HARBOURING CONFLICT

The other day I watched a Leonard Cohen documentary and something he said stuck with me. He said, and I paraphrase, “Writers are conflicted. We turn to writing to work out the conflicts. Nothing really changes. It’s more like a harbour.” I thought of all the years I’ve turned to writing in search of the meaning of conflict and in docking there found the harbour to be the small, still place of return; yet never actually going ashore.

We left Tuscany 3 months ago, although psychically I left months earlier. There was nothing left to stay for because it no longer felt safe. Yet I remember, gratefully, even a touch wistfully, the many afternoons spent writing on the dondolo (An outdoor, canopied swing-divan) looking up once in a while to the Mediterranean garden I planted over the years, and beyond, to the deceptive serenity of the rolling landscape.  There, or inside the house up in the old hay loft, I brought my conflicts to the page. Or if not mine, then those of the characters in whichever novel I was currently writing.

Usually, when one embarks on a new phase in life there is a honeymoon period which allows us to both justify our decision and idealise the future.  That was not the case on moving to London.  Sickness, cancelled events, little disasters, have come one upon another, yet none has dimmed or scarred the feeling being in the right place at the right time. And, as annoying as these random and external conflicts can be, they all pass. It is the inner conflicts which never seem to change.

Last November I burned some 70 journals written over a period of 30 years. Pages full of conflict: desire and desperation, anger and judgement, hope and despair. I burned them because they’d served their purpose and because they wouldn’t make for good reading, and also because so many of the things I had longed for and feared would never be mine have come to pass:  mainly love. Yet here I am, still trying to write my way into the centre of inner conflict in the hope that once there the exit will make itself known.

So, what is inner conflict? It seems to me to be a state of argumentative indecision: I want to; I can’t.  I should; I shouldn’t, and so on. I have never not experienced conflict every time I’ve had a creative impulse. It’s why I drank and drugged; to obliterate inhibition seeded by the inner critic.  If Leonard Cohen is right, that we turn to our creativity because it is a harbour, what exactly does that mean?

To me a harbour is not only a place of safety, but also of rest.  An in between place where one is neither on land or out to sea. In other words, the blissful state of harmonious duality.  By that I mean that when I embark on a piece of writing, or a painting, I become both intensely present and totally disappeared.  I am 100% focussed on the doing to the point that subjective thought/criticism is erased. The metaphysical gift of the creative act (much like making love) is that the borders of 2 conflicting states, i.e. present and disappeared, melt, allowing us to exist for a moment, or minutes, as being(s) without ego.

Of course, being human, it is impossible to maintain this state of equilibrium. The harbour as metaphor, sooner or later requires us to decide whether to push out to sea again in search of the illusory paradise, or come ashore and surrender to the imperfect ground beneath our feet. Unless, of course, we choose to stay tied up and slowly rot!

For now, I’ve come ashore in England, a country which is both my homeland and a nation in conflict. What I am coming to realise is how I’ve become addicted to focussing on external conflicts as a way of avoiding my own. I spent a full hour reading and watching the news before finding the courage to commit to writing this essay and risk creating something that may not cohere into something of value. And, of course, indulging in what ails our world is enough to make one believe that acts of creativity are futile, which in turn creates inner conflict.

Yet turning to creativity, whether one’s own or the work of others, is often the surest way to find safe harbour.  As I switched off the news in preparation for writing, a Stickie popped up on the screen with this poem by Wendell Berry.

I hope each of you find peace today.

With love
Maggie