GET INSPIRED BY ARCHITECTURE #5 A BENCH IN SEOUL Learning to Stop.

#5 A BENCH IN SEOUL Learning to Stop.

By Mary Rakow, Ph.D.

A friend sent this photo from a hotel in Seoul where he was staying, knowing I’d love it, and I do! Why? It’s the direction of the bench. That it’s not facing the elevators. The bench has no arms, no back so our eye moves across the carpet, to the bench, past it through the curtains to the view outside, the larger thing. Even the pattern woven into the carpet leads to the window. And if that weren’t cool enough, there’s a slim pillow. What is this architectural and design statement silently saying?  Loud and clear it’s saying,  STOP!   SIT.  NOTICE.

What does this bench teach us about writing?

As writers we have to stop.  We have to learn to stop.  To tame the “monkey brain” inside. Or to quote the late, brilliant Kallistos Ware, “The ever-restless mind [that] demands from us some task, so as to satisfy its constant need to be active.” He goes on, “How do we stop talking and start listening? How do we find this stillness and inward silence known in Greek as hesychia?  This ancient Greek word signifying concentration combined with inward tranquility?”

There was a famous woman, a solitary, living in ancient Alexandria, famed for her holiness.  She never left her room.  Curious, a desert hermit traveled to meet her. “Why do you sit in your room and do nothing?” he asked.  “I’m not doing nothing,” she corrected. “I’m on a journey.”

We know that journey.  We know the fabulous sensation of being in the writing zone.  Of deep “concentration combined with inward tranquility.”  We live for this!

So we want to strengthen our ability to get there. Even against great odds.  To get there quickly. And with ease.  We want to eventually carry that space within ourselves, all of the time, like the woman in Alexandria. 1600 years ago.

How does this happen?   By practice.  We have to work at stopping until it becomes our nature.

The notoriously amazing cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed the sustained, mystical “Suite for Solo Cello” by Tavener in the outdoor Hollywood Bowl, small planes flying overhead, audience eating their picnic suppers, pouring wine.  After the performance he explained in an interview that early in his career he had many rituals to get himself into the performing zone.  Then, after years, he was able to enter that space without any rituals at all.  He could be in the zone even in the green room with people talking all around him, approaching him, etc. In fact, he could use the very things that used to be obstacles as a way to get himself into the zone.  Things that used to distract, became a bridge.

Read about his career here.  A prodigy, performing from the age of 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-Yo_Ma. He is also all over Youtube.

Does this sound familiar to any of you?  This pursuit of silence? Of taming the monkey brain?  I am very engaged in this pursuit, as a writer and as a person on the planet. For me it started like this:

I’d finished grad school, we had three small children, had moved back to L.A from Boston, purchased a run down ranch-style house and had taken 3 years to completely transform that “handyman’s special” into a home of subtle and lasting beauty. What I wanted then was inner stillness. Not just no more hammering and power saws.  I wanted to inner silence.  Not the removal of the vibrant sounds of family life. But inner stillness.

So I started to garden when the kids were at school.  In earnest. To garden seriously.  It was a very large property and I began by planting ficus around the 150’ X 80’ periphery.  Each plant arrived in a huge wood container. I hand trimmed them until they became a solid green wall 15 feet high. I gardened because a friend of mine suggested it.  He was an urban hermit himself.  Decades before I ever considered that path.  I took his advice.  I re-designed the entire landscape, partly because gardening was so silent.  No electric hedge trimmers.  No motors.

I thought silence would take me 3 months. Instead it took me 10 years.

One afternoon I stopped for a coffee in our small beach town.  They were hosting a poetry reading that night. I went back for it.  I’d never been to a reading before.  And had no interest in writing.  The academic work I’d finished was enough for me. But by the end of the night, I’d decided to contact their teacher and was accepted into the wonderful poetry workshop of Los Angeles poet, Jack Grapes. Everything changed. Everything changed.

 But it started with stillness.

We have to not be afraid of silence.  Of stillness. In fact, we have to learn to build it into our lives one way or another. It is from these too silence that our best work will come.  Rare and vanishing, it is in stillness and silence that we will find the story only we know.  The story only we can write.

I was walking to Church.  A man sitting on the cement stoop near the entrance to the parking lot looked up as I drew near and asked if I had any money to spare.  I’d been trying to remember to carry cash but that morning had none. I apologized.

            “My name’s Mary. What’s your name?”

            He blocked the sun shining at his eyes as he looked up. “I don’t have a name.”

            He was not joking.

            “You really do not have a name?!”  I was flabbergast.

            He nodded, his face sincere.

            “Well that’s just not acceptable!”  I’d never heard of such a thing.  What poverty could be worse than not even owning a name??

            I pointed to the church. “I’m going in there.  You know, people give themselves names in there all the time! When they enter religious life they can take a new name.  Or if they’re an adult when they’re  baptized..  Or when they’re confirmed.  We do it all the time!! ”

            He looked to his right, at the church doors.  Then back to me.

            “After somebody we admire!” I continued.  “You could do the same thing!  You should name yourself! Is there somebody you admire?  Somebody you’d like to name yourself after?”

            “Lisa,” he said, instantly, which surprised me.

            “Okay! Would you spell it with one ‘s’ or two?”

            “Two.”

            “So L-I-S-S-A?” He didn’t answer.

            “She told me if I relaxed more the pain would go away.”  His voice had dropped then into a tone that seemed like sorrow mixed with gratitude.  I wondered if she was still in his world.

            “Okay, Lissa,” I held out my hand.  “I will call you Lissa from now on.” And he liked it.

I have seen Lissa twice since then. He remembered the first time.  Not the second.

We all have the right to name ourselves and our experience.  As writers this is, in fact, our primary job. To fasten language onto what we see and feel and think.  To fasten words onto that perception of the world that only we possess.  That way of looking that belongs to us alone and to no one else.  And to fasten words onto the experiences of others, when called to do so.

As writers we don’t “people watch.”  Instead we try to “see,” to “notice” in the deepest way.  This means we stop.  This means we carry inside ourselves a vast territory of stillness.  Of silence.  Of room for the other.  A place for that person the universe puts before us.  A friend of mine will say, “In prison you get used to being watched.  But you’re never seen.”

Standing in a food queue, with hundreds of other men and women, a stranger came up to the great Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova asking, “Can you write about this?” And she did.  One of the most significant poets of 20th century, she was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965.  When forbidden to publish, her poems moved through the world passed on by followers who’d memorized them by heart.

To stop.  To really see.  To listen.  To write.  This is our obligation.  This is our call as writers.  This is where we find our great peace.  Our joy.

                                                 Exercise

Try this experiment, which we did in a class on Silence at SFWC I gave a few years ago. It was the first time I’d tried it and it was surprisingly powerful:

Sit with a friend, partner, writing buddy, stranger.  Set the timer for 5 minutes. Face each other. Look at each other with steady eye contact and no speaking until the timer goes off. Then separate.  Again, with no speaking, write whatever comes. This writing is not shared.  I’d just thought up the exercise, and had never done it myself.

I choked up. It was so profound.  Then I had to run the rest of the class .

We are never “just sitting there” as writers, are we?  It’s always something deeper.

                                                In Closing

If you’re visiting the Bay Area for work or pleasure, we can meet at SFMOMA for a private session to go over work, or write new work and discuss together after. My membership will cover your museum entry fee. It’s super fun! See

https://maryrakow.com .

If you’re in L.A. this summer check out the new exhibition at L.A. Louver in Venice. “The Flower Show” includes over 50 artists and runs June 7-Sept 1. See https://lalouver.com   BTW: the opening was June 7. Try going to exhibition openings. They’re really fun! Don’t be intimidated. Meet artists.  Meet other creative people. See great work!  Get inspired!

Last and so important, 100 thank you’s to those who refer writers to me.  I am so grateful!  And thank you to those who send comments both private and posted.  Your insights complete the post!

Good writing to all.  See you next time,

Mary

Quote from Timothy Ware, THE ORTHODOX WAY, p.170.

  © Mary Rakow, 2023

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