(response to Mary Oliver)

Today my mind is bouncing from project to project with pure excitement on all the various things in progress (also, the caffeine running through my body is likely adding to the sporadic nature of my work today).

Mary Oliver wrote, “attention is the beginning of devotion¹“, and I can see how this manifests in writing, regardless of what is being worked on. As I started writing more intentionally for others to read, I felt overwhelmed by wanting everyone to love my writing. As a result, the voice in my writing did not sound like my own, it was watered down to nothing.

After reflecting on why I loved writing and the elements I loved in other writing, I found a theme. The best writers wrote to/for someone specific. Looking back, I see how my best writing also happened when I had a specific person in mind. Not even a general audience or demographic was helpful, I needed to write to one person each time I sat down. Now, when I approach a project, I write specifically for a loved one or in response to someone’s comment that I want to reflect on. Writing is a conversation between artist and muse. Rarely do I write to myself in a format that will be shared with others, instead that form of writing stays in my journal.

Now, let’s return to the comment Ms. Oliver made, “attention is the beginning of devotion”. Devotion has a couple meanings, the Latin side means a vow or promise, while the French side has more of a religious undertone of emotion, awe, and worship. Writing any sort of project – an essay, short story, book, paper, etc. etc. – results in hours and hours of work and focus. All those hours amount to care and attention to a person, hopefully it turns into something beautiful made from a place of love. To spend hours and hours working on a project for someone brings a level of intentionality and reverence that I rarely experience outside of art.

These words from Ms. Oliver’s book are encouraging, because if you had spoken to me yesterday or the day before, you would have received a different response about life and juggling the projects I’m working on. I enjoy variety in the day to day, and I feel stifled when I have to do the same thing over and over again. I, like many more who came before, hold myself to a level of excellence that cherry picks the best of people’s lives, without recognizing that the level cannot be embodied (or sustained) in one person. My sweet, sweet mother reminded me of this recently. Ambition, contrary to what I have previously considered, is not an all or nothing mentality. The black and white thinking that led me to this conclusion can be detrimental to the nature of an artist.

I am no machine. I am unable to produce, produce, produce without rest and times to pause. No, I was made to mirror nature in the ways it ebbs and flows. I was made for seasons – a time to work and a time to rest, a time to think and a time to write, a time to dream and a time to work out the dream into reality. Seasons inherently have a dreaded word involved… waiting. Waiting removes the control from our hands and makes us encounter limitations. Earlier in the same essay, Ms. Oliver writes that writes, “Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vain-glory is the bane of us, the humans²“. If we were made to be like the natural world, perhaps we need to re-focus attention to learn from the “leaf-world” over the “tech-world”. Where the leaf-world encourages me to slow down and delight, the tech-world shouts saying work harder, be more, excel in everything without exception. I am overwhelmed with all the inputs.

Wendell Berry writes about the difference between the leaf-world and the tech-world quite eloquently in his poem, “The Timbered Choir”³. While he uses different language, the sentiment is the same. I have italicized and bolded a couple lines to note.

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

In pursuit of “the objective”, as Berry says, we tear away the reminders of what makes us truly human. We forget where we came from because we have become blind to the world around us. Attempting to produce beyond our limit, we destroy the very things that brought beauty and meaning. Berry writes, “Every place had been displaced, every love unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant” – this is the exact opposite of devotion, founded on promises, vows, reverent awe, and worship. Where Mary Oliver invites us into attention, Wendell Berry warns us of distraction.

Today, I remember Ms. Oliver and write in response to her words penned not too long ago. While she has now passed away, her words remain immortal, inspiring people for generations to come. She wrote in response to the poets who came before her, who wrote to the poets who came before them, and on and on it went. What a joy to be a part of a creative lineage of people who have cultivated intentional attention throughout their lives.

1. Upstream, Mary Oliver ↩︎
2. Upstream, Mary Oliver ↩︎
3. If you want to hear him read it aloud, go look up the trailer to a movie about him called, “Look & See” ↩︎