When I was a child I loved going to the stationery store (it was literally called The Stationery Store) in my small hometown.
It was a classic Main Street business where one could buy school supplies (Trapper Keeper for me, please), office supplies, greeting cards, writing implements, and gifts.
I would always make a beeline for the glass cases where the fancy pens were kept and gaze upon them with great longing. Over and over again I would push the button that would rotate the shelves so that no pen went unexamined.
This memory came to mind after I recently shared a quote in an Instagram story about how even James Hillman sometimes struggled with fear of writer’s block:
I am locked into struggles of this book. So many demons assail and prevent. Fear of every kind. Fear of boringness; fear of it not being good; fear of it being too dry; fear of not finding my voice (and I haven’t found it) fear of writer’s block, and so on… I get so paralyzed, just sitting in the chair and staring.”When there is a rhythm, then the words follow the rhythm…But so far, it’s just a willful ego pushing out the stuff like constipation (at the typewriter) not when I sit with the yellow pads and just write the ideas (p. 181, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, Volume III, Soul in the World).
I had message exchanges with a few people about this quote because of the fun image of constipation at the typewriter, speculation as to why he preferred yellow pads, but moreover the wistfulness many of us have about writing by hand.
With Venus (beauty), Mars (action), and Mercury (communication) all combust (i.e. overpowered by the Sun) in Capricorn right now, writing might feel a little constipated these days.
James Hillman also wrote about the “hidden leader,” someone who “tilts the discussion throughout in a distinct direction. At any meeting it is the timing of an intervention that turns the tide. Not only does the hidden leader hide his hand; he also anticipates what’s in the wind, has a sense for the invisible, the hidden” (pg. 184, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, Volume III, Soul in the World).
Right now, with Venus, Mars, and Mercury all combust in Capricorn–burned up by the Sun’s light and invisible–maybe they’re operating as hidden leaders.
We can’t see them in the sky, can’t track their usual influence in the obvious ways. But they’re still there, working alchemically, “operating with natural forces in such a way as to release the innate potentials locked and waiting for articulation” (p. 184).
Perhaps this is why Hillman needed the yellow pad. The typewriter was too forceful, too directive–keys striking, commanding the page. The yellow pad allowed something else: discretion rather than directon.
Writing with a pen engages the sensation function (especially when I use my favorite Pilot Retro Pop pen!). It slows our minds down enough to sense what wants to emerge. The pen becomes a hidden leader, tilting the words in a distinct direction through timing and touch rather than force.
Maybe when planets are combust, when our usual modes of expression feel blocked or invisible, we need to work like hidden leaders ourselves–not pushing harder at the keyboard, but picking up the yellow pad. Sensing what’s trying to emerge. Trusting that the rhythm will come when we stop directing and starting listening.
Perhaps that little girl at the stationery store knew something: the right tool, held at the right moment, can release what’s been locked and waiting.
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