Paper and Ink
March 23rd, 2009 § 1 Comment
I realized that there is a mysterious power to writing with ink onto paper, especially when it’s a goal or intended outcome. I found a piece of bright yellow legal paper yesterday onto which I had written the following list of things I wanted in my next home:
Where to Live? : Matrix of Possibilities
I. Important “Must Haves”
- Dog OK
- Off-street parking and garage
- House
- High-speed internet access
- Close to SF
II. Nice to Haves
- View
- Access (not too many stairs)
- Central heat (A/C?)
- Gas kitchen
- Fireplace(s) –> that operate on gas or wood
// end
As I looked down the list, I noted that the house I’m now living in has EVERY SINGLE THING I listed on the paper. Not one thing is missing. And to the list I add the following options I wasn’t even imagining back then:
- pool
- hot tub
- quiet
- natural beauty
So what happened when I took a pen to paper and wrote down what I wanted? I’m not sure how the process works, but I can recall coming up with this list after I had already started looking for places to rent in and around the Bay Area. One of them had too many stairs, another was a gorgeous SoMa loft that had everything I wanted, but no place to put my tools or vehicles. Another had a big fenced yard and garage but a fireplace that didn’t work since the last earthquake. Each place I saw had some problem that kept me spinning in circles on Craigslist and driving my gay-brother crazy as he continued to filter the listings for my ever-changing demands.
At some point I figured out what I wanted and took the time to grab a pen and a legal pad of bright yellow paper. At at that point, something happened. There is an awesome and inexplicable phenomenon of committing a desire to paper. Somehow the magic recipe calls for two ordinary ingredients:
- an ink pen
- a piece of paper
I’m not sure if the paper has to be bright yellow legal paper with faint blue lines or if the pen has to be a medium black ink. If anyone wants to replicate my experiment, that’s what I used. Having an offbeat title for the list also helped to capture my frame of mind. I played with the “matrix of possibilities” concept for weeks and thought I was going to record my idea as a four-quadrant diagram but that didn’t happen. I wrote the title “Where to Live?: Matrix of Possibilities” and after writing it, I was satisfied that I had saved the emotion I was having at that moment. Finding a new place to live was a difficult process and I had many variables that made finding the right home challenging — or so I thought. In fact, my variables were not variable at all — they were constants. They were fixed moments in space and time. What I needed in a home could be described with words (not variables in an equation) and thus, the home that fit my needs (located somewhere in the array of homes available for rent in the Bay Area in my price range in the latter part of 2008) was out there somewhere. I couldn’t find it until I listed what I wanted and was clear about what I could and could not live without (thus, sections I and II). I wound up getting a place that had everything I listed. What if I had listed more?
I was talking to Vivian today and likened this process to something ageless and magical. It was as if the ink was blood and the paper was flesh. I was inking my desires (blood) onto paper (flesh) and once that happened, magic was in the making. I am learning more about the process of clearly deciding and expressing my desires onto paper and feeling sure of the result as I read the words on the page. I didn’t hang this paper on my bathroom mirror either. I left it on the counter of my kitchen along with other bound pieces of paper and documents. I wrote it once (clearly) and read it back (right after) and imagined what having these things would feel like if I had them.
From the dusty, cold, and dilapidated warehouse where I used to live to my new home seems so amazing and it happened so fast…
Once I decided.
Once I wrote it down.
Once I felt it already happening.
P.S.: I’ve watched and listened to “The Secret” and been a student of Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Napoleon Hill, and now Roy H Williams so I know what I’ve “discovered” isn’t a new idea. It’s old. And it works. Grab a pen and paper and write down what you want and imagine how you’d feel if you had it already. Bridge the gap of time (a perception) with energetic imagination (quantum physics, anyone?) and see what happens.
hey there, first off i like the nice clean look of you site here as well as the already varied content. I just wanted to say that I wholeheartedly agree with what you have to say here. using a pen and paper have served me very well over the years –especially when i was trying to envision long and complicated performances like my Black Parties. The structure of a party was the first thing i tried to create in my head only then could i add songs to it…and this required a lot of time just looking at lists of songs i had written down, changing the order and trying to imagine what would happen on the dancefloor with every transition.
i enjoyed reading and will subscribe. .