I’m walking home from work. Today was my first day back at the Department of Natural Resources since becoming a most-time writer. I spent the rest of the past week at home, preparing to start my book. I worked only five hours at the DNR today, half my total hours there for the week.
And yet, it’s amazing how even this mere five hours has altered my mind and body. I’m walking fast. My thoughts are on my to-do list, on what I’ll accomplish over the next few hours, weeks, months. I feel suddenly harried, spread thin.
I catch myself. What do I need to hurry for? My only plans for the evening are cooking dinner and baking a pumpkin pie. The hours stretch long before me like lazy shadows. This is what I’ve bought myself, by letting myself Be A Writer for a while: I’ve bought my evenings back, my time with Ron and friends—time that used to be spent writing, since I couldn’t write when I was working.
Is this what office work has done to me, what America has done to my mind over the years? This insidious creep of accomplishment and lists and hurry?
As I walk through the crisp, clean November night, I look up at the picturesque brick buildings of downtown Madison and wonder what my own mind used to be like before, when I was walking through the cities of Tanzania.
Dust and noise would swirl around me as I traversed the square of a bus stand: eyes glancing at me out of dark-skinned faces; the creak of a rusty-braked bus heaving forward and halting in its space; the steady drone of hawkers with their auctioneers’ voices. “Miss? Where to, Miss? Dar es Salaam? Hello! Mbeya, Iringa, Songea? Miss, hello!”
Unruffled by the noise and traffic, I would walk confidently through it all as the soft fabric of my long, colorful skirt threatened to trip me. I would reach down with one hand, feeling graceful in this practiced gesture, hitching up the skirt and striding forward. My thoughts were nowhere but here. I’m hungry; where’s the banana guy? Look at that kid; how does he carry all those trinkets on his head? Steer clear of the mangy dog. Where are those beautiful women going?
I’ve been intimidated to start writing my book about Peace Corps. It was a long time ago, now, and my memories are hazy. But I often feel like there’s something inside me that needs to come out, and if I can just approach it in the right way, it will come. I have to try.
Maybe the first step to writing about Peace Corps isn’t getting organized and checking things off my to-do list. Maybe the true first step is getting my mind in order. Shedding the thin, frenzied feeling that rubs off on me from too much time spent in cubicles. Learning again how to walk through the city with only now to think about. Learning to welcome the clean lines of the moon rising, the quiet comfort of winter, the happiness of coming home.
Maybe then I’ll be like the woodcarver in the ancient Chinese poem. When my mind is quiet, my hidden soul will emerge and speak what it needs to.
THE WOODCARVER, by Chuang Tzu
Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lai said to the master carver
“What is your secret?”
Khing replied, “I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
on trifles, that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting,
I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.
“By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell-stand.
“Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
And begin.
“If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.
“What happened?
My own collected thoughts
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood:
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits.”
