Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, old stories from Taos

In 1992 I spent a week in Taos at the Mable Dodge Lujan house in a Natalie Goldberg writing workshop. We used her book " Writing Down the Bones" Freeing the Writer Within", we were sixty eclectic people from all over the U.S. I loved this workshop so much I went back that fall for her "Wild Mind" Living the Writer's Life.

To this day "Writing Down the Bones" is the best book ever written on writing, it truly frees the writer within and is used in many University writers’ classes.

Yesterday while wondering how to spend the day, trying to make a choice between cleaning out my office and doing nothing? I am a great fan of doing nothing, Buddha tells us "doing nothing is doing something?" Who am I to argue with Buddha?

I decided to read old stories I wrote in Taos; one of them was "Coming into the Light". It was written when our topic was “what is in our baggage”, meaning the emotional baggage we carry. In this writing session I remembered being three years old and refusing to say "Heil Hitler" to the Kindergarten teacher. In Germany Kindergarten is like the nursery school in the U.S. I remember the day, don't remember what I wore, but remember that my arm would not rise up, perhaps I got out of the wrong side of the bed. I don't think it was a conscious decision.

 The teacher grabbed me by the neck and hauled me down to the root cellar of this old building, during the war years it was the village hall where the Buergermeister resided or made his decisions, today it is a private residence again. She told me "the black man will get you", it was a threat used by many parents to make the children mind. It did not mean a black person would get you, just some evil undefined, we had never seen a black human being. She left me in the dark, I don't know for how long. The farmer who owned the cellar found me and carried me into the light.

I was impressed that I remembered the story and only through Natalie's writing method did it come up out of my subconscious. Natalie and my group mates thought it was a great story. To me it was just a memory, not a good one, but after that whenever I saw a child who was approximately three years of age I cringed. That was I, refusing to say "Heil Hitler". I was a baby and this damn Nazi bitch locked me in a cellar for not raising my arm and clicking my heels.

I sent the story to my oldest daughter via email and didn't hear a thing; finally I asked if she got the story, she said she did. "What did you think of it?” I asked. Her answer was "it's not very exciting". To say I was offended is putting it mildly and I wondered if she ever looked at a three-year-old child and remembered it was the age her mother was locked in a dark cellar for refusing to say "Heil Hitler"? She is older now and has a one year old granddaughter and I will remind her of this story when the child is three years old. Have I forgiven her? Yes! Have I forgotten it? No!

So much for old stories and whether to burn what I wrote in the past or keep it for those that follow me, will they be interested? I am still undecided.