Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

—Robert Frost

Great writers are honest and share their testimony boldly. When we stop writing to gain something, we can find real freedom. The number of people who hear and respond is not the point of the expression.

Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.

—Brene Brown

I write in a few places. I write in the moment, as I feel to. I may be meditating on a topic for a bit and reading a lot and or thinking and spending time in silence with whatever writer or thoughts that show up. I wait to see a pattern, until I tap into the ever flowing stream inside. I dig until I uncover some gold. I wait until I hear the runners starting pistol fire. The sound of the gun going off serves as the signal for the athletes to begin the event.

I share the gold I find in the world and in myself. I played with different styles and with different voices until I found my own. It is similar to the voice of others I found, because it is the same voice in me, as in them. My writing can be strange and quirky, but it is honest now. The other day I was at work and I was interviewing some people for a new project. A few of them spoke up and said, “I wanted you to know I really like your writing.” I am no one with any influence really. I didn’t feel they were just kissing my ass, but maybe they thought I could help them get ahead somehow. I didn’t over analyze it. I thanked them as they spoke up, and moved on to the next interview.

In the professional locations I write, I usually write about motivational topics. I write a bit on Stoicism and topics related to knowing yourself in the context of the system we are all participating in. I sometimes may be a bit controversial and challenging. We so rarely challenge the status quo, and especially not in earshot of our co-workers. But I often hear Ralph Waldo Emerson in my ear and heart pushing me to be bold. Don’t hold back. That surely is the writing I feel the most strongly about.

He was a great writer and I admire him a great deal. He was honest and authentic. He was sharing from the heights.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.

Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.

…

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

—Self-Reliance – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust is earned and not easy to come by. Trusting yourself is the key to your life. Seeing through your own lies and dishonesty is a grueling process to be sure and must happen first before you can find the real gold. It’s a messy destructive process. Some drown themselves in drugs and drink to avoid this. Others throw themselves into religion or their careers and some just give up and attempt nothing. These are smokescreens for the chaos inside us.

It is terrifying to face yourself and see how much of your identify is just garbage, flotsam of a wrecked soul. So much of our energy goes into creating and maintaining a mask we present to the world hiding the wreck some us carry around inside us. Don’t let the really slick ones fool you. My mask had a big crack in it and the darkness seeped out from time to time. There is a great deal of energy released when we dissolve this mask. Like splitting an atom. If you survive it, you may really be onto something. It can happen suddenly or like a slow burning fuse.

Then…BOOM…ignition!

I took some writing courses in college for my English major. I had the beginning of a voice and my teachers encouraged me, but I went into a technical field in the end and didn’t pursue it. I betrayed myself and I knew it. I took the easier path, the one I could make more money from. I came to feel like a false person. I didn’t really have much to say in my early twenties, but I had endured a lot of suffering in my childhood and I suppressed the rage that it had evoked and my darkest fears. My best writing from that time of my life in college tapped into this well of darkness. It terrified me writing by that dark light. Some burn out like a Supernova channeling their rage and fear. It is true that it takes suffering and experience to find your true voice. I had no way to temper that darkness, it was overwhelming. So I threw myself into my childhood religion to deal with it, but this was just a false mask. One of many I would create in my life. My spiritual, or soul writing, from that time was dishonest and empty. I was aimless and unfocused floating in a sea of garbage.

The brightest light is covered by the darkest night.

When Emerson was young, he had a friend who sought to instruct him in the “dear old doctrines of the church,” but Emerson was uninterested in doctrine and said that he sought to “live wholly from within.” When his friend suggested that what he regarded as the promptings of his own nature might be thoughts that came from the devil, the young Emerson replied,

They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.

Well damn, that’s some real fire. Knowing thyself allows you to light a fire in the darkness. It takes pressure to trigger ignition. It didn’t take me waking up in a gutter to find my true voice. Instead I set my life on fire and danced in the ashes. As I burned, I heard a voice inside me, a guide. It showed me how to take my life in flames and condense it down into a flame I could hold in my hand. Then it showed me how to use it to ignite my heart. And then that fire flowed out of my fingers. But it didn’t destroy the good things, it burned up the false thoughts and images. Suddenly, I began writing poetry. I never had really written any poetry. I saw in my writing, not answers, but a longing. Whether it was good or not was irrelevant. It was raw and real, a pure blue flame. And I felt joy expressing things the way I did.

I gained a respect for the fear and rage. I transmuted it. I turned lead into gold. But I have to confess I didn’t do it only by my own hand. A part of me had perceptive and wisdom that seemed beyond my capability and experience. I was able to slowly find healing and traded fear and rage for peace of mind. I felt liberated and free letting my heart flow. And this was the key to everything else that would come next. New love, renewed passion for my work I was given to do, an appreciation for my suffering and the scars I had gained along the way. I’ve pretty much written every day since, that was maybe 8 years ago.

Is it not our greatest fear that God pays us no attention? That we are just the effluence of a mind we can never really approach? That things are on autopilot and the angels do their best to keep everything spinning? This fear seems to have driven many of us insane. Then you have Jesus the man, and Christ the child god. But are these just our own projections? As every god is. Is not our biggest fear that we are really alone? Could this be the real mind of god? All of this created because it was alone? And that we each ache with the fear we are truly alone?

Is not our greatest nightmare that we are food for monsters?

Everything has a purpose, even or especially our squeals. We are food for our own thoughts.

–My friend Chicken Little

Forgive me, that’s a little too deep for this post, we will get to existential dread in due time.

Writing about writing feels kind of silly. It feels like I am explaining the punchline of a joke. I am the joke I guess.

I am a mote in God’s eye.

I am a tripping fool.