“The soul virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.” — Norman Mailer

I became aware the other day that my Natalie Goldberg book was hiding or possibly missing. I was devastated. The book had been with me for years and now it was gone. I remember lying in bed with it when I first purchased the book from Pam Urick’s coffeehouse bookstore.

Reading it that first night in bed convinced me that I needed to write something now and I did. Natalie mentions in the book how the writers in Minnesota “wrote complete sentences, were descriptive, detailed, and grounded.” She points out that in Minnesota almost everyone could write like that.

Because they did write well, they were ‘unwilling to leave what they knew, to break into new frontiers and crack open their world into the unknown.’ Natalie describes a Tuesday-night class “the writing was so basically solid and good, I couldn’t shake them. I wanted them to foam at the mouth, become blithering idiots, and wander into unknown fields.”

We were in Rochester last Sunday and I made a trip to the Barnes and Noble downtown bookstore.

There I found a small hard copy of “Writing Down the Bones” at a higher cost that had more current information from Natalie. Last night I discovered my original aged copy.

Natalie talks about first thoughts and ten-minute writings: 1. Keep your hand moving; 2. Don’t cross out; 3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar; 4. Lose control; 5. Don’t think. Don’t get logical; 6. Go for the jugular.

This is something a group of us have done over ‘the years’ usually at the library and at Vilt’s Valley and Urick’s apartment that is no more.

While exploring the Barnes and Noble bookstore I found another book by Thich Nhat Hanh, a current book titled “You Are Here” that was translated in 2009. The first chapter is titled “Happiness and Peace Are Possible.”­ This will be fun too when I get around to it. Sponya bohem.