"WRITING IS KNOWN BY WRITING."

Evidently, that's what the ancient commentator Vyasa said.

Or that's what Ravi Ravinda said he said.

Well, he said

Yoga is known by yoga.

I'm taking this to mean if you want to know what writing is, you've got to write.

So much for my penchant for buying writing books, perusing them excitedly, then neatly placing them around my work area.

Introduction. (First)

Running out the door to therapy this morning (well, afternoon really), I realized I had done none of the things that currently constitute my "practice" or attempts at it. Rather than grab a New Yorker or a YA novel, I grabbed The Wisdom of Patanjali's Sutras. I get positively anxious when I don't have something to read on the subway. In desperation, I might try making anagrams with Dr. Zizmor's advertisement. On the subway, I am the proverbial captive audience. I might even be able to learn calculus if I were to study it on the subway. (Once I conqueror writing and yoga.)

Even the introduction was rich in ideas and inspiration. I'll throw this out now, although I don't intend to focus on it. I just don't know that I agree with this.

"Throughout history, there has been only one serious concern of all spiritual searchers: How can our whole being be in harmony with universal Truth? This is not only a question for the mind; it is not a question of figuring out the Truth, but it is the central question of our life: How can we become a suitable instrument for the Truth to be expressed?"

1) Define "we".

2) I don't see that quest for Truth or even being a "suitable instrument" in my day-to-day life.

But I am going to set aside this comment for now. My current quest is to see if I can write. And do yoga. And how one will influence and/or inspire the other. Maybe they will become one. Maybe they are already one.

"The mind, the instrument of perception, interferes less and less as it becomes freer and freer of subjectivity."

That sounds like great writing advice to me. As a beginning writer, I often find myself not listening to or focussed on what I am writing, but thinking (or fantasizing) about what I am going to do with it, or what people will say about it. Very much as Ravindra observes

"... The mind has a natural tendency to be anywhere but here and to be concerned with any other time but now."

In the course of writing this, I went to put away the dinner dishes and leftovers. (I am now considering cleaning the cat boxes as another means of procrastination.)

While I was vaguely pondering this post, of course, not focussed on doing the dishes or anything, these lyrics from a great Garcia/Hunter song, Black Peter, came to me.

"See here how everything
lead up to this day
and it's just like
any other day
that's ever been
Sun goin up
and then the
sun it goin down"

You can click on the underline to be taken to the Grateful Dead lyrics site and see the references to Sisyphus, etc.

But there is also the idea that given that every day is the same day ...

(now flashing on The Fugs' song Nothing,

"Monday nothing,

Tuesday nothing,

Wednesday nothing.

Nothing."

(...Which I believe is adapted from a Hebrew song or something.)Sorry not enough energy to research those for accuracy right now.)

... so you might as well get on with it.