The Gateless Gate

Local author Natalie Goldberg talks about Zen and mortality in her new book

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."

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