I remember striving to write beautifully. I experimented with rules for beautiful writing: eliminate most adverbs, use adverbs near the end of a piece as a way of deepening the emotional connection with the work. Use adjectives sparingly. Focus on nouns. Focus on verbs. Thinking of these rules today, was I attempting to embrace minimalism? A writer in a workshop said, “the writer’s” (my writing was being heard) “writing is beautiful but I have no idea what it says.”

Ouch. I stumbled over her words then and I’ve replayed them now for five years, as if it’s a skip in a record, or a rock in the middle of a trail, or a trail I randomly walk, over and over.

“I have no idea what it says.”

I have felt this way when I am in a forest. I have felt this way in conversations with people I have just met or people I love. Sometimes I walk away, confused. Sometimes I stay still, I keep listening, and, then, I being to feel what is being said.

When I say feel, I mean my body feels. When I am aware of what my body feels, I might also be aware of content, of expression.

To express the experience of life through words, the way a writer does, might be an attempt to communicate- “is anybody out there??” or “this is noticed” or “love” or “beauty” or “pain” or “fear” or “we are”.

When listening to writer Melanie Rae Thon’s interview with David Naimon (Between the Covers podcast), the room filled with a confident voice, a jazz singer’s voice, a jazz writer’s words. The experience filled me with wonder. Here are some of my notes, followed by italics of wonderings:

There is no safe place in this story.

The safe place is in the body. Love is here. Fear is not.

The literary, the spiritual and the scientific converge in this work.

The fullest experience of life connects the mental, the spiritual, the physical and the emotional.

Anytime you remember an event in your life, the memory changes.

Anytime I offer water to a tree or a conversation, does the tree change?

I’m not writing about my experience, I’m writing from my experience. I’m writing out of my experience.

If we write out of an experience, do we let go of the experience, do we release it into the flow of life? Does it become part of the pattern of patterns?

All Life is Love: the name of an essay Thon wrote.

This is in my bank of experience.

Surrender to love is my life quest.

Can I put this on a t-shirt? Surrender to Love.

Witnessing and rendering story is my pathway to surrendering to love.

ahhh. I think back to the comment which has stung me repeatedly for five years. “The writer’s writing is beautiful but I have no idea what it says.”

Perhaps witnessing and rendering beauty was necessary in that draft of the work. Perhaps some writing is a way of describing experience with little story. Perhaps some writing is a way of only witnessing.

Perhaps beauty is just as important as understanding.

The interview is wide and deep. Melanie Rae Thon is generous and authentic. Intention: I will write today, witnessing and rendering story.