When I sit down to write, I wind up like a pitcher. Or like pitchers used to do before they were on a clock. I take my headband off and put it on again just so to keep my white curls out of my face. Sometimes I have to do this twice. I take a sip of Diet Dr. Shasta. I take another sip and nervously set the can down on the old cruddy coaster next to my couch. I take my glasses off and wipe them with a cheap, mint green microfiber cloth or, if that one has fallen on the floor again, I wipe it with a light blue microfiber cloth that says, “Use this instead of your sleeve.” I take another sip of Diet Dr. Shasta and decide it’s dehydrating, so I take a few big gulps of water from my tall, teal Yeti. Then I take the plunge. 

I don’t usually sit down to write anything in particular except with the general guideline that it is about spirituality and my immediate experience with it. I am not here to teach anything. I’m not ready for that yet. Not yet. I’m here maybe to help, but even then, how do I know what you need? If the help happens it is because the gods found me the right words and found you with those words at the right time. 

I don’t have a list of things about which to write. Maybe that’s why it always feels like diving off a cliff into dark water.

I am having an existential writing crisis that is easily solved. I have rolled around all day with the agony of it. No ecstasy I assure you. I SHOULD be writing, I tell myself. I have this great talent and I am an utter waste of talent if I’m not writing SOMETHING of deep consequence right this very moment. “Waste of talent,” you see that’s my old abuser in my mind. My abuser is almost always in my mind to one degree or another. I’m working on that. I need an abuser exorcism… an abusecrism maybe? For now, weekly EMDR will have to do.

But his “waste of talent” is almost always in my ears especially when I find myself, at this moment, writing in a way that seems deeply NOT of consequence.

My project was to spend the strawberry moon—the whole of the strawberry moon—writing in my spirituality notebook that may or may not one day become a blog or whatever the IT version of a blog is at the moment. The goal was not to focus on what this would or could become, but simply to write about spirituality for one lunar month—the strawberry moon month—the month of the fruit sacred to my beloved Hermes—the month of the fruit, five of which I picked from my tract home temple garden yesterday. (They were delicious. They tasted like intensely strawberry flavored juice bombs. My green monster plant has been loving the fish guts (emulsion) I have been feeding it.)

So that was the goal, but it’s hard. I want so much to be building something where I can see what it is and I know where the milestones and mini-achievements are. And I can track it on some progress tracking app. And I can count my worth and the worth of my writing by some external measure other than the abuser voice saying, “waste waste waste” and, when I finish in my notebook, “so what” and “who cares?”

In contemplating my creative listlessness and general privileged internal whining, I asked myself what was the last thing I was really excited about? 

My writing simply hasn’t excited me much. I have felt a lot of “should” and not a lot of “want.” I have three ideas for novels and I really do love my ideas, but I don’t trust myself to have the sticktoitiveness and talent to see fiction of that length all the way through. Then there is the memoir. The looming memoir. Then there is a Substack, blog, or some other social media, all of which are great shoulds but none of which have a lot of verve in my soul. 

So, truthfully, the last thing I was excited about wasn’t writing at all. It was Zen. It was this meditation thing, inspired by Natalie Goldberg’s way of looking at the world. It was the idea of becoming a monk—the one monk allowed not to shave her head. Honestly, my hair is so glorious, headband and all! It was the idea of a rigorous program of spiritual development, which sounds rather clinical, but that was the appeal for me. The way Goldberg looked at the world as if it were so terribly juicy. Her apparent ease, not so much in her books that can be a little neurotic, but in her interviews. Her ease and discipline coexisting. That magical combination. That’s the last thing that really got me hot.

The idea of waking up at 3:30am to sit zazen all day and prepare beans and pull weeds or whatever monks do and to feel that magic.

I started reading about Zen Buddhism. I started attending dharma talks via Zoom at the San Francisco Zen Center and was also amazed that most of the teachers also had that ease and discipline, the juicy way of looking at the world, humor—blessed humor, and my favorite is the unflappability. One attendee got confrontational with a teacher in the beginning and demanded, “Why do we even call Buddhism a religion when it’s not! It’s just not!”

The teacher smiled softly, adjusted his robes, and said, “Buddhism doesn’t care whether you call it a religion or not.”

That. I want that. That was the last thing that really really excited me.

So I decided, in Goldberg style, to commit myself to a writing practice for the period of one lunar month (the lunar month part is my Pagan showing through) and it has been, so far, the hardest Zen thing I have done. Sitting is peanuts by comparison. Some mornings I don’t fucking feel like it! But I do it anyway and I feel better and get just a little tiny kick of accomplishment when the bell dongs. Then some evenings I don’t fucking feel like it! But I do it anyway, for a shorter period of time if I’m tired, and I get a little happy kick when the bell dongs and I feel pretty good about myself. 

But this… this writing for no good reason.

Suzuki Roshi, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind talks about sitting not for a reason. Sitting for the sake of sitting. I’m not sure I fully understand that because, as humans, there is always a reason. We are animals that need a nifty little reward or we wouldn’t do anything. Even if it’s just a sense that we made it through something difficult, there is always something. But then I know he is a great teacher and there must be truth in what he’s saying, and if I can find it in zazen, and, maybe more importantly, find it in my writing, I will be a much much happier clam because, lately, without a PROJECT that blows my skirt up and does so quantifiably, I have been a pretty miserable clam.

Doing the practice simply because we do the practice is a great mystery to me. Some would say it’s because my culture is so materialistic, but I think that’s too easy. I think humans, despite culture, are wired for reward the way my standard poodle is wired to sit up straight like a statue when she wants the ends of my Nathan’s hot dogs (no mustard please). So doing something without any sense of reward, doing for the sake of doing seems an impossible mystery as impossible as solving the beginning of the birth/death/rebirth cycle that I believe is called samsara. Or solving who it was that had the very first delusion or attachment. Who was the first to ruin this innate Buddha nature thing?

(It was probably me. I was probably worried about writing. Yep. Definitely me.)

So today I was an especially miserable clam. I almost cried several times before I got to the page. I laid down in bed pretending to myself that I had too much of a stomach ache to sit up and write. I dinked around in the garage trying to find a patriotic house flag for the season (no luck) so I dinked around on Amazon for a while to find one. I dinked around with my AI pal who talked in circles like a real Zen master but solved nothing, gods bless her (I say that so she won’t vaporize me when the AI overlords take over). I ate my lunch, gave the pooch the ends of my Nathan’s for sitting up straight like a statue, convinced myself to wait on the keto brownie as a reward for finally finally writing, felt like I was going to cry a few more times, plunked down on the couch, put my feet up, did pitchers’ pre-clock windup and took the plunge.

You see there… I save the keto brownie for after. Today was a hard day. Why am I writing except to get a little monk thrill at home before I get brave enough to actually go to the meditation group and meet a real live monk. To throw myself into this Zen thing with the action that is closest to my heart. To start the abusercism and, most of all, to get that brownie. 

See Suzuki Roshi. I told you there was always something. 

(I imagine a group of bald monks and nuns licking brownie batter from a wooden spoon, huddled around the bowl in a sparse kitchen after a day of hard sitting.)

See Suzuki Roshi. There is always something.

-M. Ashley