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Finding Creactive Wildness
“Our bodies are wild….
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“The body does not require the intercession of some conscious intellect to make it breathe, to keep the heart beating. It is to a great extent self-regulating, it is a life of its own.
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“The depths of the mind, the unconscious, are our inner wilderness areas, and that is where a bobcat is right now….
“The conscious agenda-planning ego occupies a very tiny territory, a little cubicle somewhere near the gate, keeping track of some of what goes in and out (and sometimes making expansionist plots), and the rest takes care of itself. The body is, so to speak, in the mind. They are both wild.”
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- Gary Snyder, “The Practice of the Wild”
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I’ve always told my writing students that I think writer’s block is a misnomer. I don’t think we get blocked, but rather that we get empty. We need to fill back up. I believe there is a creative partner inside of me whom I call the Rag Bag man, who has a burlap sack of my memories, insights, visions, observations, from which I will eventually construct the quilt of my stories. My job is to search out these bits of cloth and thread, of velvet and unbleached muslin and corduroy, red cords and dental floss and grosgrain ribbons. So instead of…
