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This Is What Metaphor Is. It Is Not Saying That An Ant Is An Elephant. Perhaps; Both Are Alive. No. Metaphor Is Saying The Ant Is An Elephant. Now, Logically Speaking, I Know There Is A Difference. If You Put Elephants And Ants Before Me, I Believe That Every Time I Will Correctly Identify The Elephant And The Ant. So Metaphor Must Come From A Very Different Place Than That Of The Logical, Intelligent Mind. It Comes From A Place That Is Very Courageous, Willing To Step Out Of Our Preconceived Ways Of Seeing Things And Open So Large That It Can See The Oneness In An Ant And In An Elephant.

-Natalie Goldberg

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This Is What Metaphor

Natalie Goldberg

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This Is What Metaphor Is. It Is Not Saying That An Ant Is An Elephant. Perhaps; Both Are Alive. No. Metaphor Is Saying The Ant Is An Elephant. Now, Logically Speaking, I Know There Is A Difference. If You Put Elephants And Ants Before Me, I Believe That Every Time I Will Correctly Identify The Elephant And The Ant. So Metaphor Must Come From A Very Different Place Than That Of The Logical, Intelligent Mind. It Comes From A Place That Is Very Courageous, Willing To Step Out Of Our Preconceived Ways Of Seeing Things And Open So Large That It Can See The Oneness In An Ant And In An Elephant.

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Falling In Love

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When You Bring The Darkness To The Table, It Doesn't Rule You Or Hurt Other People, But When We Keep It Secret, It's Dangerous.

Kill The Idea Of The Lone, Suffering Artist. Don't Make It Any Harder On Yourself.

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Play Around. Dive Into Absurdity And Write. Take Chances. You Will Succeed If You Are Fearless Of Failure.

I Wonder If I Don't Give Too Much Of Myself To Writing: I Am Always Half Where I Am; The Other Half Is Feeding The Furnace, Kick-starting The Heat Of Creativity. I Am Making Love With Someone But At The Same Time I'm Noticing How This Graceful Hand Across My Belly Might Just Fit In With The Memory Of Lilacs In Albuquerque In 1974.

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When You Are Present, The World Is Truly Alive.

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To Stay Close And Intimate With Experience Is To Stay Close To The Mind; The Nitty Gritty Mind Of The Way Things Really Are.

I Have Students That I Tell, "if Your Book Doesn't Sell Or You Can't Publish It, Write Another Book. Quit Sitting Around." The Publishing World Is A Business, But It's Not Any Big Deal. An Editor Is Not Your Guru. Your Agent Is Not Your Guru.

Nobody Cares Much Whether You Write Or Not. You Just Have To Do It

It Used To Be With Chocolate. I Would Put Chocolate In My Studio And Say, "you Know, Nat, There's This Chocolate You Can Have If You Get Over There." And Usually If I Got Over There, I Would Start Writing. Sometimes I Need Get Out Of The House And Go To A Café And Write. Sometimes I'll Write With Other Friends To Get Myself Going. And Sometimes I Just Say "ok, Nat, Enough. Go One Hour. Keep Your Hand Going." I'll Do Whatever It Takes.

And We Can't Avoid An Inch Of Our Own Experience; If We Do It Causes A Blur, A Bleep, A Puffy Unreality. Our Job Is To Wake Up To Everything, Because If We Slow Down Enough, We See That We Are Everything.

In The End, You Have To Just Sit Down, Shut Up, And Write.

The Problem Is We Think We Exist.

So Even Though I Couldn't Bear Writing About Cancer, I Faced It Every Day.

This Is The Practice School Of Writing. Like Running, The More You Do It, The Better You Get At It.

Can We Walk That Thin Line Between Constant Change And Continuation? And In The Middle Of This Flux, Feel Gratitude But Not Hold On? Gratitude Greases The Joints To Let Us Let Go, And At The Same Time To Stop And Realize We Received Something. Gratitude Is The Most Developed And Mature Of Human Emotions.

I Honor English Majors. It's A Dumb Thing To Major In. It Leads Nowhere. It's Good To Be Dumb, It Allows Us To Love Something For No Reason. That's The Best Kind Of Love.

If You Are Not Afraid Of The Voices Inside You, You Will Not Fear The Critics Outside You.

Great Lovers Realize That They Are What They Are In Love With.

First Thoughts Have Tremendous Energy. The Internal Censor Usually Squelches Them, So We Live In The Realm Of Second And Third Thoughts, Thoughts On Thought, Twice And Three Times Removed From The Direct Connection Of The First Fresh Flash.

Talk When You Talk, Walk When You Walk, And Die When You Die.

After You Have Finished A Piece Of Work, The Work Is Then None Of Your Business. Go On And Do Something Else.

None Of Your Business

Shut Up And Write. Don't Talk About Writing, Just Physically Do It.

Ultimately, Writing Is About Trusting Your Own Mind. It Is An Act Of Discovery.

Over And Over, We Have To Go Back To The Beginning. We Should Not Be Ashamed Of This. It Is Good. It's Like Drinking Water.

When We Write We Begin To Taste The Texture Of Our Own Mind

Our Job As Writers Is To Listen, To Come Home To The Four Corners Of The Earth.

Know That You Will Eventually Have To Leave Everything Behind; The Writing Will Demand It Of You.

This Is The Practice School Of Writing. Like Running, The More You Do It, The Better You Get At It. Some Days You Don't Want To Run And You Resist Every Step Of The Three Miles, But You Do It Anyway. You Practice Whether You Want To Or Not. You Don't Wait Around For Inspiration And A Deep Desire To Run ... That's How Writing Is Too ... One Of The Main Aims In Writing Practice Is To Learn To Trust Your Own Mind And Body; To Grow Patient And Nonaggressive.

You Don't Need To Go To A Therapist, You Don't Need To Do All Kinds Of Things. If You Want To Write, You Physically Have To Do It.

I Think Book Publishing Is Fun, But I Also Know I've Been Very Lucky.

Trust In What You Love, Continue To Do It, And It Will Take You Where You Need To Go.

There's An Old Adage In Writing: 'don't Tell, But Show.' Writing Is Not Psychology. We Do Not Talk 'about' Feelings. Instead The Writer Feels And Through Her Words Awakens Those Feelings In The Reader. The Writer Takes The Reader's Hand And Guides Him Through The Valley Of Sorrow And Joy Without Ever Having To Mention Those Words.

That Daydreaming Seemed Important At The Time, But When I Asked My Teacher Katagiri Roshi About It, He Said, "oh, It's Just Laziness. Get To Work." But As For Discipline, I Don't Even Use That Word. I Think More About Passion Or Love. What I've Really Learned Is The Way The Mind Moves, And How The Mind Works. Rather Than Discipline, I Know How To Seduce My Mind.

It Is Very Important To Go Home If You Want Your Work To Be Whole. You Don't Have To Move In With Your Parents Again And Collect A Weekly Allowance, But You Must Claim Where You Come From And Look Deep Into It. Come To Honor And Embrace It, Or At The Least, Accept It.

To Encounter A Fine Book And Have Time To Read It Is A Wonderful Thing.

When You Write, Don't Say, "i'm Going To Write A Poem." That Attitude Will Freeze You Right Away. Sit Down With The Least Expectation Of Yourself; Say, "i Am Free To Write The Worst Junk In The World."

I Write Because I Am Alone And Move Through The World Alone. No One Will Know What Has Passed Through Me... I Write Because There Are Stories That People Have Forgotten To Tell, Because I Am A Woman Trying To Stand Up In My Life... I Write Out Of Hurt And How To Make Hurt Okay; How To Make Myself Strong And Come Home, And It May Be The Only Real Home I'll Ever Have.

Finally, If You Want To Write, You Have To Just Shut Up, Pick Up A Pen, And Do It. I'm Sorry There Are No True Excuses. This Is Our Life. Step Forward. Maybe It's Only For Ten Minutes. That's Okay. To Write Feels Better Than All The Excuses.

Use Loneliness. Its Ache Creates Urgency To Reconnect With The World. Take That Aching And Use It To Propel You Deeper Into Your Need For Expression - To Speak, To Say Who You Are.

Actually, When I Look At My Old Notebooks, I Think I Have Been A Bit Self-indulgent And Have Given Myself Too Much Time To Meander In My Discursive Thoughts. I Could Have Cut Through Sooner. Yet It Is Good To Know About Our Terrible Selves, Not Laud Or Criticize Them, Just Acknowledge Them. Then, Out Of This Knowledge, We Are Better Equipped To Make A Choice For Beauty, Kind Consideration And Clear Truth. We Make This Choice With Our Feet Firmly On The Ground. We Are Not Running Wildly After Beauty With Fear At Our Backs.

I Am Free To Write The Worst Junk In The World.

When You Write What You Know, You Stay In Control. One Of The First Things I Encourage My Writing Students To Do Is To Lose Control - Say What They Want To Say, Break Structure.

Creativity Is No Big Deal.

The Muscles Of Writing Are Not So Visible, But They Are Just As Powerful: Determination, Attention, Curiosity, A Passionate Heart.

Even An Ice Cream Parlor - A Definite Advantage - Does Not Alleviate The Sorrow I Feel For A Town Lacking A Bookstore.

We Have To Look At Our Own Inertia, Insecurities, Self-hate, Fear That, In Truth, We Have Nothing Valuable To Say. When Your Writing Blooms Out Of The Back Of This Garbage Compost, It Is Very Stable. You Are Not Running From Anything. You Can Have A Sense Of Artistic Security. If You Are Not Afraid Of The Voices Inside You, You Will Not Fear The Critics Outside You.

Women Need Space And Silence. We Too Quickly Give Away Our Energy. There's Something About Holding That Richness.

In The Past Few Years I've Assigned Books To Be Read Before A Student Attends One Of My Weeklong Seminars. I Have Been Astonished By How Few People -- People Who Supposedly Want To Write -- Read Books, And If They Read Them, How Little They Examine Them.

I Remember A Friend Many Years Ago Who Had Taped A Sign To His Refrigerator: There's A Dream Dreaming Us. If You Try To Think About What That Means It Makes Your Mind Silly, But That Silliness Is Good.

As Writers We Live Life Twice, Like A Cow That Eats Its Food Once And Then Regurgitates It To Chew And Digest It Again. We Have A Second Chance At Biting Into Our Experience And Examining It. ...this Is Our Life And It's Not Going To Last Forever. There Isn't Time To Talk About Someday Writing That Short Story Or Poem Or Novel. Slow Down Now, Touch What Is Around You, And Out Of Care And Compassion For Each Moment And Detail, Put Pen To Paper And Begin To Write.

If I Didn't Have That, Fear And Projections Over What Was Coming Next Could Have Taken Over. But It Was Tough. Don't Think I Was An Angel. It Was Hell.

There Is No Security, No Assurance That Because We Wrote Something Good Two Months Ago, We Will Do It Again. Actually, Every Time We Begin, We Wonder How We Ever Did It Before.

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