Writing with the Tern

Writing as or with the Tern is scribbling spontaneously without obstacles. As a lonely child playing on its own at the waterline, sunk in the joy of enacting imaginary scenes. Deeply lost in the spell of creative imagination, switching between rhythms, turning from slow to high speed, accelerating, holding, Suspending, turning, diving, yes plunging, into the abyss of invisible meaning.

If such could be my spontaneous writing, starting from zero, hovering then over a rippling surface of meaning, One Moment of Suspense!...Ah, and let me fall as a flintstone, as an arrow pointing down through the mirroring surface. And then, a catch - or not: let us call that a failure to hit or a miss of true meaning - all a matter of being luckily in touch with unknowable reality. But without that breath taking split second of holding on in that magical moment of suspense, no opening of the sacred horn of Kairos’ Gifts will follow.

Such formless form of writing is never my own achievement, my proper proof of Mastership. It is a gift of the free play of all my functions, resourcing its energies in Emptiness (Tao, whatever…). Call it a spontaneous song of soul and body, opening themselves to the infinite richness of the world, grounding firmly in the fundamental relation of compassionate love. Or call it a prayer.

Writing as flexible as beach grass bowing under the seawinds, writing as jaunty as the swallow dive of the Tern, such style in creative writing could be named: Ecriture Cursive or Italic Writing. You can find that style marker in Zen Poetry and Calligraphy. It also marks the light&swift brush stroke in painting, starting with sovereign freedom from the fundamental relation between the unknowable ground of being and the depth of my soul.

Starting from the non-place - a-topos - of that empty in-between, energizing the rhythms of my poietic writing or painting is like the holding-in-suspense of the Tern’s Swallow Dive. Such is the magical momentum of poietic creation in Italic Writing and of Sketching with paint. Don’t think about it, just look to the pointing of this Tern and do it! It’s the practice of pointing from Absolute Zero. Cheerio!