Helping Someone Else

copyright 2011 by Danise Codekas

A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.-Tobias Wolfe

It takes a lot of time and energy to write a book. I often wonder, sitting in a graduate or research library, if there isn’t more info, I need, based upon the numerous citations, books, articles covering whatever topic I happen to be researching, which have not been examined.

I should live in a library, since the past 2 weeks, I have been spending a lot of time researching, and shaking my head when some query comes up nil value.

I think there are special times during the year or, maybe in life, when research perfection arises, with the correct query terminology. And the primary results display across the screen, or in the file.

It is heaven when it does. Who has time to research 642,000 references on the same topic, just because one of the words in the query happens to be cockatiel? Not that I have ever researched that word, however, I imagine you might after reading that sentence.

It is May 16 and I realize that, for many, the end of their high school and college years come to an end, at graduation. The apple trees are blooming in my back yard and the 100 year old lilac bushes are smelling good. However, I am at the library doing research on publishing sales, specifically, eBook sales.

Since writing is my thing, knowing where the industry is heading helps me make some decisions in my career, like next manuscript or which publishers. This year contracts and eBook royalties are part of my writing life challenges, and I always like to know where the industry is heading before I buy a ticket on the publishing super-highway.

Back when, I dated one of Buckminster Fuller’s relatives. Fuller is one of those people who amaze me, as a creative genius. I will build and live in a geodesic dome soon. Soon, is a relative term, as the world moves from one eon to another. Maybe I should just say that before my death, I will spend time in a geodesic dome.

With all the time I have spent designing the perfect dome life, over the years, soon that little architectural wonder will house me for a while before my last walk on earth.

Alex Hailey, once said, that every death is like the burning of a library. Profound and true, as far as I am concerned which makes it imperative for me to enhance my research skills. Having too many secondary resources is worse than having only one primary, I believe.

At least, I feel that way today, since all of the research has led to secondary data, and the primary answer or template I need to enfold a lot of info into, has not made an appearance, yet. Guess, I will have to write THAT book, too.

Back to Bucky Fuller, who once asked: What can I do that isn’t going to get done unless I do it, just because of who I am?

Now, it is a relatively innocuous question, until that last dangling phrase, that one after the comma. Unique consciousness, no one on the planet like you challenge, and, perhaps, a raison d'être to finish writing a book, quit screwing around trying to pick a color for the porch, or the 14 songs you need for your new  album, or waste any more time deciding on what you want to do for the rest of your life.

Whatever you choose, it will be exactly the right thing because that is who you are and you are the one with power to do it. It is when we begin to believe that the person next to us can read our soul that stupid decisions are made that never reflect, who you or I really, truly are now.

How many times has a friend or spouse, jumped in to help you make a decision, because you did not want the responsibility, and the end result was unappealing to you? Many times, I would think.

Many times people will compliment me on my writing talent. They think it is some kind of a gift from the goddess and I woke up one day and, like Beethoven, it was mine. Well, that is true. Not the talent, though. The knowing it was mine. It is what I did. I wrote.

I also became a voracious reader and will spend weeks, months, at a time, reading in preparation for writing. Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone for who writing is more difficult than for others. Steinbeck said that a good writer always works at the impossible.

I am working on the impossible this week. Everything I start, whether fiction or non-fiction is an impossible work of art which somehow displays on my screen, or on the page, from my 5th chakra. I can always feel my fear of revealing what’s in my head or heart, in my throat chakra. A writer is a typing, scrawling, chakra clearing dynamo.

Whenever I am getting close to an answer, revelation, or final chapter, my entire life seems to tilt, for a few weeks before. In this instance, it has been for the past 2 months. My life has been shaken up, hosed down, and I am watching it all happen, Life happens like that for us all. Seems random however even random has reason and results and consequences.

Now, it all makes sense. The research, the challenges, the fear about me, my life and my writing. I am close to a change, in the throws of changes  which are transforming me, and my writing life.

I knew there would be a reason for this book, at this time. A different reason for why I started it. That’s the way  book is. You get a reason t write it. But once it is done, the real reason is revealed. Kind of like the surprise ending.

It really had nothing to do with readers. It has to do with me.

As Anton Chekhov once wrote, a book ought to be an ax to break the frozen sea within us.

It was April, when I was in the Bering Sea. I watched the glacier walls collapse, into a blue-green,shimmering sea.I was mesmerized by colors, rainbows, and the enormity of frozen monuments, sculpted by cosmic-creator power, unlike any mass seen.

And, like my trip through the Bering Sea and old Russian island landscapes, or working on a new piece of writing, or designing the perfect geodesic dome, my life always comes down to one idea, or two, which seem to bring me back to the true meaning of why I am here, apart from the bills, research, gasoline prices or dead dictators.

This week is simply to get things in order so I can be freer to create.Nothing holding me down that does not support my energy and my lifestyle. Boxes of saved papers, books no longer used, boxes of old computer cables and floppy disks, never to be used. What about the electric typewriter?  Should I let it go? Sell it? IBM Selectric II with 10 different font balls. MMMMMM.

Know that whatever, I or you, are creating is healing me/us, expanding our consciousness and may even help someone else in the world.

May this suffering serve to awaken compassion  – Prayer to Qwan Yin