Toni Stone April 5, 2004
401 Buck Hollow Rd.
Fairfax, VT 05454
Easter eggs
the pen doesn’t want to write, then it does.
twelve dozen eggs are getting boiled on the stove top for Easter coloring.
the April snow has already covered everything and Easter is this weekend. Martha’s magazine has most beautiful colored eggs on its cover.
they are sitting in a nest of shredded wrapping paper. i could do that too.
maybe i will. on thursday we’ll be headed back to Boston for the holiday.
today i will unpack from getting home last night. i am grateful for a chance to sit,
write a while and talk to Jim, who is writing near Chicago. this is good to have writing appointments. this is good to write with someone else who is writing.
this is good that i don’t have to get dressed up and go to a cafe to write,
like Natalie Goldberg talks about.
like a parched plant who needs water, i need to write regularly.
Natalie talks about regular writing as a practice that helps us all
complete lives, as we are living them, so there is no residue remaining,
nothing hanging on, no left overs. quite possibly this will make the last breath devoid of remorse, regret or resentment.
i can see that. i can understand how to register what was seen or felt
can finalize it and provide freedom to move on. it also helps me understand why its so difficult to enroll students in writing. quite simply, we like to hang on to the old. . .savor it, review it and continue to re-immerse in it.
hoarding keeps one on the time line. i won’t give it up until tomorrow.
i won’t give it up until i feel like it. i won’t give it up because there may not be any more of it, ever.
i was discussing in my Boston class just last weekend, one of the huge obstacles to prospering LETTING GO THE GOOD THAT’S STILL GOOD.
people can’t seem to do it easily, because if its still good, they believe they don’t have permission to want something better. the overriding belief is IT HAS TO BE HORRID BEFORE I CAN GIVE IT UP. this is precisely how come our closets are so full of old clothes. we can’t let them go till they are too small, too big or too out of date–totally useless.
LETTING GO THE GOOD THAT’S STILL GOOD is only something one could do if she no longer operated from scarcity, if he no longer believed in lack.
one who can let it go, lets it go in full assurance that more is not only possible,
it’s for certain. to live like this, like it’s for certain that greater good is always on the way is quite a practice. it may take lifetimes to even be interested in this practice.
when i paint easter eggs, they are little paintings, little works of art, little poems, books, essays, masterpieces. i would love to keep them all but for what? for what? what can one do with painted eggs really? only destroy them to eat them. this is a good practice to keep writing.
this is a good practice to paint the eggs and give them away on top of shredded paper in baskets. i could even shred my little writings and put the eggs on top of them.
