Archives for March 2018

When Words are Left Behind: Revisiting Georgia O’Keeffe

March 19, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Perhaps it is my theme reveal for the A to Z Challenge that has me thinking of Literary Grannies and Creative Makers who are trailblazing women, I don’t know exactly but for whatever reason, Georgia O’Keeffe sprang into mind today and I spontaneously posted an image and a quote of hers on Instagram. A quote about the ferocity of fear and the equally tenacious quality of creative life force.

To see my Instagram Post and read the quote (and you ought to follow me while you are over there, the slice-of-life stuff may be interesting to you) visit here.

I had studied Georgia O’Keeffe years ago so I decided to look in my old blog to see if I could find anything relevant.

There, nine years ago, I was with Samuel (then Sam) on a mini-roadtrip-turned-too-long and her presence was quite strong. Here is what I wrote then:

It was the end of Spring break and tech week for “The Winter’s Tale”. The last ten days were rapidly fading in memory. They left behind a tired, soul aching me, sitting at my porch desk as the day faded.

I had no words left.

Instead of conventional language I had three blobs of paint on a paper plate palette, a brush, water and a piece of paper I had torn angrily into four more-or-less equal pieces.

Samuel and I had arrived home to an empty house following a trip to the Los Angeles airport. We were held tightly during eight hour round trip (due to traffic) into a cocoon in the back seat of a small car. He sat peacefully watching a hand-held GPS device while I allowed thoughts to flicker and flow through me and eventually brought me to this speechless frustration-laden perch on
my front porch that commanded me “Paint! Without question.”

“P!A!I!N!T!”

So I did exactly that. I just painted.

I dipped my brush into the blue-ish blob and added a touch of red and the speechless frustration turned into groaning, angry, somewhat muffled choking as I put the odd-colored paint onto the page and became even angrier at what I created.

“This is not the color I wanted,” my soul lamented silently. From my lips came words I didn’t know were there. “I hate you, oh how I hate you. I h a t e you!”

Where was “this” coming from, I wondered, and what was “this” talking about, why was I so angry and what did I hate?

These questions rose up and washed away as I splattered color and water on one square and it leaped onto the other squares, skittering and scattering from the tempestuousness of my brush beating.

I rinsed my brush, dried it and dabbled into a sweet shade of yellow. I made a box, wanting to practice the shapes and lines as called on by one of my book-learning-painting teachers I met with success-failure and kept painting.

My anger met my breath and I mixed my intention with the paper, water and color, making brush shaped rectangles of orangey-red and then yellow-y orange. My square-once-house became a pastoral scene.

I felt peace rising.

I continued. I continued again and again, two more times. I painted what came, painted what I felt. I sat there, painting, painting, painting.

It felt like hours had passed and it felt like no time had passed.

What happened next surprised me.

I reached out to the initial attempt at painting. When I wasn’t looking, the angry, blue-ish blob that overflowed with contempt had become something beautiful.

It had become beauty itself.

Edgar Degas said it like this: “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”

Even if the only person ever impacted by this painting spree at my porch desk is me, it was and is and will continue to be a good thing.

“Good thing” doesn’t begin to express it.

Georgia O’Keeffe reminds me in her words, “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way–things I had no words for.”

This painting episode was different than anything I had ever felt. The “must paint” feeling was overwhelming, stronger than any other creative call I have ever had – perhaps because I needed to listen to the message from the paint.

I needed to be the speaker, the conduit, the artist, the audience, the emcee, the chorus, the straight-man and be none of these because the paint overtook everything. It merged with my emotion: it became anger and frustration. The brush and the paint and the water and the paper were as much a part of me as my skin, my blood, my muscles, my bones.

Tears came and washed everything “just right”.

Tears didn’t wash it clean because clean and dirty aren’t relevant.

Comparison – in the moment – doesn’t matter, it is needless. It no longer carries the markings of meaning because tears came and washed everything into a wordless version of “just right”.

I don’t need language dense words to know the exact word-language definition of “just right” because I am intimate, on a soul level, with the wordless “just right”.

I don’t need language dense words to step into the questions the paint answered so vividly for me, for you, for us.

It is as it is, raw and unedited – unmolded, without words, just right.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She created the process #5for5BrainDump that has birthed books, breakthroughs and many more livestream broadcasts. Participate in this process via livestream – to check the current schedule visit #5for5HQ

She is also 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.

Theme Reveal – #AtoZBlogChallenge – Literary Grannies and You, 2018

March 19, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

7 years ago I spontaneously participated in a blog challenge.

The second year I decided to try a theme and since I had so much fun in my Women in American History class I took at our local college, I decided to go with a women and literary history theme.

The third year I renamed the rather stuffy “Women in Literary History” with “Literary Grannies” and started with a profile of Aphra Behn (so fitting!).

In the fourth year I wrote specifically about Bold Writers from A to Z which focused on a quality of bold writing – A was Audacious, for example.

I started to incorporate writing prompts. My theme for 2014 was BOLD and I’ve always facilitated writing groups with prompts so it is quite fitting I chose that theme. (that was my word theme of the year).

In 2018 I am thrilled to announce I am going to go back to the roots of Literary History: Remembering Literary Grannies 2018 #atozchallenge.

I am amazed to find how much of my life has come to be shaped around literary grannies and some people still don’t know it is a fascination of mine. I think I discovered one of my favorites because I was looking for an “I” writer and found Ina Coolbrith, the

Adelaide Crapsey: Inventor of Cinquain Poetry

first ever poet laureate of California.

When I look back and think, “When was I happiest during these last ten years?” that period oftentimes shows up as a time of deep creativity and happiness. I loved writing and sharing daily.

I was teaching a bit back then, too, and facilitating programs.
It is time to rebirth those moments in a new way.

May you enjoy this time with Literary Grannies: some better known than others and all wildly deserving of our attention.

What would you like to learn about Literary Grannies?

Would you like prompts, quotes, excerpts? I may do a little smattering of different content, but if you specifically say you would like one thing or the other, I would happily craft my posts accordingly.

This is going to be a great year!

Oh, and if you wonder who that is I’m chatting with in the overall image, I am sitting at the grave of poet, memoirist May Sarton. I have visited many literary granny graves since I started this fascination in April 2011. I will share with you as we go.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Stream of Consciousness Sunday: So Be It, Yes, Amen!

March 18, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Stream of Consciousness Sunday used to be a normal part of my Sunday Morning. Various bloggers I knew started them up and off our words ran, five minutes at a time, and was actually a sort of conduit or foreshadowing for #5for5BrainDump. This morning as I prepare to start another week long adventure in #5for5 I decided to clear my head with some freewriting.

Here is what came from it letting my words loose without any forethought or edting. Just writing. No wrongs, simply words on the page, writing.

“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ”
Coco Chanel

I listen to fiddles and classic energetic celtic music.

Emma was frightened by the binaural beats music last night and I didn’t want to frighten her. I am writing in my corner, in my recliner, in a position I haven’t used for months. It feels good.

I sat to write about how to use my time most productively today.

I don’t want to waste it: time that is. Emma comes back and starts to do a contra dance, by herself, and I am glad she is happy, because when she isn’t happy I get plugged in and start feeling miserable, too. I thought of going to church but on this day – oddly enough – I want to stay home.

Katherine is preaching today, or more accurately did preach. She is seeking a position with a church 3,000 miles away from me. I wish I was closer. Her husband is most likely preaching in his church, separate from her and she is comfortable with this. I don’t know that I would be I so value the presence and applause from those closest to me.

(This is a weakness of mine – this chronic hunger for approval and something I have been working on in rewriting my narrative.)

Back to the question.

Time. Best use of. Not beating on walls thinking beating on a wall will make a door appear because it won’t unless it does. Like turning a wardrobe into a forest or a candlestick into a guy named Lumiere who lightens up the darkness.

Best use of time: focus on planning for the week and cleaning up messes still left from last week.

I see a man jog by my house, he is slightly off focus, looking at something in my neighbors yard.

I had two dreams early this morning that are slightly distracting me but not.

My five minutes are up.

Lumiere, lighten my wall banging and ask my dreams to settle in behind my conscious thoughts so I can simultaneously collaborate with them while I get my tasks ticked off my list.

Amen and amen. So be it and yes.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Soften: A Word that Earths (And Opens the Heart to Transformation) #7MagicWords

March 17, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

This word rose from my chest. I was compelled to find a quote because that is often a part of my process – perhaps it is the community builder I am, reaching into collaboration. I knew when the quote I first found was from Mary Oliver and it was about writers – that soften was indeed the word. And then my heart fluttered toward Flagstaff and the Frozen Labyrinth experience I had there several Christmases ago.

Enjoy – My Day 2 flow into the #7MagicWords challenge from Marisa Goudy :

“Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing – soften their roughest edges – to accommodate themselves toward a group response.”

Mary Oliver

What follows is free flow writing for 5 minutes… no corrections, no fixes, no forethought. It isn’t concerned with appearances… isn’t toughened up by the editorial eye. It is soft and getting softer as the insights open. I’m grateful you are here, reading.

= * = * =

I’m not sure if this was meant to be something… I don’t know if my family meant to have me believe. I don’t remember ever hearing this but…

I have believed for my whole life that it is wrong to be weird, that nerds or freaks or anyone “out there” was wrong and above all, I needed to avoid wrong or different.

This is sort of in direct opposition to the family member most revered and treasured (or so it felt) my brother John who had down’s syndrome – and ironically squared, as a child never spoke about his down’s syndrome.

Things would be talked about like institutionalizing him and people would stare when we came into a setting but none of that different-ness that so many others saw as wrong was ever spoken. The first time someone actually spoke to me about having a brother with down’s syndrome was when I was seventeen and a co-worker asked me what it was like having a brother “like that” and on a playground a child asked my daughter, “Why is your uncle such a freak?”

My daughter shrugged and kept playing. I smiled, thinking how great it was that she didn’t get upset.

I talked to her about it – to see how she translated what the other child said.

I am comfortable calling myself eccentric. I don’t like being called a freak, though. Freak connotes cast out. Eccentric softens the freak, even though “Fly your freak flag” is something people say –

I pull my hands from the keyboard and hold my chin and my face in them, trying to make some sense of the curvy direction these words are going, sort of labyrinthean like the image I chose to go with “a word that earths.”

With age, my skin feels more dough-like. Softer.

I do not need to be afraid of softening, being a freak, or getting older.

My writing is strange and wonderful in its Labyrinthean shape. Having a freak for a brother was a huge blessing in my life. He paved the way for me being a mommy to a child with autism and another child who has bi-polar disorder.

The primary difference between John’s different-ness and my children’s is we can see John’s. It was obvious. There wasn’t any hiding of it behind a “I’m just like every other person here” look.

John’s down syndrome softened his proclamation of different-ness. My babies and I look “normal” and surprise! We are not.

Rewriting the Narrative: We are much better than normal as was my brother. Strange, wonderful, freak, unconventional, eccentric, darling dear lovely soft… me.

Note to self: challenge of all challenges is to move this from words on the page into deeply rooted belief. PS We can do this!

I do not need to toughen up, another urge I was offered when I was young. I am choosing, electing, embracing etc my softness, my softening.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative. I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

These thoughts are posted unedited and will occasionally include an extra session or two to get to the depth the person feels necessary. Sometimes, the person (in many cases myself) backs away from the writing because… it is uncomfortable, she feels like something is about to crack open or she becomes bored and drifts away momentarily.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

I Know the Letters Are There: The Inner Rumblings of a Writer

March 16, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I remembered writing this piece as my mind-heart-spirit took a few deep breaths into the #7MagicWords challenge from Marisa Goudy : I wrote the original poetic essay in 2003. In reviewing Marisa’s prompt now I realize I got it… wrong. Yet it is entirely right.

I’m joining the challenge three days late. On the first day we were to uncover a word that integrates and on day two a word that earths. Mine… integrates. Definitely. I’m sticking with it: LETTERS.

I just completed a modest rewrite on this essay. It is ripe with letters. I took a joyful classroom memory that integrates my childhood with my now – my passion ever present, continuing.

Here I am, the 7th grade me as seen by the early forties me.

Did a hush fill the dark room as a storm gathered outside or was it in my imagination? I can’t remember exactly.

In the back of the room my fingers dashed steadily across the keyboard, pounding away at the manual typewriter as it spoke clankety clankety clankety ding!

A woosh replaced the clanks as I swiped the typewriter carriage with all the zest of the former girl’s arm wrestling champion from Linden Avenue School, now graduated to the Middle School that sat proudly on top of a circular driveway. The yellow brick walls were sunny with optimism despite the rain drops increased force against the windows providing a counterpoint rhythm to my typing.

Did the ceiling evaporate and a ray of light suddenly connect my hands to heaven?

Something had shifted. It had broken through the physical plane and into my thirteen-year-old being. I had the skill to type without looking at the keyboard thanks to the Tap Tapnick poster on the wall and hours and hours of diligent practice so I was able to scribe the words without looking at my hands. I could close my eyes or stare straight ahead or above the chalk board and continue typing.

I knew the letters were there.

There was never any question.
There were other children in the room tapping away at their machines. I know there was other activity. I remember Mr. Seymour, my English teacher, walking into the room to visit with Mrs. Behrman, the
typing teacher. Right in the midst of the bustle and the buzz of thirty or so typewriters all clanking and dinging and swiping, I was not there at all and I knew the letters were there.

All I had to do was connect my mind, soul and heart to my fingers and words burst forth from knitting the letters together, stitching them into a patchwork of meaning. I was able to translate all the emotion that was rumbling through my early adolescent self onto the page so that the world of the Glen Ridge Middle School and beyond would be able to understand what it felt like to feel so incredibly alive, so
incredibly buoyant.

From reading my words I knew they would be able to understand what it meant to tap into the power of God while writing.

The Topic was simply “Music”. The composer was for the first time a life force greater than my own.

I had tapped into the Zone, the Flow, the Space in the Center where everything is conceived, birthed and buried.

I knew the letters were there. And so was I. And all was well, even if no one ever read those words pumping out of me, the letters were in front of me, within me, surrounding me.

All was well and would be well. I knew the letters were there.

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.

We Soon Forget and It Is Gone, Just Like That, Just in That.. What is the Word?

March 6, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Sometimes the need to write something is so intense and I just need to throw words on the page.

I had a prompt for an instagram challenge – my instagram writing will appear here shortly because, quite frankly, it has crackeled and flowed this week all written in 5 minute chunks.

A prompt today was “Books and Magazines” so I looked up “books” in my flickr account and what I got – well, what I got was this image and what I wrote below will be molded into a poem like shorter piece especially for my Instagram Audience – to follow click here please. Would love to have you along…

Now – here goes a surprising twisty road trip of 5 minutes – this is so surreal in its free form, fact and fiction and out-of-body merge and meld…

Broken, put in a box for all these years

Months

Days

Hours

Moments

We soon forget and it is gone, just like that, just in that nick that cut that tear of a moment and the dirt sticks with more tenacity than the lightness of our once upon a time wish, the candle we blew out and never bothered relighting because…

Well, because.

You know the well, because as well if not better than I.

Don’t you?

Purple is my favorite color isn’t it?

And I discovered yet another broken mug in my kitchen sink this morning and I wondered again how I could still not value myself enough to have a dishwasher but after all these years I still don’t and I can still hear that long ago boss saying to me “What kind of a house did you buy that doesn’t have a dishwasher? And I was ashamed again that word, that foreign word I insist foreign but know more intimately than that man I fucked this morning who has no idea how much his humor hurts me, still vile as the bile creeps up my neck and I hold it back keep swallowing keep forgetting keep not looking not looking it isn’t good to look dumb shit you will regret it I guarantee it and I do. I do. I do regret it all.

I look back at the broken mess I poured into the beautiful glass bowl, so surprisingly heavy.

My gift for a performance I always thought was a dis not good enough oh yes the word is disappointment.

The word.

Disappointment

When will the damn timer go off.

Do I really need to write more of this?

The penultimate disappointment I stopped performing because of it, partially. I had to stop I didn’t couldn’t want to be.

Thank God, the timer.

This is an exploration of self via free flowing personal narrative: this specifically is sharing everyday, in the now. A sort of 5 minute meditation upon that day or the day before…. we’ll see how each day shapes up without insisting it conform to any particular shape beyond writing for 5 minutes… go. write. now.

I’m using the “5for5BrainDump” model which grants a person the gift of 5 minutes of timed writing to dump whatever comes onto the page without editing, forethought or judgment. What appears on the page and out of the rambling mind is remarkable.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Early Morning 5 Minute Meditation: A Friday in Early March

March 2, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

It is a grey morning. I woke up due to the foreign sound of rain dripping from my roof. It doesn’t rain much here in Bakersfield and when it comes, I am delighted. My only hope is the First Friday festivities aren’t rained out. I love the gallery visits but what I most love is walking around, looking at what the courageous street artists are showing and collecting lots of hugs.

Tonight there is an event honoring an incredible young dancer and the invitation says “dress to impress” and “A photographer will be there.” That is enough of a call for me.

Last night I saw “Angels in America” Part 1. There is so much I don’t remember. I was such a different person last time I saw it. I was a theatre newbie back then and was in awe of everything, just in awe.

When we are in awe, sometimes that sense of “this is so cool” isn’t able to capture the nuances that I capture now: the set changes like a ballet, so every moment my eyes stayed fixed on the stage. The textured technical elements – gave the setting and the language more depth only subtle in a way it entered the awareness like a soft breeze does on a hot day: you feel it and notice it and you are grateful for it – it adds rather than detracts from the present.

My timer goes off and I have six minutes until I take Samuel to school. Today looks to be a steady stream of activity, but nothing nerve-unsettling. Peaceful productivity. A passion activator Friday sort of a day.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Beyond Feeling Stuck: How 5 Minutes of Free Flow Writing Freed the Words

March 2, 2018 by jjscreativelifemidwife

The next sentence was born from what I wrote yesterday – which after you read this stream of consciousness moment in time, you may see where its roots are.

I can only do “it” in a prescribed way. Follow the rules other people set or die.

I know. This sounds extreme and yet it is how I have oftentimes behaved.

Before I fell into what am I going to call this time?

Before I got lost, I was a great experimenter. I could play and explore and played improve games as a way of life. I continued doing this everywhere except for where it would bring me an income or transform my situation from…

Oh, I am having a hard time finding words.

It is safe, even if I don’t find words.

Even if I can’t unbolt this lock.

When I was in college I was a student manager at a restaurant called The Rathskeller. I worked on weekends when none of the adult management was around and oftentimes I got there and was on my own for at least an hour or so.

One afternoon when I was alone, I got stuck in the elevator. There was no handle from the inside, only from the outside and only accessible through a tiny window I could reach if I stretched really big and maneuvered my body just so and…. On that day, when there was no other option, freed myself.

Just like right now: the sun came out from behind a cloud just as I wrote that. Just as I said “It is safe even if I don’t find words” I instantly found words.

My timer went off, my five minutes was up about a minute ago and I need to share this, now.

From yesterday’s writing: Just as I am the one who locked myself out of the world and into banishment, I am the one who is now setting myself free. I am the one who is choosing an active trust and then actually taking the steps rather than talking about taking the steps. Read yesterday’s post by clicking here.

It is important to give license to stop and continue, stumble and continue, rant and scream and cry… and continue. This continuing is where the transformation happens.