When writer Natalie Goldberg was diagnosed with cancer, she decided to write about her life and how she lived instead of dwelling on her illness. The result? A book called The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zigzag Life. Goldberg, who will be doing a reading of this work at St. John’s College (1160 Camino Cruz Blanca) on Tuesday, April 12, at 7 pm, spoke with SFR about finding her Zen in writing and the impetus behind producing this work.
SFR: What was the
inspiration behind The Great Spring?
Natalie Goldberg: I
wanted to tell stories about my life. ... I'm also a painter, and I saw each
story as a canvas where I wanted to fill it with as much detail as I possibly
could and make as clear a painting as I could.
Are you from New Mexico
originally?
I came to New Mexico in 1970 to go the Graduate Institute at
St. John's.
There seems to be an
emphasis on finding some sort of spiritual peace or a spiritual center in New
Mexico. Did that inform some of your writing?
Absolutely. I don't know if you've ever heard this saying, but "New Mexico is like the mind of God, empty."
Do your two passions interact with one another?
Writing is my practice; it's my real Zen practice. Painting is
my darling pleasure. But when I paint, in the silence of paint, I'm often
working out things unconsciously that I'm writing about. And also, painting has
made me very aware of the visual world, and what is writing, finally, but a
visual art? In that you have to make the reader see what you're talking about.
What would you say is
your favorite part of The Great Spring,
or something that you're particularly proud of in the book?
I think I'm just proud that, I think of them [the stories] as
girls, that each girl stands up on her own and has a fresh thing to say.
Is there anything you
would like readers to know about your work or your experience writing the book?
I put together The Great
Spring while I had cancer in 2014. I didn't really want to write about
cancer; what I wanted to write about was my life, in case I didn't make it out
the other end. I would have said, "I did these things; this is how I lived."
Santa Fe Reporter