Month: October 2017

Out there,
many miles away,
something was happening.
The noise from Stalingrad shook my cradle
At the time there was no turtle shield around my senses
Protecting me from vibrations and noises
created by the second world war.

Seventy-five years later,
still no shield.

In answering a question I recieved recently, I write the following letter. I have experienced you as an intelligent human being. Thus I avoid spelling out a solution in straight language. After all, a core thing in writing is ”show not tell”. So here it comes:

Some humans have a rich and sensitive interior. They could not survive without a ”turtle shell” protecting their interior. You can build such a shell by using a lot of bricks made out of ”mental stuff”. Each brick is a thought you construct in order to improve yourself as human. You fasten one thought to other thoughts using ”logic”. The result is that you may become filled with ambition. You feel a need for being more clever, smarter, better doing the things you think is right. Or you might even stretch yourself in doing what you have heard is the right thing to do. Behind building yourself such a shell might be an early event when you though your personal core was attacked or questioned. You may have an experience of feeling hurt or wounded. After many years, I have found that this might be the case for me.

When we write such a shell may turn into a jail. Most certainly we will experience a jail if we want our writing to come from our sensitive core. We may select an action strategy where we separate writing from what our personality needs. We may easily act this way as our surrounding society tells us to think that way. And they do it in big letters. Following this approach, we regard writing as a technology/method or a craftsmanship. It has nothing to do with our personality.

When writing the above lines, I suddenly realised I could as well argue the other way around. What I mean is that until now I have found that I mix writing with an urge for personal development. My texts are self-reflective up to the point of boredom and beyond. I have judged myself as doing the wrong thing following that approach. And I question myself; I thought of myself as an inadequate writer. But starting just now my perspective is changed. Mixing writing and personal development might be the right thing for me to do. It might turn out to be a way to reduce or dissolve my shell. Maybe this way is the only one that is within my reach.

Your friend in writing / Göran Stille

 

One thread through my history
I look back, and two experiences emerge from the background. One is these is a few minutes I encountered with a friend, Catharina, in late 2015. The other is those few minutes with another friend, Bengt, in 2016. I experienced these moments just like that. Immediately, I became curious and asked myself why they happened. But soon, I accepted that they were beyond understanding. At least, they were beyond my level of understanding. In a sense, there is no point in showing or describing these events. Such an act would never carry the values they have given me. I suspect that such an action will even reduce and freeze that space in me that I have established.
Since 1980, I have talked about the value I think that such empty spaces have to humans. That is for 37 years or almost half my life. But, I have not yet been able to change my pattern of action.

Just now
At this moment, October 2017, I believe that my worst enemy is myself. At least my ability to establishing empty spaces in my daily agenda. My overheated urge to be smart, intelligent has been running the show. I have mobilised armed troops in this battle. Old thoughts, attitudes, values and habits are the troops. I even consider them proven in battle.
Everywhere, the troops are now waving with white cloths. No single kind of troops won. I have found and respected an elementary zone of emptiness. This area is even free from ideas on how to maintain or expand it. It is free from teaching others how to get there. In fact, this might be a meaning of ”it is” that I cannot ever express or verbalise in any way.

At a distance
Regard your life as a continuum in both space and time. You have to establish a zone of emptiness somewhere in this continuum. A segment in your everyday agenda where your creativity can play. It is of value to you if you clean it from all of your previous ideas about what you need to do in and with that segment. Your history of ambition, intellect and emotions might well be your worst enemy. Try to align whatever guts you have in giving yourself respect for this empty segment in your living of your life!

I
Monday morning
My morning sleep was broke
The fog is still there
Outside they started to dig into the street
Renovating the waste piping
Their machinery made noise at seven thirty

II
Today we shift the location
for where we live.
Summerhouse to city living
Drove our car fully loaded
from west to east.
Leaving morning dew and a sea like a mirror
for the big city.

I started to think and lost control
What is civilisation?
Where is the best place to live?
Where we are going
or where we were yesterday?

III
Whenever it is crowded and messy to be a human
I fly away using words and thoughts,
always at some distance above the ground.
My conscious abandon me
pinches me from participating
in what is.

IV
She told me to set my goals
on a fair level
not where I thought I ought.
This advice, I have heard before
But kept it at a distant
Did not understand this advice
in my core.

She gave arguments
to support her advice
But I stopped her.
I heard what she said the first time
and was fully occupied
by taking it in emotionally.
I do not need being ambitious
to feel good enough.