The Leap Into Luxury

Spontaneous Writing Booths Do not feel left out when you school, Zen Centre,church has a carnival, bazaar, rummage sale. Simply set up a spontaneous writing booth. All you need is a pile of blank paper, some fast writing pens, a table, a chair, and a sign saying “Writing on Demand”. They choose the topic and you write. 

For three years for the Summer Festival and Bazaar at the Minnesota Zen Centre. I timidly began charging fifty cents a poem, but by the next year it was up to a dollar. There was a waiting line throughout the day. I let my customers give me any topic. Some were “the sky” “Minnesota”, “emptiness”, “love”. Kids wanted poems on purple, their shoes, bellies. My rule was that I filled one side of a piece of standard paper, did not cross out, nor did I stop to reread it. I also didn’t worry about putting what I said in poetic stanzas. I filled a page like I did in my notebook. It was another form of writing practice. 

Write, don’t reread it, let it go into the world. There were several times when I felt I really hit home in the writing but I just handed the sheet of paper over to the customer across the table and went on. 

-The brilliant Natalie Goldberg from Writing Down the Bones (which, by the way, is a book I’ve read and reread more times than I can tell you. )

I did this today. At a rich, snooty luxury café. (it took a lot of guts). I chose that one because it would be a leap for me. I chose it because it was the richest, snootiest, fanciest café in the city and I wanted desperately to have coffee there and write in a place that smells of money. Just.

 

 

So I went in. Took a notebook and my LAMY bold. Walked in to find a nice young man at the counter who looked like he owned the place. And he did. So I asked him. And he agreed (if he hadn’t, I hope I would still have had the nerve to enjoy a coffee there). So I took up a table near the chocolate fountain, ordered my coffee and tried not to fidget. Chocolate fountain was a lucky thing for me (some Feng Shui connection with the good chi from the chocolate molecules, I bet)- people just kept coming!

 

 

And so I sipped coffee and wrote about a range wider than I could ever have done in a single sitting. Among other things, I wrote for a little boy on Kindergarden Love (I wrote about sharing your crayons), a suited industrialist came to get one on troublesome employees (I wrote on perspective), a beautiful, radiant young lady gave me the word “flutter” and I wrote about butterfly kisses. I also got to write on fuss free journals, bodhichitta (I would never have thought of that one!), the Tao of Art, Handmade Love (I think they say my card), ink (this one was great. INK is everything to a writer! To this writer, anyway. ), this moment (that moment was a L.E.A.P.)… and about 27 more. And each of them offered me coffee and conversation. And most even offered a hug.

 

 

I am changed and deepened.