“It is important that awake people be awake.” William Stafford I opened the windows around my writing space this morning after I took William Stafford’s words to heart. I set my timer and make sure the font is big enough to read without my glasses on, as I get older it is more challenging to read from my keyboard to the laptop’s smallish monitor. I notice the sky is a dusky tangerine color along the horizon’s edge, as if the day wasn’t sure it really wanted to break. Perhaps I ought to open my front door and step on my lawn, bringing William Stafford’s words with me. Perhaps Stafford was lecturing himself, too, when he wrote of sleeping resources in language and describes a poet’s wished for accomplishments. I wonder what it would be like to talk to such a poet. I remember how I was too afraid to approach Juan Felipe Herrerra as others pressed in, close, to speak with him. I held back, slightly embarrassed to be fan-girling him. It has been a year for being like a teen-girl chasing after boy-band-poets who, when seen on the street might be accountants or restaurant reviewers or computer technicians. Poets, I suppose, hold secrets in their incognito appearances. The tangerine is turning into the palest grey pink as the sky agrees it must do what it must do. My task, as a poet-mommy-creative-citizen is to wake up to this day. To say yes to what appears and negotiate that yes with grace. Recognize everyone else is doing her or his or their best and embrace each emotion as it reaches into my eyelids. Don’t be afraid, be excited. Make Samuel a Nutella sandwich to nibble before he walks to school. Fully enjoy the rest of the first cup of coffee. Water the front lawn. Live. Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon! To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.
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NOTE: To watch the livestream of #5for5BrainDump, it is included beneath my writing. You may write along with me, almost live. Let me know what surfaces in your "in between space"
When I think about the “in between space” – just yesterday I learned another term for it – I think of Rumi’s field. Do you know Rumi? If you don’t, hearing about his field means nothing. He is an incredible poet and below my brain dump I’ll list a couple of my favorite quotes from him, but this is the one that has perpetually holds space in my heart: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing And right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” Note to You (and me) My writing got interrupted by a strange assortment of people walking up to my neighbor’s house. This is typical when we are trying to write or take action on our goals or think more deeply than we are accustomed to – our focus is lifted from our heart’s task to something else that will keep us comfortably ensconced in the status quo. I am going to get up from my seat, stretch, refill my water and come back, refreshed, and start again. My in between space looks like a sunflower ringed field in Northern Arizona. The soil is exposed, red and rich, and the altitude is high. I feel absolutely infinite and absolutely insignificant. It occurs to me this is where freedom is conceived, birthed and lived. I wonder if I am strong enough to create this field within me, everywhere I go because I feel like this is the answer. I feel like I have been seeking too long and hard to know that this field lives in the center of my chest. When I lie down in this field and open up to the nothingness of a without words space, tears come to my eyes. I don’t expect them to come and barely notice until they are falling down my the sides of my face, into my ears. The grass is soft and slightly wet but it doesn’t bother me. I am unbotherable and the salt on my face doesn’t get wiped away, the water keeps flowing and me, lying in the grass, a halo of sunflowers all around like a divine circle, knows ultimate contentment. Instead of writing a poem I am within the poem. Instead of explaining how to do something, just lie here with me. Maybe the soles of our feet will touch, maybe our fingertips will touch, maybe we’ll be separated by miles and miles and miles and the thing is, our souls will touch. They know each other and can find each other in our supposedly separate fields. We’re here. Together. Separately. Divinely Earthly. So be it.
Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!
To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing. After I wrote for today’s brain dump I read a bit of Louise Bogan’s memoir. She and I have far too much in common.
Then I retyped the brain dump and added a few salient notes. I encourage you to do the same. When you type up handwritten notes, add nuggets in small slices. Keep the voice of stream of consciousness, free flow writing strong – and if clarity isn’t there, a few phrases will make it easier for your future readers. So – my “re-start” is in the form of a Louise Bogan quote. “I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around.” Louise Bogan Right here, right now I wsee Alice, Strunk and White flowers and my aware alert writing or my attempt at aware and alert writing. I think about connecting the three, tuning into the word flow of intuition, intentionally. The infinite messages underneath the words and I smell the cedarwood oils I have flowing throughout the room to further spur my writing. I see vapors, but that would make four and I try so valiantly to stick to the instructions even when they are my own. Alice is my companion. Technically she is Emma’s cat AND she is my pal. She reminds me life happens. Things get knocked off tables. Sometimes I throw up and make messes, metaphorically and actually. Sometimes (more often than I would admit to people I am trying to impress) I leave the messes where they are, I don’t clear them out right away. I just shrug and turn. It isn’t a good practice like this writing is, like confession is and I turn to the Strunk and White Flowers which remind me, revision and red-marks are good. The teacher who writes in red all over your paper is meaning to help, not harm. We make it harm when our ego is larger than the possibilities we present, when we are so unpracticed at breaking and glueing ourselves back together because of an unwillingness to step into scary crevices, cracks and grab onto the teeth of a forklift without safety goggles or gloves or even…. Any of it. We grab on and let it lift us and sometimes we fall into an ugly glob on the ground and police come along and do that outline of our splat and a blood splatter expert comes along and says her smart stuff about how our splat erupted and what it says. That’s Alice throwing up and Strunk and White blood splattering and my once final draft, now in revision and repurposing paradise notes. Makes me wonder how much stuff I can create from this once-finished work. I turn to Strunk-and-White who remind me editing is sweet, not scary, as is revision and repurposing. “The possibilities are infinite” I am reminded. Is that Alice purring in her sleep? 3/10/2017 0 Comments #Moreofthatplease - And How I'm Overcoming Mistaken Beliefs on Asking for What I want (and You May,too!)
My heart desires… #moreofthatplease
It was a magical day back… not sure when… Emilia typed #moreofthatplease into the screen on periscope and I knew, exactly, this was a way to state our core heart desires without stumbling into the lack mode of whiny wanting. I don’t necessarily see wanting as whiny and I get that some do and would if I were to say “I want I want I want” like when I was a little girl and my many pen pals and I were writing letters to each other sharing about what we wanted for Christmas. I said I wanted a Malibu Francie doll. I wrote the same letter to my Grandmother and she saw it as me boldly asking her for a Malibu Francie doll. She ended up buying it – after talking about my ten-year-old indiscretion with who knows how many people. Now, the middle-aged me is laughing at both thoughts: my grandmother’s distaste for my writing about what I wanted and my ten-year-old-me thinking “Uh oh, writing about what I want publicly is a bad thing and to be avoided at all costs because it upsets people and for goodness sakes, one must never upset people!” The tragedy would fall if I continue to believe what my Grandmother said. She never even said it to me. She said it to others who repeated what they thought she said back to me. She actually bought me and sent me the doll, fulfilling the wish – so in a way, I gave us both a gift. She got to be my Fairy Grandmother (not a typo) and I got to receive an actual gift from her instead of the usual $5 check. The #moreofthatplease I am looking at is further healing, deepening clarity and the realization that things are not as they seem. Especially when it is the adult me peering back into the childhood years. I realize I have forgotten to set my timer and I have no idea how long I have written. Ahhh, I will get more later my loves. I will write more and share #moreofthatplease later today. It’s your turn, too, dearies. Your heart desires #moreofthatplease – share it with the world, unabashedly. Invite it all into your life. Write for five minutes with the prompt -- My heart desires #moreofthatplease and watch what flows. Repeat as necessarily. Enjoy the process - I certainly enjoyed my rambles. And watch the video to write alongside, it is timed as well. Go and flow and write.
This is the writing from yesterday’s prompt – my second “go around”. This prompt is definitely worthy of several writes. I may revisit on another day, later this week, as well.
When I forget to be afraid, I can say what I really think: I am not concerned with the ramifications of every phrase my mind curates before I the words are spoken. I hear my mother intone to my sister “Think before you speak,” a phrase I didn’t need to hear because it was tattooed across my forearms and my memory before I reached puberty. It is more than possible this “Think before you speak,” managed to be fodder for me electing not to speak, write, finish for concern with what evil may lurk if I somehow say, scribe or complete in a way that might be offensive. And I wonder why during dark times of my depression why I thought my very being was offensive? Back then each inhale, every exhale felt like an insult to the universe, painful to execute so many times a day. It felt easiest then to lie in bed on my side, shallow breaths, gazing loosely out my back window praying no one would notice my existence. I notice today when I get to the end of that turn of phrase, my writing stops completely. There is still a twinge of “how did I get there?” much like the twinge of “oh, yes, I am right here… still.” Not in a depressive sense, but in a chronic fear sense wrapped around worries about my almost-all-grown up children. This, now, has more ramifications and less of a chance for me to be protective toward them. I am not a helicopter parent like some, but I do always seem to want to be there to soften any difficult punches or prods or stumbles. (I also realize I don’t want to write about these difficult things. My pauses get more deep and the urge to turn away widens.) When I forget to be afraid, I poke around my emotions more, with a curiosity rather than an investigator with an agenda. When I forget to be afraid, I remember to investigate any lingering truth in the emotionally charged assertions. When I forget to be afraid, I take a deep breath and look intensely, openly at the facts in front of me without pre-colored/stained lenses. I say “oh, interesting!” more regularly than “oh, no,” when I forget to be afraid.
Today I choose mindfulness. I choose to create space. I choose tenacity.
I choose to take action that serves me – and selectively weed out what doesn’t fit me. Today I choose myself and I choose Samuel. I choose to maintain and love our home, I choose to see him with contentment and grace. I choose to create time to make art, to make love, to make words flow on the page with (I’m not buying it yet but I will) glee. Today I choose to enjoy the process, whatever comes. I choose to drink water – and laugh too loud at times. Today I choose to make chocolate sugar cookies for North High – because I am grateful to have the opportunity to serve, to connect, to make others feel treasured because that makes ME feel treasured. Today I choose to see my successes, receive compliments and know that what is in front of me is symbolic and not an unalterable. I may always cover up certain aspects of life with gesso and paint over it. Just makes the new stuff more interesting. Don’t erase, love it into becoming something else. The foundation, the mulch that makes the soil more rich. All these “less than” feeling experiences are mulch and I remember how much my feet love standing in soil. Reminds me there is freshly mown grass on my front lawn, waiting for my bare feet which could REALLY use a pedicure. I want to feel that grass, and sniff it. So today, as soon as my five minutes are up, I choose to have more than slightly cold feet in the freshly mown grass. All is well. I know, yes I know, all will be well, even what feels crappy right now. Tomorrow, as Scarlet tells us, is another day. Today I choose this one. It is good practice to walk around in the mud. My toes like it. The chimes of my timer are ringing. They sound like a country church if I squint my hearing. I am blessed.
I started the brain dump writing about how I wanted to feel. I discovered before I knew what I truly wanted to feel, I knew I wanted my feelings acknowledged, so here is what was born:
I want to feel like… My feelings are valid. My feelings are important. My feelings are justified… actually more like I want to feel like I don’t need to explain why I feel the way I feel constantly, I don’t need to translate why I’m sad or angry or frustrated. I just want to be able to feel and express what I feel freely. My feelings are not to be ridiculed. I remember being told, “Don’t cry.” (I hate that) I can cry. Crying is healing. Crying is a gift. Crying is a soft pillow and a firm mattress, both – together, after a long day. Crying is permission to let go. Crying is a bridge… like an on-ramp to your highway of healing or crying is an onramp to Your Wildest, Uniquely You Vision. Crying is an important part of getting further along in the process. It isn’t a bad thing, there is no reason to say “I’m sorry” when you’re reaching for your vision, is there? There is no reason to apologize when we’re crying, when we’re stomping our foot, when we put our pens down and say, “I need to let my pen rest. I.just.need.to.let.my.pen.rest.” The empowering friend is the one who will sit beside you while your pen rests, gently smiling, trusting you will pick it up and continuing to work your process. (I let my pen rest before picking it up and writing more.) Negative self-talk is addicting. Negative self-talk writing is addicting. Negative self-talk writing creates blocks and barriers to the healing we are committed to creating, which is why when we do #5for5BrainDump we circle up through gratitude at the end. Just as you remember the negative experiences which created your negative self-talk monologue, finish your writing, always, with a positive spin. There are reasons for this. There are methods for the madness here. I can see you driving down your highway to healing, the highway to your unique vision. Your hair is freely flying and a wide smile is on your face. How does that feel? What’s next on your road to freedom? The words that fell onto the keyboard (I did two brain dumps from this prompt, both using my computer) surprised me. Here is the first:
I never told my children to stop crying, never shuuu-shhh-shhh!ed them, never called them babies when their emotions welled up and over onto their faces. How could I, when one of the bravest moments I experienced in the last few years was me crying alongside my son and daughter, the three of us recognizing our solidarity – alone from everyone else. What isn’t brave about that? Our tears joined us in courage, not weakness. When have you experienced bravery and courage? Quitting a comfy job? Takes courage. Standing up for someone no one else is standing with? Is brave. Saying what no one else will say, even though they want to say it? The Personification of Courage. This is barely a start of the courageous acts we see daily. I remember visiting a Mom hours after her baby was stillborn. I didn’t want to visit her. I can still hear my heels clicking as I walked down the hospital hallway, still feel the hug from her relieved husband that someone else was there to hold them up, perhaps, to reassure them the journey might not easy and it was, and would be, survivable. Brave. Saying No, courageous. Saying Yes, Mighty! Saying nothing, intensely bold. Saying too much, and apologizing? A warrior angel lives in your bloodstream. Writing what you believe, in order to fully understand why you believe it? An act of impeccable bravery. And it’s all you need, my beloved long ago Elizabeth Cady Stanton reminds us. ““The best protection any woman can have... is courage.” (The second 5 minute piece of writing rose from inspiration from a quote from Anne Frank:) “I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear; my courage is reborn.” Anne Frank People think I’m brave, so they tell me, but I don’t feel brave at all. I don’t think I could’ve faced what Anne Frank did. Or maybe I could have? I don’t know, I can’t compare myself and I know that so why? My face wants to live in my hands a moment. Perhaps I need to hold myself in a space of compassion for a moment. Wrap myself in a quilt of ok-ness. Tuck myself into warmth and softness and tender reassurance. The first moment of inkling Samuel had autism brought me to the keyboard, to explore, to research, to write. After that first moment of incredulity, the vocalizing my thoughts to my mother, the disbelief when she said she thought that was what it was, that she and Sue had talked and neither had passed their thoughts along to me, words were there. Words wrapped me up in their blanket of care. They wouldn’t theorize and leave me out of it, not my words. Not MY words. My words. The most secure, friendly, no nonsense companion I knew. Like Anne Frank, I imagine, and countless others who sat with our notebooks and our pencils, scratching and scribbling and writing haphazard prayers and pleas and anything just to feel less alone. Anything to feel less alone and less of a freak among a sea of normality. Writing was then and is now my sanctuary. A friend quoted me last week, surprised me she remembered something I said that I didn’t remember. “You haven’t written in four years?” I said to my writerly friend, “How have you survived?” I didn’t realize it may have been like slapping her with a palm of ice. My shoulders hunched in her confession. I felt as if I had lobbed a betrayal in my friends wound. Here it is, though, I don’t know that I would have survived what I knew she was surviving without words. I also know the pain of not writing in a certain genre: poetry, my long time cuddling companion, has been absent from my arms lately. Yesterday, I wrote a micropoem. Today I wrote another micropoem. After writing poetry in only fits and starts lately, these short poem-lettes feel like an orgy of words. Allowing the words to be born: brave. Thank you, Anne. Join the PeriWriters Writing Group on Facebook for daily prompts and community. We host a Monday - Friday Writing Community Broadcast from 11 am to Noon PST. To participate on my writing live broadcasts, follow me on Periscope @JulieJordanScott or watch live or on replay here: http://periscope.tv/juliejordanscott www.facebook.com/groups/PeriWriters/ Here is what I wrote in 5 Minutes:
One of my biggest strengths is simultaneously one of my greatest weaknesses: can you relate to this? I am extremely prolific. I write a lot. And then I forget what I wrote and it gets buried into the next thing I write and forget about and the pile of writing and forgetting eventually becomes overwhelming and I just bury my head in the “I can’t get anything done, I’m so ineffective” story at the helm of all those dear, meaningful microstories waiting for me to deliver them. “If only I were brave enough,” I lecture me. “The world is waiting for my words!” I shout from my feet to my belly. “You had cancer, idiot, get a hold of yourself and do something,” which usually paralyzes me most effectively. Please tell me I am not alone in this. Please don’t pity me. Please don’t edit my voice and make it wrong because I don’t write in the same style as you. I lift my hands from the keyboard. This story isn’t easy to write. I somehow have believed it has to be easy in order to be worth something, the flow has to be constant, never ending in order for it to have value. I rub my hands together, micromovements, I hear in my head, “This is the church, this is the steeple” and the now almost fifty-five-year-old me says, “Open the door and love all the people.” That’s what I do with my story. That’s what I will do with this story and others. Love other people. Love other people into the wonder of their stories. Love other people into ending their blocks in writing, their roadblocks of belief, their micro-or-mini-terrors at the smallest wobbles or the earthquakes or the car accidents or whatever version of “Turn and Run” they have. Look at that. The applause-timer sings. Just like that. Wow. I’m onto something. Join the PeriWriters Writing Group on Facebook for daily prompts and community. We host a Monday - Friday Writing Community Broadcast from 11 am to Noon PST. To participate on my writing live broadcasts, follow me on Periscope @JulieJordanScott or watch live or on replay here: http://periscope.tv/juliejordanscott www.facebook.com/groups/PeriWriters/ |
Julie Jordan Scottis the founder and creator of 5For5BrainDump. She has been inspiring artistic rebirth since 1999. Archives
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