Casi Cielo Salon

what does melancholy look like?.... writing about the "abstract" concretely

In the last few days I've talked about describing objects and concrete actions like eating, but what about things that seem more abstract--such as feelings or emotions or ideals?

To me, these are often harder to describe because we tend to shy from the immediate senses, the concreteness of them toward mental categorization and conclusive analysis. So we might miss the more primal and immediate feel of feelings which may include color, physical sensation, metaphorical imagery, etc. If you are willing to be curious with the immediacy of the "abstract" without trying to mentally categorize it then it's not as abstract, and you'll find your own way to write of it.

Here are a few other ideas and hints.

"Good writers may "tell" about almost anything in fiction except the characters' feelings. One may tell the reader that the character went to a private school...or one may tell the reader that the character hates spaghetti; but with rare exceptions the characters' feelings must be demonstrated: fear, love, excitement, doubt, embarrassment, despair become real only when they take the form of events--action (or gesture), dialogue, or physical reaction to setting." - John Gardner

From the book, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, edited by Janet Burroway, I've taken two examples of writing. One that tries to pin down the character Debbie into the author's opinion and conjecture without offering concrete alive detail, and another example that is more observatory in the present moment.

Example 1:

Debbie was a very stubborn and completely independent person and was always doing things her way despite her parents' efforts to get her to conform.

Example 2:

Debbie would wear a tank top to a tea party if she pleased, with fluorescent earrings and ankle-strap sandals.

"Oh, sweetheart," Mrs. Chiddister would stand in the doorway wringing her hands. "It's not nice."

"Not who?" Debbie would say, and add a fringed belt.

The book, Writing Fiction, adds:

"We have not passed a final judgment on the merits of these characters, but we know a good deal more about them, and we have drawn certain interim conclusions that are our own and not forced on us by the author."

Another potential idea:

What Does Melancholy Look Like?

Our minds do not think in abstracts. The mind assigns imagery to every abstract subject it needs to process. Try it: What do you think of when you hear the word "honesty"? You pictured something, didn't you? We use these same images to communicate.... Your task today is to write down the first thing you think of when you hear the following abstract words: Rage, Order, Justice, Evil, God, History, Pain, Smart.  - Caffeine for the Creative Mind

ART CREDITS: Melancholy of a Japanese Girl, by Yoko Furuso

bypass the inner judge through constraints

One way to bypass the inner judge is to focus in on an object in a place, time your writing, or otherwise constrain your writing situation. Much of my "40 days of ordinary rapture" journal writing in 2006 took place in my backyard at either dawn or twilight--between the earl grey scent of citrusy bergamot, the camellia blooming pink, the migratory birds, the snail's itinerary, the texture of passing clouds.... there was plenty to pay attention to yet it was also so-called ordinary enough it would be grandiose to worry about whether it was "good enough."

The following two snippets speak to constraining your attention to an object (and try to see it for its own sake) or constraining your time to a set limit.

"Look at a cup, for example. Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on? Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? You would have no idea what this cup is, except for your past learning. Do you, then, really see it?" - A Course in Miracles, Lesson 7

"In Ray Bradbury’s Zen and the Art of Writing, he tells the story about how he wrote Fahrenheit 451. He’d been unable to get any writing done at his home, because he had a few young children who wouldn’t stop screaming. So, he went to the library to write. The library had typewriters that let you write for 10 minutes when you put in a dime. Ray was struggling with the money at the time, and had to feed his family, so he didn’t have many dimes. He’d pop in the dime and then frantically type for 10 minutes. In-between, he’d walk around the library.

When you write incredibly quickly, it induces a flow state, which taps into your unconscious mind.

. . . . You cannot edit yourself and be in a state of flow simultaneously. Flow first, then edit. Then press publish." - Ev Bogue

ART CREDITS: My own photo of rose petals on Seattle sidewalk. These are the types of photos I was taking in summer 2006. Simple. Seemingly mundane. Everyday beauty.

when the mind fasts, Reality enters - Ramesh Balsekar

"Contact with the awareness of the Absolute can come about only when the mind is fasting, when the process of conceptualization has utterly ceased. When the mind feasts, Reality disappears. When the mind fasts, Reality enters."  - Ramesh S. Balsekar,  A Net of Jewels

Today is Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. I've lived in New Orleans--and in fact, was residing in the Marigny neighborhood during last year's Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday is a holiday, and traditionally the last big hoorah to indulge before Lent begins. (Although, in New Orleans curbing indulgence  isn't  in the city DNA.)  Alhough I was marginally raised as Catholic--I quit after my communion, I don't observe Lent either, at least not in any typical sense. 

Me? This year I'm "giving up" on memory and rehashing the past for Lent. Live by inspiration alone.

Perhaps, spurred by the quote by Balsekar above (just serendipitiously sent by a friend this a.m.)  give up believing in my thought gyrations. Reality happens in the present not in the synapses of my brain. Beyond (or more accurately, below) what I think it is, it is.

Today I'm not providing a writing prompt. 

Indulge your intuition. Feed on your inner muse. What does It prompt?

When I Met My Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

-- William Stafford

Most people 'paralyze' the muse with their thought gyrations of perfection. Consider that anything you write is okay, and that you can not write it wrong. Trust in simply showing up... each day for 40 days (minus Sundays). When poet William Stafford was asked how his daily practice of writing one poem a day could possibly produce quality poetry of high standards, he replied:  "I lower my standards."

"William Stafford woke up every morning, seven days a week, at 4 a.m., made himself a cup of instant coffee and a piece of dry toast, and stretched out on his family's living room couch. There, notebook on lap, he wrote until the sun came up. He wrote a poem a day, a process he describes in the short lyric "Just Thinking": "Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window. / No cloud, no wind. . . . Let the bucket of memory down into the well, / bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one / stirring. No plans. Just being there." Stafford was a late bloomer whose first major collection of poems, Traveling Through the Dark, was published when he was forty-eight. It won the National Book Award in 1963. He went on to publish more than sixty-five volumes of poetry and prose." -- "The Poets Laureate Anthology" edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt

ART CREDITS: Sure takes a lot of showing up every day to a blank page to get this vortex of words. Book sculpture and architecture by artist Matej Kren.

share your watercolor journals in Salon too

art credits: a journal page from luscious PaPaYa! Cards and Gift's Anahata Katkin