Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America Essay

Natalie Goldbergs coarse Quiet Highway Waking Up in AmericaI dont think comp unmatchablent subroutine is a creature, or a lady, like some people say. Its a tide of circumstances sweeping us along. But Im not a Fatalist, because I believe you cease swim against it, and sometimes grasp the hands of the clock face and steal a some precious minutes. If you dont youre just cartwheeled along. Before you discern it, the magic opportunity is lost, and for the rest of your life it lingers on in that part of your mind which dreams the very best dreamstaunting and tantalizing you with what might come been. (from the film Flirting, 1990) Every moment is enormous, and it is all we have (Goldberg xii). Natalie Goldberg offers her readers the opportunity to accept the delicate nature of life and the importance of slowing d take ones life. In her autobiography, Long Quiet Highway Waking Up in America, she invites readers to journey along her path to awakening in an childbed as an author to pass on her breath (22). By capturing her meaning and holding it close to ones heart, the reader grasps the essence of Goldbergs message. It becomes clear that awakening can take on many forms and can be reached by different roads, but it is all centered on one goal to go within oneself and find inner peaceableness and understanding. Through her exploration of America, teaching, spirituality, impermanence, and writing, and through her writing style and language, Goldberg sends her readers along their own long, quiet highway. The main point one might gather from Goldbergs discussion of America is that Americans contend to slow down all aspects of their lives, need to take the small components of life and make them significant. Goldberg sees an impatience in Ame... ...er to her dear as simply Natalie. In fact, it seems strange to refer to her as however the author of a narrativeshe has most assuredly transmitted her universe through her writing, most definit ely made a connection. There atomic number 18 few times when she outwardly addresses the reader, so when she does, she calls attention to the importance of the event she is describing. Understand, she implores, causing the reader to sense the urgency and the great impact of what she is describing. When she describes Rinpoche as fluid energy (87), she wants readers to know this was really how she experienced him. Hers was a critical discovery, one of experiencing people. Natalie reaches readers. She cannot be disconnected from her work because hers is the breath we capture. Works Cited Goldberg, Natalie. Long Quiet Highway Waking Up in America. New York tiny Books, 1993.