She was a great writer who, in an unintended act of goodwill towards future generations, mainly wrote in pen. This is important because pens have no erasers, nor do they have a ‘delete key.’ There is steadiness in her hand, even in the mistakes, which are clearly legible despite the hatch marks. Crossed out, skipped over, left dangling unfinished even these pieces of thought brought forth from her imagination hold the key–a key–to how she worked and who she was.

The answers are not always in the finished work; though it may look authoritative. The struggle is most tangible in the draft. Once the contradictions are ironed out and the confusions corrected, the energy is changed. There is elation (and danger) in that release of tension that accompanies the act of completion. From that point on, the words are changed from what they were when they were still malleable clay in the hands of the creator. In the best scenario, the words maintain the essence of the struggle, which imbues them with a depth they can’t muster on their own. More often, the creative demons are cleaned out, shown the door, exorcised, leaving behind shells of words without a clue who made them, how they ended up here, and what for.

Post script: Unknown to me, in yesterday’s there was an exhibition review for a collection of handwritten letters, manuscripts, stories, and lectures from the likes of Emily Dickinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, George Washington, Einstein, Eisenhower and others, at Sotheby’s. What a perfect way to feel the humanity in history. Go check it out if you’re in NYC.

How would things be different in this world if people actually believed there was enough to go around? It’s a concept too profound – and unfortunately too far from our current state of anxiety – to imagine. So ingrained is the ‘psychology of lack’ in our consumerist culture that the idea we might just have enough now is heretical.

But we do. Have enough. Most of us.

Maybe not the woman profiled in the New York Times this morning who is currently raising her two daughters on nothing but food stamps; and maybe not the women in the DR Congo who have lost husbands and children to war and famine; and maybe not the man I saw on the subway yesterday who stood in a crowded car and started his tale of woe only to peter out in despair when he could see that no one was listening.

These people are exempt.

So, if we have enough already, why do so many of us feel so unsettled? The Taoists call the majority of our day-to-day whims “artificial desires.” They do not grow out of a need in the body or the soul, but from the ego. Artificial desires are the desires–big and small–that have the power to manipulate even the most rational people into raving lunatics. These are the desires that are confounding because they are not actually tied to any real need and when they are fed, they just get stronger. They’re like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors: at first they appear exotic and compelling, attention grabbing and seemingly unique (“This is MY desire!”). But as we feed them they grow into something bigger than our will, bigger than ourselves. As we go on feeding them, they threaten to consume us.

The reality of our consumerist culture today is that we are all swimming in a sea of messaging supporting a psychology of lack, artificial desires, and what Lao Tzu considered one of the worst of all sins: “incitement to envy.” My industry – advertising and marketing – has preyed on it for years and would continue to do so if it weren’t starting to wear thin.

No sin can exceed

Incitement to envy;

No calamity’s worse

Than to be discontented. –Lao Tzu

Discontented. It seems so mild a state to be considered the worst of all “calamities.” A starving person is not discontented. A dying person is not discontented. These people have bigger issues to contend with than contentment. Continue Reading »