I've often enjoyed the brevity that Natalie Goldman exercises in the book "Writing Down the Bones." This shouldn't be taken the wrong way. What I mean to express is that her chapters are short and, most often, to the point. This is a quality I find admirable. There is nothing there that doesn't need to be there. Never is this more true than in the chapter entitled "One Plus One Equals a Mercedes-Benz."
Registering at less than a page, this chapter deals with the idea of melting into one's surroundings and opening up oneself to any and all prospects. The author implores the reader to "turn off your logical brain that says 1 + 1 = 2. Open up your mind to the possibility that 1 + 1 can equal 48, a Mercedes-Benz, an apple pie, a blue horse." As in previous chapters, she encourages us not to tell our stories with facts, but with details and figurative language. She asks us to allow that which we observe to consume us in a sense ("burn all of yourself with it"), to consider how it feels to describe oneself not as an outside force acting upon an object, but as the object itself. To become the thing about which you're writing. She states that we have only a short time to experience such "ecstasy" before our egos will send us crashing back to Earth again, leaving only the writing itself with "the great vision." The purpose being that we return - again and again - to these writings to remind ourselves of the nature of the human condition and the necessity for compassion and kindness in the world we share.
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