On Being a Cat

Dogs can be taught almost anything for a reward.

Cats look at you as though you have lost your mind,

then walk away to do their own thing . . .

I must have been a cat in a former life.

After my colleague-husband and I finished our latest book, Conversations • Images and Poetry, it was time for a breather. The process had been exhausting, with some glitches that  we previously had not encountered with earlier books. What I needed was a little rest and recreation to re-energize my writing voice. A road trip to North Carolina was just what I needed! There we visited friends and walked the sand beaches of the Outer Banks.

However, this breather stretched into a longer period of minimal writing. I waited — and waited — for the next project to appear. Previous projects always had announced themselves without much effort on my part. Sometimes they would even show up during the final stages of proofs and printing a book. This time nothing tweaked my curiosity or imagination.

Months went by. I was totally uninspired. I began asking myself what was going on within me. Writing Conversations had been like climbing Denali or Mount Everest, a culmination of years of writing and photography. Maybe this pause was about some transition in how I wrote or what genre' I chose.

Perhaps — but no jolt jump started my writing. No seeds of re-definition sprouted like the fragrant Sweet Annie herb that appeared in new places every spring in my garden.

Then an epiphany arrived — at the same time as the Epiphany of the liturgical year. A gift arrived from some unknown place. The great aha for which I had been looking. I was following around a rutabaga at the end of a stick. 

A rutabaga? You know — rutabagas, those rather homely tan and purple root vegetables that you pass by in the grocery or farmers market every fall. Now, rutabagas are not a vegetable of which I am not particularly fond  — and my husband refuses to eat them. Thus, no rutabaga never had crossed the threshold of our lives!  

A carrot I could understand — dangling at the end of a string tied to a stick, coaxing a horse or donkey to get in gear and move forward. I am fond of carrots. But this foreign vegetable? Wherever this image came from, it persisted in my mind. What in the world might it be trying to tell me on my writer’s path?

For non-published folks, there is bit of an aura of mystery about writers of books. They believe writers lead somewhat glamorous lives. However, writing is not that alluring image. Writing and finding an audience for one’s work is nine-tenths hard work and one part luck of the draw.

I had put in my time pursuing success as a writer. I had several books to my name, took writing classes to hone my writing skills, attended conferences to network, published op-ed pieces, taught at several literary centers, did public readings of my work, marketed my books, created two blogs, and belonged to several writing groups. And among all that activity, I did manage to find time for writing. It was be fair to say I’d accomplished my goal of becoming successful as a writer.

But following a rutabaga, this earthy commoner? I might not have noticed a carrot, but this unattractive vegetable caused me to do a double take.

It dawned on me that the gift of this metaphor was about the external motivators in this decidedly unglamorous profession. Motivators that somehow had captured me and were running my writing life.

I stopped looking for that next project. Instead, I spent time reflecting about how I’d come to be a writer. Neither writing nor photography were things I’d ever dreamed about doing. In fact earlier in my life, I’d have laughed out loud if someone has suggested such crazy ideas.

When I did begin writing in earnest, it was because I felt called to this strange occupation. Hours of solitary time when the goal is communicating with others. A low-reward system with sparse feedback — other than the thrill of holding a completed book in my hands, seeing my name in print, or an occasional person who tells me my writing has meant something to them. An often laborious process of re-writing and editing. And unruly words that frequently take me somewhere unintended.

But in the process of becoming, I traded my calling for a profession. I realized I needed to stop following all these skills I learned. Not stop doing them (because they still were necessary), but stop traipsing  around behind them as though they were the raison d'etre of writing. I had to return to writing from my heart and soul. Writing what I needed to express — before any consideration of whether I was writing something that would “sell” or speak to anyone else.

My internal reflection broadened beyond writing. What motivates any of us to do what we do? Of course, external demands of our time and energy determine much of our behavior. We don’t say to a boss that is not what I feel called to do today. A certain number of things need doing, in order to keep our lives working — from buying groceries and filling the car with gas to ensuring we have clean bodies that won’t offend others.

The externals in our lives coax us onward. They can appear to be what motivates us to take up a cause, express our opinions, do kind things for others, or spent precious energy on issues that may or may not end in success. And those external motivators may be what keeps us going — especially on those days when we’d rather roll over in bed and sleep in or forget about accomplishing a thing.

There are no easy answers. What answers that exist are unique to each of us. I can’t tell you what to do with your life — your one wild and precious life as the poet Mary Oliver describes it. I can’t even answer the question for myself half of the time.

Becoming a writer was never a career choice for me. Writing took me over, not the other way around. Gradually, playing with the music of words and how they interact with each other captured my attention and led me deeper into the literary world. I’ve always loved Pablo Neruda’s lines in “Poetry” where he says:

                      And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived

                      in search of me. I don’t know. I don’t know where

                      it came from, from winter or a river.

                      I don't know how or when,

                      no they weren't voices, they were not

                      words, nor silence,

                      but from a street I was summoned . . .  

But here I am! It was not that I’d lost my writer’s voice. I just had to quit following that blessed rutabaga around, concentrating on doing all those things writers do to become heard. I needed to trust that in good time, words again would flow from within me.

It is the way it always has been for all of us. Sometimes we are not fortunate to have work that chooses us. The work that we do may be out of sheer necessity — to support ourselves, our families. Or we become parents when it was not our intention at that time in our lives — and we had to embrace a different lifestyle than what we intended. Or we may live somewhere we’d rather not be.

But if we can distinguish the rutabagas from the small insistent voice from within us, the universe will find the means for expressing our unique calling in surprising ways.

Remember . . .  I never set out to be a photographer or a writer.