Caminante, se hace camino al andar

Insights from a Spanish poem and the world's sacred texts on trusting ourselves on the creative journey

This is the Next: the Newsletter, the weekly newsletter that mixes personal essays and social critique, and, where I, inspired by literature, psychology, and all my spiritual practices, attempt to make meaning out of what happens: to me, and to us all.

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I'm in the process of brainstorming ideas for my next book.

While I am querying for my memoir, I feel the need to play around: with the idea of another plot, with the possibility of writing a novel, with the dream of diving into the world of fiction, of discovering down which rabbit hole a bunch of characters might lead me. There are days when I grab a pen and paper and start taking notes. Days when I look for sources to do research. Days in which I read a couple of lines from a book I just discovered, and write down a detail: a date, a character, a name.

On other days, what I feel is that I need to let time just pass, as I allow myself to live more and produce less, as I let my inspiration rise like Shakti—the serpent moon goddess. In yoga philosophy, Shakti represents the energy that rises from the foot of Mount Meru, and only at its summit does it find Shiva—the sun god, also a serpent. The Moon Goddess stands for inspiration (or being energy), the Sun God for that which makes inspiration manifest (or doing energy). It’s their union that allows for enlightenment, but it is also their union that transforms ideas into matter.

In my body, I feel my energy move like a snake: it rises as it goes through me, sometimes slow and numb, at other times, fast and hurried, or still, but upward, like a cobra, ready to attack. From the earth to the mind, from the soul, through the mind, to the earth. My energy, my inspiration, can’t be forced.

When I started my first writing project—my memoir—aside from having a general idea that I wanted to “write a memoir,” I had no idea of where the path would lead. I used to live in Norway at the time, and I sat on my large, comfortable couch, in my immaculate minimalistic Nordic apartment, looking past the window at the trees in the forest, as I would try to attract the memories I was trying to recapture. I didn’t know how to write a scene—nor did I know you were supposed to write in scenes—but I felt I needed to write my memories down in small chunks. One day, one memory. Those memories, I wrote sometimes in first person, sometimes in third. I re-read my writing out loud, just to find that the scene didn’t work, that it moved me: to pity, only. I was a bad writer.

But soon, I figured, I could take a book I loved, study a scene, study the way one sentence followed the next. I’d mirror the scene with my own words, matching the author’s verbs with my own, the author’s images with mine.

Soon, I found more resources: several books on memoir writing, articles and courses that offer this or that bit of advice, the Storygrid podcast—which I studied religiously.

At first, in my apartment at the outskirts of Oslo, I had felt like Dante in the Dark Forest of the Divine Comedy’s first canto: as if he had lost “the straight path.”

But today, as I look back and look forward, I almost feel as if it was having no idea of the direction, no milestones to hit, no clear path that saved me. I had no yardstick of comparison, no clear metrics, no definition of success that didn't sound like something like "having written a book that excites and moves me as much as my favorite books, which have opened my eyes to other ways of see the world…" and so I allowed myself to play, to wander off, to explore.

In sacred texts, every story that has to do with a great journey of transformation includes an element of faith.

In Genesis (12), it is written:

¹ The Lord had said to Abram,

“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

Jehovah tells Abram that he has to abandon his certainties (his land, his parents' house, his comfort zone, we would say today) and embark on something new, but as for the direction of that path, there are no instructions at all: nothing more than a vague “go to the land I will show you.”

And as Antonio Machado wrote in his poem "Proverbs and Songs," the path appears as you walk:

Walker, your footprints
are the road and nothing else;
walker, there is no path,
the path is made by walking.

When you walk, you make a path
And when you look back
you see the path that will never 
be stepped on again.

Walker there is no path
but wakes in the sea…

The act of creativity, in other words, isn’t about following the path that someone else has traced. It is not a trip with guarantees, much less with instructions. It is a daily act of faith.

Almost five years have passed since I was that girl in my Nordic apartment with its amazing wooden floor, looking out the window and wondering whether I’d ever be able to write. Lots of time, and a manuscript I am now querying for.

And yet, the uncertainty of now is much like the uncertainty of back then: I don't know where the path is going, and again I wonder, am I on the path or am I getting lost? Does it matter?

But I tell myself that all I can do is wait: waiting for that “land that will be shown to me.”

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I am Abram, waiting for the kind of clarity that can only come about as I move forward, trusting that even though the journey I am on feels dark and full of traps, the path eventually will make itself known.

Because I am the walker, I am not the path.

I am reminded of something I once heard about a certain belief the Japanese hold: that when somebody asks for direction, you should always point them somewhere, even if you have no idea of where it is they are trying to get. The belief goes, wherever you point them, they’ll eventually meet someone on the way that will know the way. Isn’t that beautiful?

May you trust the path.

May we all.

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