PaperWork: ‘Carry the poem away from the desk and into the kitchen’

INGREDIENTS: This column contains wishful thinking and some hypocrisy.

When I spill out thoughts and personal observations each week I sometimes feel like the great pretender. Or perhaps the better word is “wimp.”

That’s the word used by Natalie Goldberg, a writing guru I admire. She is often quoted when sharing writing advice and insight from her book “Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within.”

In her book, Goldberg recalls a conversation with a fellow writer about the disguise writers wear.

“We talked about our voices as writers – how they are strong and brave but how as people we are wimps,” she wrote.

“This is what creates our craziness. The chasm between the great love we feel for the world when we sit and write about it and the disregard we give it in our own human lives. How Hemingway could write of the great patience of Santiago in the fishing boat and how Hemingway himself, when he stepped out of his writing studio, mistreated his wife and drank too much.”

Guilty as charged, I thought. Uh, not the abuse and drinking part. But what she said is true of many writers being hypocrites. She had more to say.

“We have to begin to bring these two worlds together,” she said. “Art is the act of nonaggression. We have to live this art in our daily lives.”

She quotes Katagiri Roshi, a teacher of Zen Buddhism: “Our goal is to have a kind consideration for all sentient beings every moment forever.”

“This does not mean put a good poem on paper and then spit at our lives, curse our cars and cut off someone on the freeway,” Goldberg explained. “It means carry the poem away from the desk and into the kitchen. That is how we will survive as writers, no matter how little money we make in the American economy.

“The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world, and why not finally carry that secret out with our bodies into the living rooms and porches, backyards and grocery stores? Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in this world.”

That’s a lofty goal, but I am focused on the challenge – that writers try to be true to their words and the messages they sell to the world. And that pulls me back to the basic question: Am I really a wimp? Is there a wide gap between what I say and what I do?

Well, again: Guilty as charged. Not always, but it does happen. But I should clarify.

This little ditty I sing every week for you is often just me thinking out loud. I feel out of place when it sounds like I’m telling you what to do. Preaching.

So I try to focus on myself, my actions, my mishaps, my fears. Me. That’s why these words are more of a memoir versus essays on how others should live. And I do find myself connecting on some personal level with others who tell me, “Hey, that’s me, too.”

I am often talking to myself. But that does not mean I am truly honest. I lie to myself all the time. Good example: “Yes, definitely tomorrow I will begin doing [fill the blank].”

I try to turn my ramblings into good advice or some kind of life lesson. And I hope others think about what I share. But … do I always follow my own advice? Well, despite good intentions, I do not.

I can blame procrastination or laziness or I’m too busy and other poor excuses. I can say, “Hey, it’s the thought that counts.” And, come on, it’s human nature, right?

Or maybe Natalie Goldberg is correct. In the end, maybe I’m just a “wimp.”

• Lonny Cain, retired managing editor of The Times in Ottawa, also was a reporter for The Herald-News in Joliet in the 1970s. His PaperWork email is lonnyjcain@gmail.com. Or mail The Times, 110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL 61350.