The True Secret of Writing by Natalie Goldberg

Author:Natalie Goldberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

A Long Chapter on a Short Practice

A Week of Writing in a Café

Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.

Die knowing something. You are

not here long.

—WALKER EVANS, 1960

Sometime, you might want to try a short practice: go to the same coffee shop for seven days in a row, the same hour, the same seat and record what’s in front of you, what you hear, see, smell, taste. No interpretation.

I’ve mentioned this short practice to retreat students, but it hasn’t seemed to stir anyone but me. I decided finally to do it.

At the end of November, the day after Thanksgiving, I committed myself to going to the Tea House on Canyon Road at noon every day for seven days and to write straight for twenty minutes “what was in front of my face,” grabbing what I could of overheard conversations, people at tables, people coming and going. I’ll admit it would have been more efficient to bring a laptop (they have Wi-Fi) but I’m an old dog and I snatched what I could of the action with pen and paper. I set it up as a short exploratory practice, just to see how it felt.

The hard part was my immediate resistance on the first day. Already I didn’t want to do it. I had a stomachache. I didn’t want to be in a café where everyone was eating. Choosing noon was impossible; it was the middle of the day. What was I thinking? Better first thing in the morning. And then I thought, This is a beginning writer’s activity. It sounded so attractive when I proposed it. I can’t learn anything new, I told myself. That Friday, the first day after a holiday, the place was filled with visiting family and friends. Here I was again alone, writing. I fell into an old pit—the lonely writer. Why didn’t I become a funeral director, a plumber, a short-order cook? Not this again.

Natalie, shut up. You said you were going to do it, you’re here the first morning, follow through. Stop being so dramatic.

I half bit the bullet. Only one day did I get there exactly on time and I missed one day in the middle but made it up at the end, continuing consecutively till I hit seven.

But now three weeks later—I hate to admit it—though there was intense resistance I learned a lot. First, I see the old girl can still show up. Second, I find myself thinking a bit about the people I wrote about, even in such a brief encounter. I also find myself more attuned to people’s conversations. Just this past week at a True Secret Retreat, as I led the group slow walking out of the zendo into the courtyard, I heard two people speaking loudly outside the kitchen. Normally I would ignore this or include it as part of general sound or on a bad day be annoyed that the staff didn’t respect silence. But because of the café practice, my senses were piqued. What was their relationship? I realized the loudness was an exalted state.

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