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Inspirations

Writing Yourself

THE JOURNEY HOME

Roselle Angwin explores the unconscious and turns your life into literature.

Natalie Goldberg has an exercise in one of her books that I’ve found very fruitful, and often surprising: write about home without ever mentioning any house you’ve lived in.

By nature, I’m restless. As I’ve aged I’ve started to allow my journeys to be metaphorical as often as literal, but still I want to go everywhere, live everywhere, experience everything (well, maybe not everything). I guess as a writer that’s also a useful characteristic – and it’s certainly better for the environment if it’s metaphorical, the journeying.

Given that restlessness, it surprises me that I have started to think so much about the nature of ‘home.’

Simplistically speaking, there are places in which we feel at home, even if we don’t live there; and people with whom we feel at home; and ideas that feel like home, too. Ultimately, of course, what we hope to find is a way of feeling truly at home in this world, in our own skin, with who we are, with – spiritually speaking – our essential nature. If we push this far enough, then ‘home’ means being at peace in every moment, in any place.

With poet and author Ken Steven, I lead a writing retreat on the Isle of Iona each year. We use silence quite a lot as well as the silence of the island’s many voices. Within these silences we also talk about the notion of pilgrimage – what it might mean in the 21st Century, what it might offer, how to ‘do’ it.

The notion of ‘home’ and the idea of ‘pilgrimage’ are intimately linked. Certain places hold the ability to soothe, to uplift, to reorder a state of confusion and to bring us back to ourselves. As writers rather than tourists, if we choose to bring mindfulness to our travelling, it can be both enlightening and inspiring. Our journey to such destinations – and Iona is traditionally one of these – is to a place where we might bring ourselves home, gather together the scattered fragments of ourselves and find a resting place out of the whirlwind of our habitual accelerated lives. Albert Camus said: ‘We travel for years without much idea of what we are seeking. We wander in the tumult, entangled in desires and fears. Then suddenly we arrive at one of those two or three places that are waiting for us patiently in the world. We arrive there and the heart is at last at peace – we discover that we have arrived.’

If you would like to explore this as a practice, then I invite you, every morning for the next month, to spend a few minutes writing, without too much forethought, about ‘home’ – without, of course, mentioning any house you’ve ever lived in. If you would like to email any short pieces in to me via my website (www.fire-in-the-head.co.uk), I would be happy to choose excerpts from the best of them to showcase on the site.

I’d like to leave you, this time, with these words from the inspiring poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, who died earlier this year: ‘No journey is too long when you are coming home.’

ROSELLE ANGWIN is a poet, author and director of the Fire in the Head creative writing programme, which includes a novel writing correspondence course, with a poetry one to follow. In 2009 she’ll be offering a new intensive course, part writing, part spiritual programme, rooted in her Zen practice, poetry and story. Her novel Imago will be published in November.

REFERENCES:

The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau (Conari Press, 1998).

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From Issue 39 ◊ Oct/Nov/Dec 2008

Caution:

The exercises in this feature can access memories and feelings that may be challenging or painful. Before you start, do ensure you have supportive friends or family members to talk to if need be.