life experiences or memories is the core of metaphor and image. You might want to even create a poem out of these images. ◦ ◦

How to Heighten Your Five Senses: Smell

Rilke's "New Way" of Writing

In his book on the craft of writing, Next Word, Better Word, poet Stephen Dobyns explains how the great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, around 1907, attempted to find a “new way” of writing. Instead of waiting for inspiration to engulf him, he would just begin to write on a particular subject, and the inspiration would appear as he wrote.

He actually caught such an idea from another great, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, for whom Rilke had worked as a secretary. Rodin often made preliminary studies of his sculptures in clay. He often didn’t plan on what he wanted to make, but once engaged, inspiration would fall and the subject revealed itself. ◦

Rilke's "New Way" of Writing

Use Scent to Heighten Writing

The best writing employs the use of the five senses to explore metaphor, to show instead of just tell. In the book, "The How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci Workbook," the author Michael Gelb poses this self-assessment test to help you become more aware of your sense of smell:

-- I have a favorite scent. (What is it? Why do I like it? What does it remind me of?)
-- Smells affect my emotions strongly, for better or worse.
-- I can recognize friends by their scent.

-- I know how to use aromas to influence my mood.

-- I can reliably judge the quality of food or wine by its aroma.

-- When I see fresh flowers, I usually take a few moments to breathe in their aroma.

Gelb also suggests making "smells" a theme for a day. This could be a perfect journaling "date." Record what you smell and how it affects you through the course of a day. Spend a half hour at your favorite florist. Inhale the aroma of ten different perfumes or essential oils and describe your reactions. Others have suggested smelling a crayon, chalk, a rubber ball or other simple items from childhood.

How does smell affect your mood or memory? Write down your observations. What does each scent remind you of? Comparing sensory reactions to real life experiences or memories is the core of metaphor and image. You might want to even create a poem out of these images.

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Use Scent to Heighten Writing

New online journal writing course

Let the new year serve as a fresh start for your journal writing direction. I'm leading an online journal writing course this spring with the University of Illinois at Chicago Writers Series. It's called "Rescript Your Life: A Journal Writing Workshop." The great thing is you can be anywhere in the world to take this workshop because it's online. It gets underway on March 9, 2009. Juicy details follow:

Direct your plans, relationships and creativity toward a new, personal direction through journal writing. In this online workshop, you’ll find your journaling “personality” and apply a variety of eastern and western techniques to uncover and explore your burning issues. Also learn how to journal your dreams, travels and creative ideas and even start your own online journal blog. Journal Writing Online allows participants to better deal with past, present and future issues through the outlet of journal writing, particularly when applying field-tested techniques introduced in the course.

Participants will also be better equipped to use the journal as a creative conduit to evolve raw experience into written poems, stories, character studies and other creative pieces. During this time of economic downturn, journal writing offers people an inexpensive, yet passionate outlet. This era is an ideal time to turn to an introspective mode, evaluating the past and looking for new direction for the future. Journal writing can help people in any situation deal with our changing times.

Topics include history of journaling, journal styles, dialogues and their methods, techniques of journal writing and blogging.

At the completion of this course, participants will be able to:

• Focus on the type of journal writing to fit his or her personality.
• Access their own list of numerous, personal journal writing topics and questions.
• Use the journaling method of dialogues to address personal and creative issues.
• Understand and use the Japanese method of haibun and naikan.
• Create a Leonardo da Vinci-style notebook.
• Create an active dream journal.
• Create an online journal blog.
• Develop a personal journaling vocabulary

COURSE TITLE:		Journal Writing Online
DATES:		March 9 - April 10, 2009
TIME:		Online
COST:		$325
INSTRUCTOR:		Cynthia Gallaher
LOCATION:		Online
COURSE NUMBER:		JW0309
REGISTRATION DEADLINE:		Friday, February 27, 2009

Register for Journal Writing ◦

New online journal writing course