Attention and Devotion. Devotion and Adventure

I worry that I’m losing the game. I took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. I’m not sure how to get back.

I had a conversation with a writer friend recently. We were walking over to a class at the California College for the Arts where I was going to speak to writing students, and I got a flash of a memory of when I was a young writer in San Francisco. I remembered how I’d spend my days traipsing through the Mission, reading and writing in cafes, watching people, dreaming, aspiring, wondering.

I told my friend how much I missed that era of being a writer, how I preferred it to my life as a writer now, even though I’m supposedly more accomplished. The world held so much wonder then. I could go into a bookstore and be transformed into a different person by the time I left. Each day pulsed with a possible adventure, the joy of a new thought.

I can still traipse through those same streets, of course, but somehow it’s different. Somehow I don’t have quite the same access. Age? Maybe. But why does age and whatever jadedness it brings on have to be the culprits, I wondered.

Yesterday, I stumbled on a famous line of poetry from Mary Oliver, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Every time I encounter this line, I have to pause and think about what I pay attention to, what I’m devoted to.

Am I devoted to the bustle of my to-do list? Am I devoted to the twisting crimps of a day’s petty emotions? Am I devoted to “making it” as a writer? Or am I devoted to things more whimsical, peculiar, sensuous, subversive, lustrous, delectable, and divine?

We are what we think about. We are what we put our energy towards.

We tend to give our attention away easily. A screen calls us like a siren, and we’re helplessly in thrall to its songs. A touch of envy turns into an earthquake of envy. A worry grabs us, then kidnaps us.

The act of attention is an act of assertion, though: we claim our life instead of being claimed by it. If we pay attention to our attention, we’ll find an instruction manual on how to focus our gaze. Things that generally go unnoticed suddenly blossom with unexpected life.

The tatters of fog swaying in the wind. A tree’s strange calligraphy against the sky. Drizzle whispering on the windows.

One definition of a story: it’s a series of moments of attention.

When I was younger and traipsing through my life in the Mission, I think my attention was more powerful, more focused, more delightful, more nourishing because I was so entirely driven by shaping myself into a writer. I searched out firsts. I took all sorts of risks (many I shouldn’t have). I only wanted an adventurous life.

I thought of adventure in terms of peak experiences back then, but adventure can take many forms. The best kind of adventure isn’t necessarily about climbing the mountain, but noticing the mountain. You can climb a mountain without noticing it, after all, and you can notice a mountain without climbing it.

Adventure might be best defined as simply being alert to life.

To be more alert, I’ve started collecting leaves and berries and twigs and flowers on my daily walks and making them into Ikebana displays. Ikebana is the centuries-old Japanese art of arranging flowers. The practice roughly translates to “making flowers come alive.”

That’s what adventure is: making life come alive. And we make life come alive by paying attention to it.

“One tree is like another, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether,” wrote Mary Oliver.

There’s always a revelation to be found, a nuance to be traced. An adventure to be lived.

A while back, I wrote an essay about my early days in San Francisco that I miss so much.

Because a quote

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

~ Mary Oliver

Because a podcast

This was a particularly unique conversation. Helen Macdonald, the author of H Is for Hawk, and Sin Blaché, who hadn't published a novel (but had "trained" as a novelist in NaNoWriMo for years), met online, became friends, and teamed up to write the recently released novel Prophet together.

The novel is amazing. Sin attributed the playful spirit she'd learned in NaNoWriMo for helping to make their collaboration work. Their natural chemistry was evident in the conversation. They were such a delight to talk with.

Because it’s time to get ready for NaNoWriMo

Check out NaNoWriMo’s NaNo Prep resources—and sign up to write! Just go to the National Novel Writing Month website—it’s free!

You’ve got nothing to lose and a novel to gain.

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