Julie Unplugged

Fragmentary Yellow - A Magpie Tales Inspired Poem

Lighthouse Dandelions by Jamie Wyeth - This week's poetry prompt from Magpie Tales

One of the things I love about writing poetry to prompts is I never know where the images or suggested words will take me. In this case – with Magpie Tales weekly prompt – it is nearly always an image either a painting or a photograph – and this week it was as if I cut a hole in my belly and let the stuff that had been sitting there, waiting, to pour forth.

Perhaps a bit “rough drafty” feeling to me – I offer you today’s (as of now untitled and raw, off my pencil) poem.

Oh - and please visit the Magpie Tales blog to check out other's interpretations of the same image. It always surprises me to see the directions we go... almost always completely different.

 

 

 

Overexposed and wan, smeared with butter

Shadows have snatched the scorched leaves

And stolen their voices whatever is old is new again

So the wrinkled cliché says

Mocks

Chants

Sings

Pallid, ashy, frail lyrics while

The space underneath her ear

aches, the space where the

last bit of skin was stretched

to cover the skin not so

magically evaporated with

The

Cancer

“We got it all,” they said

A pregnancy of time gone by

Leaving behind only

Trailing ribbons of ecru ache

Tied up behind her ear

The cries of the stillborn baby

Still ringing from her womb

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© 2013 Julie Jordan Scott

"You are my deepening skies; Give me your stars to hold” & Other Quotes from Literary Granny, Sara Teasdale

This young girl from St. Louis grew up to write “Life has loveliness to sell" and many others...

I remember when I first started discovering some of the women poets of the early twentieth century. It felt like I had found a huge room full of women who were like sisters, mothers, cousins and aunties to me.

Sara Teasdale was one of them.  A lyrical poet whose work focused on words from a women’s perspective, she won the first Columbia Poetry Prize in 1918, a prize that would later be renamed the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Today I was thumbing through my collection of “all things Sara” when I realized I have used her as an inspiration for creativity many, many times. She has showed up in lessons I have taught, she has appeared in essays, her images fill my photo album:  how had I put those memories of our earliest “relationship” aside.

Sometimes that happens with passion: we fall head over heels in love with one.. and then another… and then another and while the one a few ones back is still tucked away back there, sometimes underneath the surface she is still doing her poetic best to awaken the memory.

Literary Grannies do that: they walk around in your thoughts, tip toe by tip toe, untraceable sometimes for years. When you do manage to notice, they are never angry. They may even give you candy and most definitely a hug or a kiss and a squeeze on the cheek.

If you haven’t “met” her before, please settle into your seat and allow her words to fill your breath, your heart and your mind.

 “Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup.”

☼

“I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful when rain bends down the bough.”

☼

“I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.”

☼

“It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.”

☼

“No one worth possessing can quite be possessed”

☼

“My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain.”

☼

“I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies--
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold”

☼

“Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not far, it never will be far”

Sara Teasdale in Mixed Media: lyric poet with a sad end to her life.

* * * * *

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© 2013 Julie Jordan Scott

Welcome to YOUR Best Day: What Will You Create with It?

 

Embracing "This day – this moment – this "right here under our noses" is our day yet. " will change your life

 

Samuel will be twelve-years-old this coming Monday.

How did this happen?

How is it that in a few short weeks I will no longer have any children in elementary school and I am expecting my first grandbaby?

People ask – which daughter is pregnant? They almost always think Emma, which makes her sort of laugh, but no. It is the first daughter I raised, Beyunca, who is pregnant. She is thirty-one, prime baby time, and very pleased to be bringing life to the world. She is due in December. We are using this time to continue recreating our relationship.

Like much of my life, it is not a conventional one.

The one constant, though – for you and for me – is we will each gain so much when we learn to hold this day as the treasure it is. This day – this moment – this right here under our noses is our best day yet.

Embracing this thought will help us to understand the purest forms of gratitude and awaken such an abundant attitude, the sadness of a little boy becoming a young man will turn into a swelling pride in the young man he is becoming.

He wants adobe aftereffects for his birthday – the movie making program – because he keeps honing his skills as a video maker. He does so many things I could never figure out.

Today Emma is celebrating her first full day at school with no braces by wearing makeup she put on herself and an adorable outfit. She is truly coming into her own. The conversations we have been having lately would be mind-boggling if I didn’t know what a miracle that young woman is, just in being herself.

I even grieved a bit to learn Katherine is not going to be home this Summer after all. She is off to either Berkeley (my fingers are crossed and re-crossed!) or Washington, DC. I have been focusing not on my own selfish desire to hold her a little bit longer, but on holding her growing independence as she reaches into the adulthood she has been earning ever since she arrived on the Smith College campus nearly three years ago.

The mulberries are crashing off the tree today, firm and tight. Instead of splattering on my neighbor’s cars, they bounce off.

My yard looks like mulberry stew.

I am holding this moment by looking up recipes that include mulberries. Would you believe I’ve been in this house with this tree for twenty-two years and never gleaned the fruit to create anything edible?

I wasn’t ready then, I suppose, for the full abundance this tree has offered me season after season after season.

There is a whole other story there.

I’ll leave that for another day, another moment, another time of writing life.

Enjoy your best day - what will you create with it?

* * * * *

I'm so glad you are here!

* * * * *

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© 2013 Julie Jordan Scott

How to Make Simple DIY Postcards with Items You Have at Home Now

Postcards here from Dana Point, San Francisco and Bakersfield

It was well over fifteen-years-ago when my now thirty-one year old daughter went off to Summer Camp bringing along her exchange student “sister” from France. Sandra, the student, was a young woman I fell in love with instantly.

It is an unspoken rule that one must send mail to her children at camp, so I decided I wanted to send postcards. Instead of Bakersfield postcards, though, I sent postcards cataloguing Sandra’s visit so far. My favorite postcard was of the two of us with our arms around a street kid on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles near the Chinese Theater. Back then, the homeless teens would pose with you if you gave them a dollar.

Since those days, the characters around the Chinese theater have gotten quite professional. Last Summer they were working in teams and one particularly aggressive Superman told me it was $3 a photo for each of them. I liked it better when it was children working for food.

I’m getting off course, though. What I wanted to share with you is this: if you are like me and can’t find the most picturesque postcards, why not take literally seconds and make your own with items you more than likely have in your home right now.

Choosing Your Photos May Be What Takes the Most Time!

Supplies:

One or more 4 X 6 index card(s)

One or more 4 X 6 photo(s)

Spray adhesive (or other glue, I just like how spray adhesive adheres)

One of more recipient(s) happy to receive your mail.

Here are the couldn’t be simpler than this steps:

1. Line up your index cards and choose the photos for the postcards you plan to make during that session.
2. Spray adhesive on up to three index cards at a time.
3. Carefully line up the photo with the index card and press them together.
4. To feel secure about the adhesion, you may want to put your fresh cards underneath a large reference book just for extra assurance.
5. Write your note and send it off!

Today I am making cards from Jack Kerouac Alley in San Francisco, the beach in Dana Point, Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Mojave Desert and finally some scenes around the town I call home, Bakersfield. The inspiration to make postcards is the February Letter Writing exchange called “Lettermo”. Some of the participants collect and send postcards. Since I like to give people what they want, I figure, “Postcards it is!”

Tonight I am taking a friend to the airport in Los Angeles and I plan to spend the evening there, visiting some places I have never been in the past. As I made my postcards this morning I realized how much my photography has changed over the years and decided to challenge myself to take some uniquely Los Angeles photos I will turn into post cards tonight.

You can even do this when you travel. I use Walgreens to develop my photos, so you could simply upload your photos to the Walgreens website and get them printed in whatever city you are visiting at the time. How fun for your friends at home to have a tangible photo with a handwritten note about your trip to Zion National Forest with your children’s faces smiling back at them?

Sharing online is great, but do you remember receiving your last postcard in the mail? 

If you make extra postcards, you will have plenty for your next mailing or to write while you are the passenger on your road trip. You may have your children decide which photos to use or write a note to Granny or Mr. Lollar or the teen who is feeding your cats at home.

My daughter is at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. I may send her a postcard of my and Elmo soon: yes, I had a photo taken with a life size Elmo the last time I was in Hollywood.

Like most creativity, it has inspired me to make more art.

When will you take a moment to make and send some personalized, artful postcards?

=    =    =  

Julie Jordan Scott is a Creative Life Coach, a Poet Performer, a Writer and a Mommy Extraordinaire. Stay in touch with her via twitter or facebook or you may always call or text her at 661.444.2735 to arrange a complimentary coaching session.

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Your Wisdom, Please - What Does "Love the Questions" Mean in This Circumstance?

In my hand I am holding a book titled Druha Citanka. It was published in 1913. I have no idea what the title means, but  nonetheless I hold the book gently and with great care.

Two previous owners added their name to the front page: one is Pauline whose handwriting I can’t read. The other hand wrote: The Book Belongs to Pfc. Paul W. Boley with a San Francisco P.O. Box. Did he serve in the military during World War II? Was the PO box the place his mail was sorted to the secret destination where he read letters in whatever language this is: Polish? Czech? Slovenian?

I feel so ridiculously American that I don’t know what language this is by looking at it. I can recognize Spanish, I can recognize some French and German. I feel as if I should be ashamed for not knowing more. I have hosted couchsurfers from the Czech Republic who speak almost unaccented English. 

I usually buy old books in other languages to use in my mixed media art, but this book seems so dear to me, I almost don’t want to cut into the pages to make art. If I don’t cut into it, though, it will sit on my shelf – never understood.

I discover the book is written in Slovak through using a language ap. I discover the word  "vdacny" means “grateful”.

How perfect is this? What is my new book friend telling me?

To use it in art?

To leave it in tact?

To parcel it out to others?

To keep it all for myself, even though I don’t know Slovak?

It is like Rilke says “love the questions like a book written in a very foreign tongue”. I

Is this image asking me a question about sawing wood?

continue to hold this delightfully old book. It was published when my Granny wasn’t even ten years old.  It feels sacred, it feels like curiosity and wonder made manifest. Who else held this book? Who else read it? What has made it last for nearly one hundred years?

 

I feel it is calling me to create art with it so that others may know and feel its message, its energy, even if we don’t understand the language. It reminds me of how I have learned to love without understanding. It reminds me how I’ve learned love isn’t about understanding, it is about being open and receptive regardless of understanding.

What do you think?

===

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

At The Corner of Mason & California in San Francisco: Between the Inhale and the Exhale My Past, Present & Future Convened

Reverb Prompt: Which little detail — something you saw… a look… a touch… a fleeting moment — from 2012 would you like to remember in the years to come? The most difficult part of this prompt is remember where it greeted me... ohhh... there. Day 17 from Relish12.

For just a moment I was dizzy with unsteadyness. I looked up and spun around, attempting to figure out where my body was in relationship with the glorious vibe of San Francisco

From the San Francisco Financial District - Can you believe this man is casually texting while leaning on the Robert Frost Memorial? Ay!

Unbelievably for me, I was visiting San Francisco with no destination in mind. I had several possibilities but nothing was in stone. I have sort of learned my way around the City but for some reason I didn’t want to bother with navigation and after a lovely greeting from native son Robert Frost I noticed a cable car had appeared so without thinking, I jumped on it.

A few moments later at the intersection of California and Mason, I jumped off the cable car, feeling an incredible urge. Even with that incredible urge I did the “should I shouldn’t I shuffle” before I leaped from my six dollar seat of a rather short cable car ride.

I scurried across the street and my eyes caught the Fairmont Hotel.

If you take away the Christmas Decorations, the Fairmont looked exactly as it did on that July day in... 1988? I believe?

I actually gasped the forty degree misty air straight into my gut.

This is where Mel and Tom got married on a Saturday in July before I knew how challenging many of the upcoming chapters of my life would be.

From that moment on, I went where I was divinely directed. Every single destination I found had some personal connection with me, as if my past was reaching out to massage my ever tense shoulders, saying, “You are a survivor, you are one who loves a lot and loves well. Continue your journey knowing that you are love incarnate.”

I will remember this “eye-to-eye” glance from my past, present and future for a long time to come.

Now that I have written it, I will more than likely remember it forever.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

Women in Literary History: Alice Corbin Henderson, Poet, Mother, Activist, Curator

It has been a while since I have written a biographical sketch about a woman writer in literary history. Today I went through my file filled with photos of these women and randomly selected Alice Corbin Henderson as the subject of today's sketch. Enjoy!

I adore this portrait of Alice Corbin Henderson!

 

"I saw the world go by and laughed as it was going."

Alice Corbin Henderson.

I knew when I first saw her photo that poet Alice Corbin and I would become friends. Now, I could tell she was also long gone – a revered woman poet, critic,  an early associate editor of Poetry Magazine – I knew she belonged in my women in literary history knowledge bank.

She was an avant-garde poet, an imagist,  who was originally from St. Louis, joining the ranks of Kate Chopin and Zoe Akins as late 19^th and early 20^th century women writers from that city.

She studied at the University of Chicago. Her first collection of poetry, The Linnet Songs, was published in 1898. In 1904 she rented a studio in the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago,  where she met her future husband, visiting professor. William Penhallow Henderson. He was a painter, architect and furniture designer. Together they had a daughter, Alice Oliver Henderson.

In 1912 her second collection of poems, The Spinning Woman of the Sky. She left Chicago for Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1916, after having been diagnosed with tuberculosis. She continued working on Poetry Magazine by long distance until 1922. Later, she was curator at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

When she arrived in Santa Fe, she was not only inspired by the people there, but also the cultures and art from the native Americans she met along the way.  She became an activist on the behalf of Native Americans.

She also was in a group of poets in Santa Fe who called each other “Poet’s Round Up”  and included DH Lawrence, Witter Bynner, Yvor Winters, and several other poets. The group fizzled out until resurrected by Alice Oliver Henderson when she returned to Santa Fe as an adult. The group evolved into "Writer's Round Up" and was quite a big part of the Santa Fe art scene, especially in the  1930's.

 I fell in love with this poem, published in Poetry Magazine in 1916.

Apparitions

A thin grey shadow on the edge of thought

Hiding its wounds –

These are the wounds of sorrow

It was my hand that made them

And this grey shadow resembles you

Is my own heart, weeping

You sleep quietly beneath the shade

Of willows in the south

 = = =

To find out more, here is a fascinating chronology and list of papers held by the library at the University of Texas.

I had better luck searching simply "Alice Corbin" if you would like to do research on your own to get to know this fascinating woman more deeply.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

Writing with Emily: for the Most Creative of You Creative Folks

I bet the very creative among you will recognize yourselves in my words today.

I can’t even tell you how often this happens to me:  the car behind me honks to startle me awake from solving all the world’s problems or writing my shopping list or deciphering last night’s dream.  Does this ever happen to you? Sometimes I am thinking about how to help my children lead their best lives or what I will cook for dinner or trying to remember the details of a story from long ago.

My mind leaps from thought to thought to thought and all of a sudden  the car behind me honks, frustrated because I didn’t leap to go through the intersection because the light just barely turned green.

Actually, in these cases I have no idea how long the light has been green because I am too lost in reverie about whatever is happily holding my thoughts so attentively.

Last night on the way home from an event at the Art and Spirituality Center where I created from a whole new-to-me version of Hansel and Gretl, I wondered how Emily Dickinson might write a poem about a particular intersection here in Bakersfield.

I sat in my car, looking at a street light. I thought, “How would Emily Dickinson see this seedy neighborhood with this high powered street lamp?”

I was having so much fun I almost didn’t see the traffic light turn green.

Are you ready to experience the darkness on a Bakersfield street corner with Emily Dickinson and me?

Street Light, Corner of 21^st and Union

Electric orb

Sharing luminousness with the

Members of the pearly ancient profession

And the shaking, tittering loose toothed

Hungry for the next, next, next….

As well as the cars who have lost

Their way and landed

Underneath you

# # #

Think about one of your favorite characters: fictional, historical, literary, and consider what might happen how they might experience your life through you. Then write as that you-Emily Dickinson character or You-Cat character or You-Green Lantern character.

Whatever it is, whichever or whoever combines with you – have fun and write it.

Just beware of when the light turns green. The car behind you might honk to startle you awake from your poetic word play.

Here I am, writing on the Lawn at Emily Dickinson's House in Amherst, Massachusetts

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

Emily Dickinson Roses + Virginia Woolf Teeny Tiny House + Upcycled Pesto Jar = Word Love Squared

A bouquet of Emily’s Roses mixed with Katherine Anne Porter roses and a vase upcycled from a pesto jar and covered with more books pages painted pink. The house in the photo is a Virginia Woolf house. I thought they looked pretty together.

The roses in the foreground are more Emily Dickinson Roses. I even made teeny tiny roses, about ¼ inch in diameter. These roses will be on a different upcycled project which I officially began with making the roses. J

I bought another used book of Emily’s poetry to paint/dye and use. I decided since she is so well known, I should use more of her work instead of only doing obscure artists, writers and poets.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

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My Saturday Night Interlude with Leigh Stein (and she doesn't know a thing about it!)

You never know where inspiration will strike and sometimes it doesn’t strike and you must write, anyway with all the enthusiasm of a slightly hung over snail.

Tonight it was the instant I discovered a young poet named Leigh Stein who has the nerve to have been born the same year I graduated from college. This is impossible.

She should still be in diapers or preschool at the latest.

Somehow I forget that my eldest daughter is studying at the University of Edinburgh and if my firstborn had lived, she would be nearly twenty-three.

Tonight the poetic siren stirred in coming to terms with this young woman who made me blink myself awake to the reality of my age vis a vis her age and I simply had to write a poem in response.

This is what I wrote, straight stream of consciousness poetry:

This is more than slightly surreal this fact, this woman who wrote this very entertaining poem was born the same year I graduated from college

How is it possible she is an adult, writing about getting older even, using Lindsay Lohan in her poem, that she can even have experienced enough of life to have a part Part VII?

Forget I asked that question, please give me that honor as I step into cronedom with my head bowed, my daughter singing Taylor Swift in the background.

I am fascinated. I join her in thinking of Caracas, in Russia, having Fever,  taking leave.

We poets are kindreds. I love-and-hate that because it means time doesn’t even stop for me and the fact Stanley Kunitz lived to more than one-hundred-years-old delights me.

I find gratitude’s hoodie sliding over my right eye to think, “Isn’t it fun that I love words so much and so does she and so did he.”

Before I get nauseas and wonder if the pain in my face is worse because the nerves of the skin moved from that other spot is making its way in my body again?

I smell my steamed rice, begging for salt, butter and my mouth.

As for Leigh Stein, I’ll check in with her later.

This next sentence may sound a lot stronger than my usual writing, but it is what I unapologetically believe. Waiting for inspiration is a ridiculous way to write either poetry or prose. You can’t schedule inspiration, after all, because you never know where inspiration will strike and sometimes it doesn’t strike.

It is time to remind yourself you must write, anyway with all the enthusiasm of a slightly hung over snail.

 

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

This is my twenty second post (of 31!) for the October Ultimate Blog Challenge. Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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