New Paintings by Natalie Goldberg

What Wakes Us Up? by Natalie Goldberg and Miriam Sagan

What wakes us up?

Curve of a blue door
A gray wet wall on a gray day
When you call and tell me your suffering
When I tell you mine
When I remember my mother, dead for four years, her black curl, her big teeth
Vanilla smell of ponderosa
Corn tortilla crack in my mouth
Sudden light at day’s end
News of Rawanda, Bosnia, Hiroshima, Birkenau
Open highway
The word “Paris”
Coca Cola
Putting a large condolence card in the neighbor’s mailbox in the rain
Drinking tea with a friend as dusk falls and the chatter around us in the cafe fades away
Waves breaking black with volcanic sand
Crossing the hospital parking lot
Sound of the key in the lock
An old letter falling out of a paperback book
The sight of my naked feet
A glass of water
Overheard gossip from the next table
Far off siren
An earring dropped between floorboards
Thinking I understand a foreign language
The right song on the car radio
Biting into a jelly doughnut
Sweeping dust

Truth or Consequences

I’m in T or C, one of my favorite places, particularly in the winter. This piece below was written a few years ago, but feels like the present. After all, T or C doesn’t change that quickly.

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Truth or Consequences Haibun

At the Pelican Spa Motel, a lime green wall, a purple curtain, a turquoise bench. A brick red roof. A turquoise sky. I describe the colors over and over in this notebook as if I were painting.
I’ve noticed that in the Chihuahuan desert Christmas trees always seem to be white or silver. Great clumps of cactus. In the cafe, strings of very beautiful neon colored lights: purple, deep blue, yellow, cherry candy red, kelly green.

this town
is all about color
(and loss)

Trailer parks, funky apartments, half deserted Main Street. An odd courtyard, maybe once a motel, doors guarded by jeweled Buddhas.
They’re building a spaceport here, in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
When I peeked inside the windows off the courtyard I saw lavishly aportioned apartments in an Asian style–like something out of the Arabian Nights.
We soak in the deep baths. Nat sits in the sun and writes a haiku about how after twenty years I’m still a poet and she writes prose. She laughs out loud.

The OPEN sign
is all I want to see
on the cafe

breakfast
at the Sunset Grill
with the old-timers

So many years–at least forty–writing in some notebook, drinking ordinary coffee, in some out of the way corner of the world.

I was young
once too
you know

I write, as if to remind myself. And settle in.

Natalie Goldberg in Taos

Check it out!

http://www.openroadmedia.com/authors/natalie-goldberg.aspx

Book Review: Old Friend from Far Away by Louise Allison

Louise Allison

Book Review: Old Friend from Far Away
In Natalie Goldberg’s Old Friend from Far Away, the author suggests several exercises to get the creative juices flowing, to go deeper and question yourself, relentlessly. When I first saw that this text book was a collection of exercises, I groaned to myself. How I hated a specific exercise. I always thought these were trick questions with a right or wrong way to do the exercise. I usually would fall under the wrong category. In fact, I usually skip that part. But there was no escaping this assignment. I was here voluntarily after all. I was here to learn this craft of writing so that I could better tell my stories.
I’d have to face the agony of the task.
“Exactly how do you feel about apples?” the first exercise asks. I am to write with flowing dialogue everything I have ever known or thought regarding apples.
My professor, in an effort of encouragement said to the class, ”Just start writing. Write I hate apples and see what comes up.”
As I begin with the simplest of statements my mind begins to relax and unravel. The more I continue the babble or rather the stream of consciousness, the less involved my mind become, the less it sounds like babbling. It shifts somehow to a more sensible flow of thoughts that become more and more cohesive . I think the trick is to keep the mind out of the process as much as possible.
Suddenly I find myself engrossed in the writing. I believe this is the beginning of the creative process or “zone” that Ms. Goldberg is attempting to point in the direction of. Now, I am recalling all kinds of memories and associations revolving around apples!
Eureka! Maybe I have been wrong. Perhaps these exercises in process are not as harrowing after all. Maybe they are simply warms ups! Could it be this fear I have held on to all my life was just simply that? A thought, a product of my mind!
Maybe that bumper sticker that says “Never Believe What You Think?”  has something to it after all.

Booksigning at Collected Works for Love & Death: Selected Poems

Natalie Goldberg gave us an introduction at Collected Works Bookstore. It was particularly moving because we’ve all known each other for so many years. She talked about “continuing”–how it isn’t easy to do that as a poet.She really set the tone for the evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Renee Gregorio reading her poem “Circling Orgasmic”–an early poem which she’d never performed aloud before.

Natlaie Goldberg on the “core motor” of Literature

recently had dinner with miriam. the bull’s ring where no one else would ever come with me. we shared a steak and it was good. always when i leave her and really when i’m with her too there is this feeling there is something we are not getting to or something i forgot to tell her that is so important. what can be more important than two old friends spending around five hours together. (we met in 1984) after dinner we walked around the plaza which was empty and debated whether i should have an ice cream cone at hagen daz, the energy center of santa fe, in my opinion. at the last moment i said i’ll pass, come to the post office with me.(i’m eating droste chocolate now as i write this) the moon was hazy and i told her it was a good moon for a haiku and she made up one on the spot which i can’t remember. but what i do remember was the two important things we did seem to talk about besides love, still her favorite subject: i said all these years when we look at the people we know no one has really changed much, even if they fulfilled their dreams, had children, married, divorced, published books, traveled all over. and the second thing was and i can’t remember it. forgive me. maybe it will come to me later. we were sitting on her brown couch in her living room and the late afternoon sun was slanting in and i asked her to lower the shade. what we said meant a lot to me but now all i remember is the mint tea, her new painting on the yellow wall in the kitchen, the oreo cookies in a jar, the tanazakii book she finally returned, the red and black coat she put on as we left her house. next to her house is an empty lot that her neighbor owns. i want to buy that lot and make a little park out of it. miriam seems indifferent to it. i say to myself, don’t you have enough to do. you don’t need to make a park on the other side of town from where you live. but always if something is not pretty, i want to make it beautiful. can you imagine how i suffer?

i remembered during late night zazen what the second thing was that was so important to me with my evening with miriam: she was trying to get across what last week was like. she was at the blackboard explaining a french form of poetry i’d never heard of before and suddenly an announcement “it’s an emergency. it’s freezing out and the gas has gone out in parts of the state and we are conserving energy. all schools closed right now. leave the building.”

then i turned to her. they should have let you continue with your lesson. what form is that?i never heard of it. and she explained it to me. and i said, “miriam, isn’t literature the most important thing in a society? ” and i was dead serious. “i mean, i didn’t choose something peripheral. what is more important.” how could we live without shakespeare, hemingway, mccullers, moby dick(which i still haven’t read but it’s presence is important). ok, water, food, clothes, heat, have their place. but i drive around sometimes thinking, while i listen to the news, they have it all wrong. they are too far away from poetry and that is their problem. i am not a fool. i did not choose something stupid and unessential. like the heartbeat, breath, like the core motor that runs us, look deep, you will find words there and sentences, details. what we do is central to the functioning of the world. don’t you agree?
***
And from Miriam: here are the haiku I wrote

how many haiku
must I write…
waiting for you

you say “hazy moon–
look! quick, write a poem…”
it’s gone

Natalie Goldberg Paints Paris…and Minneapolis

Here is “Paris Cats” by Natalie Goldberg. I’ve always loved her paintings–in fact own two. Obviously there are about color, but also, I think, about place. And the details of place–how small things give a feeling.

In “Paris Moon” are the antenna dancing because of the moon or vica versa?

And what place could be more different from Paris than Minneapolis?

Yet I know these are two of Nat’s favorite places.

Video excerpt of Natalie leading a workshop here.

Fun–Fantastic!–New paintings by Natalie Goldberg

Apple Tree

Father’s Shirt

Happy Birthday

Interview With Natalie Goldberg

This is a three question interview with Natalie Goldberg. I wanted to ask her some questions that were outside of the type of thing she usually gets asked.
1. Miriam Sagan: One of my favorite of your books is THE GREAT FAILURE which is about that unAmerican word “failure” as well as your father and the less than
perfect side of zen teacher Katagiri-roshi. I think some of the reception of the book took you by surprise, and perhaps in its own way was an experience of disillusionment not unlike
those which fueled the book. Do you feel ok talking about this? What happened?
Natalie Goldberg: sure i can talk about it. it was a very painful experience to publish that book. i was naive. i didn’t realize how institutional zen had become and that the sangha in mpls didn’t want it out that roshi had committed some sexual indiscretions.  many of the zen teachers up there acquired their authority from being his dharma heir.  but really no one can give you your authority.  also the rationalization was , yes , he did these things but he also gave us such great teachings. that is so true but one doesn’t negate the other.  i wanted to embrace the whole story. who was this great man that i loved so much?  i was willing to go to the mat, to spend two years writing a book to find out.  i never heard from anyone from that sangha again except two or three people who were friends before and remained friends afterward. i don’t think anyone read the book because if they did they’d see how full of love it was. i loved katagiri roshi. i was willing to take him off the pedestal and make him human.  having gone through the hard reception of the book i gained my own authority.  but it wasn’t easy.  also when i named it the great failure i meant it as a buddhist term,  like the great spring which means enlightenment.  what i meant by the great failure was that it was beyond success and failure, or when you completly come to the bottom then failure and success disappear and you are on the ground seeing things as they are. how wonderful!  what i didn’t realize is that america too is terrified by failure and the word immediately upset people.  on book tour i had to defend using the word.  we are always rushing after success and running from failure. we are afraid if we mention it it will contaminate us.  finally, i think it was in boston i said to a hundred people in the audience, ok, who of you hasn’t failed. no one raised their hands. see, i said. it’s part of human life.
Miriam Sagan: I love your book on painting LIVING COLOR. I’ve so enjoyed
looking at painting with you, and happen to love your painting as well.
I’m curious–how did you come to care so much about abstract art? If I
didn’t know, I’d say you were drawn more to the representational. How
do you access it?
Natalie Goldberg: yes mostly i paint representational things like a duck, a church, a piano and make them look like they took lsd.  but it was after katagiri roshi died that i had a need to express things outside of form, to express the formless world.  i’ve painted for 35years.  but it was hard just to come to the page empty of the known world.  i would begin in the middle of a piece of paper and grab a stick of pastel, a crayon, a colored pencil, a paint brush and just begin as though i had no words. how do you say something you feel when you have no words?  i dont’ think i’ve been totally successful but i’ve done some pieces i like.
Miriam Sagan: I think of you as someone who fulfilled her dream of becoming a
successful writer. Is this true? Did you get what you imagined? Is there anything you don’t like about being a writer? If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?
Natalie Goldberg:
i’d be an opera singer or a farmer or the principal of a small public elementary school in texas.  and yes i did achieve what i wanted. i wanted to be a successful writer.  i didn’t know what i was getting myself into. it’s lonely. it feels like i’m still stuck doing term papers in school while the rest of the world grew up and had a career. you can never count on an income. you have to stay true to yourself because if you don’t you write poppycock (whatever that is).  i would like it if people read my current books and didn’t keep referring to a book i wrote in l986 called writing down the bones. i’ve moved on.  if they like my first book why not read others?  i’d like it if i could go to a hot springs naked and no one recognize me. 
www.nataliegoldberg.com
***
This was done in April, 2010. I’m re-blogging it here as part of the Doodling Hearts category.