Specialness is a form of mental sickness, stemming again from fear.
The power of love -- and I'm not necessarily talking about romantic codswallap, though even part of that relationship has its apparently pleasant phases — is quite simply built on the reality of oneness: there is one life illuminating every thing, whether animate or apparently inanimate.
And where do such thoughts come from? Fear stops writing. Love powers it. Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones is a must read for those writers who have lost their way and slipped into sterility.
Resurrection in writing
It was a hot day in November, 1999, some years later, when hell started to disintegrate.
On a beach in Langkawi, an island off Malaysia, a whole series of scenes suddenly leapt into my inner vision. It had been so many years since I experienced this part of the mind working that I thought I had gone temporarily insane. On that humid beach, sitting under palm trees with the high-pitched whine of insects, something had returned to life.
Writing unfortunately does not stop wars suddenly. I disagree. Harnessing the right stream of thoughts at the right time in the right place brings miracles.
"Writing is survival," said Ray Bradbury, in his insightful preface to Zen in the Art of Writing, a must read for whatever kind of writer you want to be. If you are here to write, and you don't, you will die a kind of death. But once you resume writing, well: resurrection abounds.
Put another way: you must stay drunk on writing so that everyday life does not destroy you.
-- Letter from Malaysia, 21 August, writing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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