You Say Tomato, I Say Apple

Wanna create with me? Join me for tomorrow’s community Zoom—10am-11:15 am PST, Sunday 1/21/24!

If it sounds fun to gather, come even if you don’t consider yourself a writer. Scribble, draw, knit, paint, whatever. We’ll create. We’ll share. We’ll eat tomatoes like apples if we want to.

Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82573204423?pwd=X36gZlannezEzUCveDKOUJZtGgsRIA.1

1. In a foreword to the thirtieth edition of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way) recalls Natalie inviting her to swim in the Rio Grande, assuring her the spot where they would get into the water would be “safe and placid.” Once there, Natalie went in, and Julia eyed the current, which was “strong and swift,” warily. At last stepping in hesitantly, she wobbled and spluttered. As she watched her friend follow her own guidance—”just relax”—it occurred to her, This is how Natalie approaches teaching writing.

2. Another time, Natalie urged Julia to take a bite from a succulent tomato grown in her garden as if it were an apple. As Natalie took a juicy bite, Julia thought again of her friends’s approach to the teaching of writing.

3. Goldberg herself writes about the joy of teaching third graders in the preface to that edition. She quickly realized she could go deep with the young people she describes as open, frank, and untainted. She even shared new, raw material of her own. She read from “a lengthy lament of all the people I had known, loved, and lost,” noting she hadn’t yet found a title. A boy she calls Raphael raised his hand to suggest “The World Come Home to Me.” “‘Where did you get that?’ I must have fallen backward,” she writes. “He held up his palms and shook his head, “Just thought it might work.”

So, as I free write tomorrow, I’ll be considering three things:

• Jumping into the river of my mind and relaxing into wherever it flows

• Taking a bite out of something familiar in a whole new way

• Trusting myself (and my readers) to be as open and frank and wise as a nine-year-old

OK, I’ll have a fourth consideration:

• Panpsychism. In an entertaining essay on whether the universe cares,

  Michael Edward
  notes panpsychism makes a case for consciousness being present in everything. Because where do the quarks, subatomic particles, and empty space that comprise everything end and you begin? As someone who talks to many of the things in my world and speculates shoes may up and go on solo adventures, I am delighted by this idea.

Photo by Immo Wegmann, Unsplash.

This first part of the prompt, should you prefer to do it on your own, is from Goldberg:

List (or draw or paint) objects that are your friend—a coffee mug that fits your hand perfectly, the sweater that still smells like cinnamon, the chipped teakettle with the best song. I’d set a 12-minute timer.

And here’s round two, should you care for another go.

Pick one or three of those objects and build:

• Write the object(s) into your current project.

• Write a scene featuring it/them.

• Braid the three, maybe a paragraph about how each came to you.

• Write a speculative piece. What if you lost it? Never had it?

• Write from the perspective of the object. Does it see you as friend too? Where would it go if it could?

Resources

• Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones

• Michael Edward’s “‘The Universe’, Dude…”

• Tom Robbins’s Skinny Legs and All, whose characters include a bean can, a dirty sock,a spoon, a painted stick, and a conch shell. Plus, it opens on a couple driving cross-country in an airstream.

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Why gather to create? You may have read my story about being at an outpost a handful of miles from the US/Mexico border when, suddenly, I heard my name. I’d had weeks of solitude in a wildlife refuge and was feeling marvelously feral. Sharing a sunset, delicious food prepared by a friend, a fire (in which we burned a log my tiny hatchet got buried in), and conversation till dawn was gorgeous too. I think writing’s the same. We’re alone creating, getting lost in ourselves. That’s wonderful, almost otherworldly sometimes. Then others add layers. We read work we love, we join writing circles or critique groups, we create together. And our creative process finds a whole new layer.

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