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“The world can’t end unless it runs out of stories. For this world is made of stories, each tale a part of an eternal drama being told from beginning to end over and over again. As long as all the stories don’t come to an end the world will continue.”
Michael Meade from The World Behind the World.
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Stories seem to be the theme in my circumstances lately.
In a recent webinar, Eckhart Tolle talked about the importance of telling your story.
Justine Musk asked in a recent post, ‘What is your one sentence?’
Robert Moss reminded me in his book, Active Dreaming, that a human being is an animal that must define itself or else be defined by others.
I have also had a couple of things happen that made me feel like I was dragging too much of my past into my present.
So, I rewrote my ‘About’ page and thought I would share it here.
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My Most Recent Story
Penned July 23, 2003
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I can’t say for sure where my writing journey began, but I know I was infected by moonlight and daydreams at a very young age. They tried to cure me in the public school systems, but the medicine did not take.
I wish I could save all the tortured dreamers being bored to tears in the classrooms across the world, kind of like a Catcher in the Rye, but I can only work on saving my little corner.
Passionate writers are born with a need to add something more to what they have seen. They are not created by MFAs, by blogging or even by writing books.
I am not impressed by the letters after your name, although I am sure you earned them squarely. I am not impressed by your subscriber numbers or your klout score or even by how many of your friends you got to buy your book. I simply want to feel your words.
I want to be moved by your art. I want my story to be complete in yours.
Passionate writers live with a need to script. We were blessed and sent here maybe by a league of angels. How else would we have appeared on this strange earth? But then again, I can only speak for myself. Maybe there are writers who fell into their craft later in life.
I want to keep this ‘About’ page short. I want to get to the point and not embellish it with too many details. There is no need to tell you when I started blogging, when I published a chap book or the wrong turns I took understanding the online world. If you want to know all that you can simply ask. I’ll tell you what I know. I’ll tell you where I’ve been.
Right now is what matters, the story I am living now, this is what matters.
As I write this in the gloaming on a balmy evening in July, I still call myself a writer. I have a hard time fitting into the title of a poet as I am called by many. Do I want to be a poet? Or to simply live a poetic life?
We do find our poetry, after all, when we get on with the business of getting on with our lives.
Poetry is a life’s study – A nearness of objects – Of callings – Birds and creatures
It is a life long excavation – A steadying when I come too close to defining -
Reminding myself not to use words like love, god or beauty -
But instead to experience them and use the gift of noticing to pen their dance on a page -
I don’t believe poetry can survive in the black and white.
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Influences? I am sure I’ve had many, but there is one who always comes to mind.
Joseph Campbell was the writer who influenced me the most, not in my style, but in my view of the world.
When I was around seventeen I dreamt that he sat across from me on a couch. He leaned up, motioned for me to come over and said, ‘We want you on our side.’
I got up and started walking.
I am still in mid stride
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The sun is gone. I can’t understand why they don’t put lights on keyboards. I can barely find the right keys to delete the things I never meant to say.
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I thought I could sit down and write a precise third person bio. I couldn’t do it.
How does one write from outside of one’s self?
How are you telling your story?
Where you are right now could quite possibly be all you ever have. What is it like?
Leave me a comment.
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43 comments
July 25, 2012 at 7:51 AM
You make me think in a way that doesn’t make my head hurt. I love that!
July 25, 2012 at 10:06 AM
Well – thanks Reed!
My life’s mission has been fulfilled. Painless is probably the best form of thinking. Don’t you think?
N~
July 25, 2012 at 7:52 AM
How does one write from outside of one’s self? You have made me ponder on that one sentence and made me ask myself can I answer that and I think I can and will. I started to write poetry at the young age of fifty. A turning point in my life where I constantly questioned myself, where to go I from here? Life to me is poetry. The mind is bursting with thoughts that fly endlessly throughout the subconscious creating visions of that we the poet or storyteller must create and release if not for others to read but for ourselves, unleashing our thoughts, telling our stories of roads we have traveled or of the path the future wants us to travel. Right now I am in the present, creating my poetry from past life experiences and have faith that I will become better at the craft of writing and telling the story of my life through poems. What is it like? The only word to describe it is FREEDOM. To be able to sit down and put forth my thoughts on paper if not for the world to read but for me to know that in poetry or writing one stays sane of the daily stress in life we all deal with.
Your writing inspires me to become a better poet or storyteller. I have a long way to go but I am enjoying the journey. Love your blog. Paulette
July 25, 2012 at 10:13 AM
Hi Paulette,
Thanks so much for commenting. It sounds to me like you are writing from inside of yourself instead from the outside, but who is drawing lines anyway. And you are right life is poetry, a nearness of objects, callings and promptings. Writing is a gift that heals whether it is being read or written. I agree with you on all of this.
I might question your last statement though, about having a long way to go. You are already there. I am terrible at sentence structure and the worlds worst speller. Give me poetry and broken lines so I can throw all the periods and prepositional phrases up in the air. I would rather just see where they land.
Nicole~
July 25, 2012 at 1:46 PM
They land beautifully, like a puzzle in the end it all comes togerther. Paulette
July 25, 2012 at 10:03 PM
And I meant that you writing from the inside was a good thing. A very good thing. I didn’t want you to misunderstand that.
July 25, 2012 at 11:01 PM
I didn’t misunderstand it, you paid me a compliment and gave me the motivation I needed to keep writing poetry. Your writing lands in places that stir the reader as myself to continue to create. Thank you Paulette
July 25, 2012 at 11:35 AM
I love Reed’s comment to you – you have that gift of making us think about things – are you a poet or simply living a poetic life – maybe I need to correct my statement to you of many months ago- I don’t know how you live for I am not with you all the time but you know that and maybe I need to stand corrected and simply state that you are “living a poetic life”…… you are the writer, the woman that observes, watches in curiosity of things and her surroundings through your photographs through your words.
Everyone has a great story for that is what the word HIS(STORY) is all about…..we have a mouthpiece to share it, we have a pen to write it…..
Write your best story, live your best story – BE your best story!
Here’s to dreaming of pirate ships and dolphins,
Nancy
July 25, 2012 at 12:37 PM
Pirate ships and dolphins, yes. That give me chills. That was a shared dream experience and I definitely received its gifts. (I was just writing about shared dreams for my Thresholds newsletter)
I heard Joseph Campbell say that he spent his life discovering the myth. I think poetry is not in the writing, but instead in how we discover it everyday. Under rocks, under stones, on the bird feeder…
I wonder if you read my proverb on my FB page today. It goes like this, ‘People who shoot birds kill the messenger’.
Glad I could make you think,
N~
July 25, 2012 at 12:04 PM
I can’t count how many times I’ve been tripped up by the need to present a bio. I open my mouth and nothing comes out, or like that closet in that old radio show – it’s an avalanche.
Do you know the Wizard of Oz book that has the princess who keeps all her heads in glass cases and everyday she picks which one to wear…?
I think some day I’ll run a writing workshop in which we simply write our own bios, and then again, and again and again, until the stories become luminous in our mouths, become treasure in our pockets, until we realize it is a daily practice. Hello Day, permit me to introduce myself… I am I. I am here. Here is my light…
xo
July 25, 2012 at 12:31 PM
I don’t know that Wizard of Oz book. I am intrigued though.
The idea for your writing workshop sound yummy! Yes, it is a daily practice to tell our stories everyday, again and again. And rewrite them until we love them! And coming at this way – the I AM statement hold so much more impact. Today I am this… Not – Today I will be this…
Beautiful!
N~
July 25, 2012 at 12:56 PM
My grandfather read to me all of the Oz books when I was little, whole currents of its peculiar beauty flow through me still.
Here, I found a picture of Princess Langwidere:
http://www.the-beheld.com/2012/01/fictional-beauties-heads-of-princess.html
July 25, 2012 at 12:41 PM
Your wonderful question:
“Do I want to be a poet? Or to simply live a poetic life?”
Not all can be poets but most probably can live poetically if they follow their passions in whatever way they can, without causing any harm to others …
July 31, 2012 at 1:59 AM
For me I prefer to simply live a poetic life.
I would say that the feeling of having a poetic life is like living in a peaceful earth full of hopes and dreams.
But anyway, thank you for this heartwarming post Nicole.
Cheers!
August 2, 2012 at 4:35 PM
Hi Ashleen,
A peaceful earth full of hopes and dreams. Now that sounds like a great place to live. We should all work on that.
Nicole~
July 25, 2012 at 12:42 PM
… having said that though … you are a poet as well as a writer!
July 25, 2012 at 12:56 PM
Ha! I just want to kick around in the garden and then maybe I’ll write about it.
A life poetic…
July 25, 2012 at 1:33 PM
As I read your post and I was thinking too that when did my writing started either, it really make think and think. As I remember I was just reading blogs and it came to my mind that maybe I will start a blog of my own.
July 25, 2012 at 2:14 PM
Problem with bios is we’re always changing…you’re changing so much…and how can you ever fit what’s important to you in a few lines.
perhaps your bio should be just that…
“do I want to be a poet? Or simply live a poetic life”
Doesn’t say much…but it says everything….
July 26, 2012 at 12:18 PM
Always changing. This sounds like a good thing. Maybe I will turn it into a rolling diary of sorts. Good idea.
Nicole~
July 25, 2012 at 5:30 PM
Great changes, Nicole. Actually, improvements is the better word.
Your post makes me think of many things. My resolve to shut up after the second sentence is being tested.
On writing, my take: writing makes you notice the things that are running your life.
On Joseph Campbell: ditto. Interviewed, Mummenschanz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummenschanz & http://www.mummenschanz.com/en/ told their story. Three young Swiss, unknown, broke, sharing a New York flat. Campbell on TV: “Follow your bliss.” So they did. So I did. Yes, it’s for life.
On write from outside of one’s self: the only way, for your thoughts are inside your mind like the music is inside the radio – beamed in from the outside.
To shup up after the second sentence, tomorrow’s a new day.
~Beat
July 26, 2012 at 12:17 PM
Hi Beat,
I was wondering the other day where in the world you had been. I vaguely remember Mummenschanz. How interesting.
I guess I need to figure out how to subscribe to your blog so I can keep up with things. I thought had subscribed, but I think I was only signed up for the email updates you were sending out.
But why do you need to shut up after the second sentence?
Nicole~
July 26, 2012 at 6:15 PM
Nicole, I’m still in Switzerland. Pretty much suspended blogging during the transition from there to here. Nothing wrong with your subscription – it’s me who dropped the ball. I saw the forced time out as opportunity to stop and redraw the map. When ready to get going again I’ll be sure to let you know. Shouldn’t be too long now. I feel every other day is a day too long, yet there IS work involved :-]
Re shut up after the second sentence, just my way of saying my communication improves when I condense “it” into as few sentences as “needed”. I guess if I mentioned it to you, it’s because after years of courting the goal, it remains elusive.
~Beat
July 26, 2012 at 2:43 PM
Your new About page is really wonderful! Deep and beautiful words, just like all your articles…
July 26, 2012 at 2:57 PM
Agreed, Joseph Campbell put together a great summary of a million perspectives, give or take a few.
I think bio’s are always tough as they’re sort of an illusion. Yeah, this or that may be what you’ve done it the past or what you’re generally working on but in reality you’re always stepping into somewhere else, the future, the unknown, etc, and all this past stuff usually only prohibits what could happen, prematurely closing doors if you will. Especially you could say for writers. Yeah, you could say that what a writer does is define something, but I think it’s more about having a need to first go into the unknown, the undefined, the chaos, that is maybe the cause, and the writing effort is attempting to sort it out with a bonus being a way to share it with others. But, once done, for the writer they’re probably onto the next thing, need another fix of the unknown, sharing usually left by the wayside. Tough nut to crack it seems, always applaud anyone that follows through and figures out a good way to do it. Of course, I guess that can be an unknown in itself, actually sharing it and getting feedback but I that’s probably adding a bit of spin, it’s always more fun creating something new.
Anyway, blah blah blah, I think either not enough coffee or too much this morning. I liked your bio, definitely gets one thinking,
.
July 29, 2012 at 10:10 AM
Thanks Matt,
I like what you say about the need to go into the unknown. It reminds me of the adventure of the hero. The call and answering the call and heading out into the unknown. And we come back with words and only words. We can only hope the words are enough.
N~
July 27, 2012 at 10:03 PM
“We want you on our side.” Priceless.
July 29, 2012 at 10:12 AM
Hi Galen,
Priceless indeed. It was a wonderful dream that really changed the way I felt about myself. It was like a calling from the master himself.
N~
July 29, 2012 at 10:01 AM
I don’t think poet is a title someone needs to attribute to themselves, it is for others to deem them worthy of such. Do your work, try to be as true as possible. That is the all. The rest is out of your hands.
July 29, 2012 at 10:14 AM
I guess in the end we can only try to build our reputations, but even this is out of our hands.
N~
July 30, 2012 at 1:43 PM
Such a beautiful story! Sharing these kind of stories is not only beautiful because of the images you paint with your words, but these are some hidden truth behind your words as well. I like this one so much!
August 2, 2012 at 4:31 PM
Thank-you for your comment Ninetta,
I hope it inspires you to write your own story. Let me know how it goes.
Nicole~
July 30, 2012 at 2:36 PM
Nicole, this is beautiful!
“The world can’t end until it runs out of stories” I really like this catchphrase. My story will be known someday in the entire world!
August 2, 2012 at 4:32 PM
Hi Miguel,
How will your story be told to the whole world? I can’t wait to hear it?
Nicole~
August 2, 2012 at 6:53 PM
My story is still being created, it will take some time, but in my heart I know I will win. My message will be that it does not matter how many people have spitted on you, you can still achieve everything you want
July 30, 2012 at 7:17 PM
“Do I want to be a poet? Or to simply live a poetic life?” We can be poetic even we don’t want to be a poet.
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Well written truly inspiring
August 2, 2012 at 4:34 PM
Thank-you Becca,
I always appreciate your comments. What did the post inspire you to do?
Nicole~
August 8, 2012 at 4:37 AM
Every post has a poetic life as he sees it in this way, but not everyone who leads potic life is a poet…
August 8, 2012 at 10:55 AM
Ahhh maybe not a poet in the sense of the written word, but a poet can be a teacher or a musician or a painter. Being a poet is defined by so much more than just mere words.
Thanks for your comment,
Nicole~
July 31, 2012 at 12:49 PM
I totally agreae with you about coming from the heart, maybe if we did everything from our hearts and less from our heads then life would be much easier and nicer. “Poetry is a life study” i love that bit, everything we see in nature inspires us to write something beautiful I think
August 2, 2012 at 4:38 PM
Mirian,
A life study or a study of life. It is all grand. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment.
Nicole~
August 1, 2012 at 10:21 PM
I never get tired of your style of writing. It’s so dream-like and personable (which is what you probably are aiming for). I have a hard time describing myself on my About page. I enjoyed yours much more than mine.
August 2, 2012 at 4:39 PM
Hi Karin,
Thanks! I am enjoying all the poetry you are sharing on your FB page. I don’t always have time to comment on everything but I see it on my feed and it is most refreshing.
Nicole~