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Wild Mind

An Interview With Natalie Goldberg

Wild mind is the huge place where we really live. We are always listening to what I call “monkey mind,” which is constantly saying, “I can’t write, I don’t know how, I don’t want to.” But there’s this huge mind that’s available to all of us, where all things — animals, rocks, us — are interconnected and interpenetrated. This is what we have to connect with in order to write.

The Seduction Of Consciousness

We don’t have a “drug” problem. We have never had a “drug” problem. We will not have a “virtual reality” problem. Past, present, and future, we have a consciousness problem — today compounded by the fact that it happens to be occurring in a Neanderthal political landscape.

Spilled Milk

My grandmother has told me the story so often, I vividly recall the milk house although I have never been there. It is built of gray stone gathered from the fields and held together with chalky mortar. A patch of moss by the door looks like a velvet pincushion. Inside: a cream separator, the churn, gleaming tin pails, and butter paddles, their wood frayed from years of use. I see them through her eyes as she recites them like the rosary, like a charm.

The Doctor

On Friday evening, December 31, 1982, corresponding to 15 Teveth, 5743, Hyman Lebele Andower rose from his evening meal, sat on the couch to read his evening paper, and felt a sharp, twisting pain in his genitals.

Father

Renee

This was it — the cool, very weird thing I had been hoping for. I was about to go to a strip joint with a Pentecostal Christian mentally ill recovering alcoholic young lady. These are the moments I live for.

The Lourdes Of Arizona

In Search Of The Soul Of Psychotherapy

“The mother is already distant from Sarah. Sarah is trying to distance herself from her father, and suicide is the only method she’s discovered so far to do that. But the father told her that if she killed herself, he would kill himself, so she’s even denied a successful death. This family is a violin, with only one string, and it’s a funeral march.”

Fresh Paint

Father never sold a single painting. He gave them away. He walked the streets in the early morning haze, avoiding crowds and lighted avenues, and handed his work to a face he admired. He never gave his work to anyone he knew, only strangers.

Getting Out Of Bed

A single bed, a jail cell, a green sofa

Bobo And The Devil

Bobo looked up. The devil took the opportunity to slip out of his grasp and go rest by the wall. He had a huge black cloak, and purple sneakers, and came across as very urbane, but he bit in close situations. Bobo had learned to avoid his teeth.