Thoughts on Pages

There is some deeper knowing, either inside of me or outside of me that is tapped into by putting pen to paper.


I used to write pages everyday, when I couldn't think straight, act straight and sometimes even see straight, pen and paper. Sometimes it's a stream of swearing that comes first, sometimes huge howling questions, sometimes pleading or coaxing out of what I know is in there somewhere....something to save me from the confusion I feel at that moment.


At one time I think I'd have been trying to catch it, trying to keep it so it's never forgotten or lost to me again. Poetry is like that, like a picture sometimes, just to capture fleeting ecstasy to return to it when I choose...But the morning pages called for by Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way are far from that.


I've been completing them for a week now, three pages a day, mostly on waking, of uninterrupted stream of (Un!) consciousness writing. I'm not allowed to read it back even at the moment, so am fairly unaware of what I have actually written, but I can say it's very freeing, and I feel things shifting, my worries and constant self-talk are affected by this process.


I recently wrote an e-mail to Beth at The Virtual Teahouse about how I have used art and writing over the years for self-healing. Today I find myself wondering about it more deeply again... The power that is in the process of putting marks on paper and why the process has evolved for me to include shape and colours and words altogether..

I watched through the amazing video of Jill Bolte-Taylor with a friend this morning, and am wondering if some of the answer is in there...in the left, right split of the brain, with perhaps the left side's constant narrative being joined more evenly with the right's sense of Oneness by the process of involving the body in the dialogue.


It's intriguing me today.