The Book of Alchemy: A guide to the art of journalling

“This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours,” he writes. Our memories are made of not only our direct experiences, but also the experiences of others. They arise and exist in conversation, an ever-evolving dialogue.

A day spent writing is de facto better than a day spent avoiding writing.

Set your timer for five minutes and do nothing. Stare at the desk or the wall or the dust motes in a slice of sunlight. Then write about the thoughts, the questions, and the answers that came up in that moment of slowness, of stillness.

THIS IS YOUR PROMPT: Pick five items from the list below. popcorn * lettuce * iceberg * cotton candy * puffs * sugar cubes * dandelions * buttercups * pallbearer * clothesline * National Geographic * fire ants * watermelon * sunflowers * ticket stub * campfire * satellite * fish scales * baby powder * quilt * brooch * barrette * tin can * bingo * F

My modus operandi became this: to trust and find ways to delight in the mystery of how things unfold, even if it’s not what you had planned, even if it’s far from ideal, and to believe that facing the thing you fear brings you exactly what you need. In my journal I wrote: It is possible to alter the course of my becoming.

As Anaïs Nin wrote, “When we go deeply into the personal, we go beyond the personal. We achieve something that is collective.”

In the case of my memoir, Stray, I would take an index card, and on the front, I’d write a place—“Laurel Canyon,” for example. Then, on the back, I’d write any details that came to mind: landslides, traffic, Lily’s coffee cart, squirrels stealing pomelos, care and threat, Fleetwood Mac, loneliness, losing the daylight. Another was “Owens Lake”—dust

Fifty years on, I see a journal very differently. Every morning I walk to my desk and step into what feels like a cabin in the woods. Sometimes words come out of me that I can share with others; often memories or intuitions arise that may be useful only to me. But the process of sitting alone in a quiet space and hearing what lies on the far side o

one of my favorites was shared with me by the poet Marie Howe: “Whenever I can’t do the practice, I’ll get a composition book, and I’ll write three pages a day, but I write it with my nondominant hand, so it’s a big scrawl,” she said. “Or I’ll write, ‘I don’t want to write about …’” and then just write into that—so there’s a release in it.”