Odilia Rivera-Santos
“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.”
― Anaïs Nin
Always pull this quote out when you see doubt gather around the mouth of an individual whose support you expected but are not, for some reason, getting. The other, the one outside yourself and not privy to the intense joy of steps taken on your particular journey in your particular manner in life, judges and makes pros and cons lists for having faith in you.
A true writer has to be comfortable with doubt -- self-doubt and that of fellow earthlings. Doubt spurs some to action or lays one bare, vulnerable, alone, staring at full moons and the faces of couples on a first date in search of the illusive seed of wonderment.
Too firm a grasp on the mundane, the quotidian with details devoid of gustatory, tactile, auditory, olfactory sensation leaves you a dull boy or girl. There was a lot of activity around me and people saying my name with requests for my attention, and then, as if by magic, the day became quiet and people dissolved into the background ... their voices muted, my chores demanded my attention, and people's stares helped me acknowledge my existence.
I walked down some unfamiliar streets with my friend's girlfriend's dog and let him guide me as if he were God, past a television studio, a high school, some cafes I hadn't noticed and back to my intuition. My intuition states clearly on page five of its manifesto that I must write as my main source of interconnectedness in the vast physical world made small by spiritual acts, such as being led down different roads by a borrowed dog named Harvey.
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