January 26: Coming Through the Rye, Natalie Goldberg, "Writing Down the Bones," New Cartoon

It wasn't as cold as it was the day before, but the sun still wasn't out, and it wasn't too nice for walking.  But there was one nice thing.  This family that you could tell just came out of some church were walking right in front of me--a father, a mother, and a little kid about six years old.  They looked sort of poor.  The father had on one of those pearl-gray hats that poor guys wear a lot when they want to look sharp.  He and his wife were just walking along, talking, not paying any attention to their kid.  The kid was swell.  He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb.  He was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole time he kept singing and humming.  I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing.  He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye."  He had a pretty little voice, too.  He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell.  The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the curb and singing, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye."  It made me feel better.  It made me feel not so depressed any more.

Obviously, the above paragraph is one of the key moments in Catcher in the Rye.  Holden is still wandering the streets of New York, alone and depressed, when he happens upon this family.  The father and mother are oblivious to their child, too absorbed in their adult conversation and lives.  The child, left to his own devices, has created a game for himself, walking along and singing.  Holden, I think, identifies with the boy.  There's a lightness in this passage, a happiness, that isn't present in the rest of the novel.  For a few moments, watching this child, Holden forgets his problems.  He forgets Allie and Jane.  He forgets his own distant parents.  He forgets being kicked out of school.  He just follows the boy through the rye.


We all need such moments in our lives.  Moments when all the worries and frustrations of the world fall away.  They are difficult to come by, especially for adults.  The key is finding the boy in the rye to follow.  For me, that boy is writing.  When I'm writing, and it's going well, I feel like that little boy in the above passage, strolling along the street, humming in the cold December sunlight.

I'm not saying writing is always like that for me.  Sometimes, the act of writing can be an exercise in frustration.  I can sit, staring at an empty journal page or computer screen, unable to string two words together.  At those moments, I'm a little more like the other side of Holden, depressed, frustrated, angry.

Writer/poet Natalie Goldberg wrote a book for those kinds of writing moments.  Writing Down the Bones, published in 1986, contains tiny chapters of writing advice from Goldberg.  With titles like "Beginners Mind, Pen, and Paper" and "The Power of Detail" and "Spontaneous Writing Booths," these chapters are designed for fledgling and experienced writers alike.  I first encountered Bones in the late 1980s, and I have returned to it again and again over the years when I need to be reminded why I decided to become a writer.

One of my favorite passages from the book comes from a chapter titled "Man Eats Car."  In it, Goldberg discusses the creation and use of metaphor.  As a poet, I sometimes get wound up in ideas for poems.  I decide I want to write a specific poem about an important subject, like gun violence or poverty or spiritual loneliness.  Then I get stuck, looking for an image or metaphor to hang this huge idea on.  Here's what Goldberg says:

But don't worry about metaphors.  Don't think, "I have to write metaphors to sound literary."  First of all, don't be literary.  Metaphors cannot be forced.  If all of you does not believe that the elephant and the ant are one at the moment you write it, it will sound false.  If all of you does believe it, there are some who might consider you crazy; but it's better to be crazy than false.  But how do you make your mind believe it and write metaphor?

Don't "make" your mind do anything.  Simply step out of the way and record your thoughts as they roll through you.  Writing practice softens the heart and mind, helps to keep us flexible so that rigid distinctions between apples and milk, tigers and celery, disappear.  We can step through moons right into bears.  You will take leaps naturally if you follow your thoughts, because the mind spontaneously takes great leaps.  You know.  Have you ever been able to just stay with one thought for very long.  Another one arises.

I find something very freeing in those paragraphs.  Goldberg gives me permission to wander through the rye in any direction, enjoying whatever I encounter, whether it's a homeless woman looking for a cup of coffee or a baby rabbit in a snowstorm.  She tells you to trust yourself.  The ideas will come.


That's what Writing Down the Bones is all about.  Trusting yourself.  Trusting that, if you sit down with a pen and paper, if you just write, you will find the image or metaphor or idea you need.  You will find your catcher in the rye.

For Saint Marty, Natalie Goldberg is his catcher in the rye today.

Confessions of Saint Marty