Julie Unplugged

This November, I will.....my celebration of Creativity

This November I will.... love the moment.

I even made my own "Art Everyday Month 2010" logo, see it above?

This November I will lay a foundation for a world shatteringly wonderful 2011.

This November I will write at least 2000 words daily.

This November I will stretch myself physically and creatively.

This November I will remember love, first.

This November I will put myself out there more than I am used to doing.

This November I will be living my dreams more completely and bringing several to light that I wondered... "Would this ever happen?!"

This November I will be praised and perhaps I will have fingers shaken in my nose.

This November I will playfully experiment and accept doing things badly on the way to doing them well.

This November I will remember love, first.

This November I will laugh hard.

This November I will do some new stuff.

This November I will catalog and hang words on shelves, I will put ducks and baskets and buckets in shiny, muddy, tear-stained rows.

This November I will fart, I will may puke, I will most likely wring my hands and do some wretching.

This November I will create and publish chap books.

This November I will perform poetry, twice.

This November I will perform on the largest venue ever.

This November I will remember love, first.

This November I will sit in the sun, I will more than likely be rained upon, I will yawn and be tired, I will howl at the moon and more than likely I will sob at least once.

This November I will say thank you.

This November I will hang out with my favorite nun.

This November I will vote.

This November I will hug my babies.

This November I will pray.

This November I will stretch.

This November I will NaNo, I will AEDM, I will do the PAD Chapbook Challenge.

This November I will.....answer the call, this November.

　

 

OneWord.Com delivers....

I tweeted this morning: (juliejordanscot) is spending the morning with Rainer Rilke, starting with "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart."

I went to OneWord.com and the word today was "missed". I had sixty seconds to write. Because I didn't log in before I started, I got to double my time. It never fails - 60 seconds to insight when we amble along with the words.

Here is what I wrote:

What have I missed by being lost to the questions as they arrived? What did I miss by not being willing to let myself sit with the question? Questions work so much more effectively when we become intimate with them, rather than rush through their nuances without noticing. Questions are like your best friend: they take time to get to know, they are filled with surprises and light. They want what is best for you and they want to experience it alongside you.

Questions are not meant to be fumbled around or passed or kept separate. They are meant to be held, cuddled, shared deeply. They want to be written into both comedies and tragedies. They want to flow through the blood and be given through the breath.

Today I am going to continue along this Rilkean path.

Today I am going to continue to "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart."

Wednesday Wishcasting: And It Is....

For the first time in what feels like forever, Jamie poses a Wednesday Wishcasting question which has, for me, an "easy" answer.

She asks, "Wishcasting Wednesday: What do you wish to shed?"

I've been working on this, slowly and intentionally, since Summer. It is like I had to ease into it, at first.

I wish to shed excess "me" - I wish to be in better shape. I wish to have knees that don't hurt. I wish to move more easily.

Since I started doing yoga and zumba and now, hooping, this is happening.

I have found that dietary changes are happening because my body feels better and happier and we have a more cohesive, stand together relationship than in the past. My body (and the excess it carries) was sort of floating around - or not floating around - separate from my spirit and intellect. While there were certain activities where we were deep kindreds and very satisfied there were others where we dissected from one another.

Now we are bringing that together, my body and I, and I am honoring my body by eating better and enjoying her in many ways, not just the physical activity of satisfying my love and I.

Lately I have been preparing for a musical I am in so every night I am doing choreographed dancing. I am not the worlds best dancer though once I get my moves down, people will never know the not-so-graceful means to get there. Somehow I feel like this wish is imbued in that show. I wished to be in a musical for so long and had just about given up when I was "begged" to take the fabulous role of the "lead villain" in a local musical that is going to be performed on a larger stage than I have ever performed upon... in fact, which is a several year old wish I never knew "how" I would achieve.

My body and I haven't shed the excess yet, but the process is moving forward. I am grateful, happy and I am moving consistently for the first time in years. Since college, actually.

And I did something else that feels wildly courageous. I have an appointment with a trainer at the gym on Saturday. This is a first. I haven't ever had the guts to go through the whole body fat measurement thing because, quite frankly, I didn't want to know. Now I know it is just a mark of the beginning of finally leaving what I don't want behind and stepping fully into my grandest wishes.

I wish for this to continue and increase. And it is...

Wishcasting Wednesday: What does the soft animal of my body wish....

I love the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. Jamie Ridler used this poem as a part of Wishcasting today and I need to make a confession. When I first read the prompt I thought, "Oh, sheesh. How many times must I read about the soft animal of my body this week? I love Mary Oliver, and I love the whole soft animal concept but must I write about it one more time?!"

Naturally, the soft animal of my body came and put her arm around me and took her softness into my neck and guided me back to the page. I got "free write, just a little" without needing any words.

I wrote....The soft animal of my body loves and wishes.... to take time free of language. Time in silence, time in presence, time in watching without internal narration. The soft animal of my body loves, well, without worry of consequence of that love. The soft animal of my body is love, creates only love...

 

The soft animal of my body loves the rain, loves sniffing, unabashedly and singing out, "Oh, the smell of that skin, that cinnamon, that pumpkin that smell of that fire, glowing, smoking rising through the air, scent made visible oh.... I love love love the way that makes my belly feel" as she collapses into a giggling or moaning heap, no apologies, ever... from the soft animal of my body.

This way of being doesn't need explanation.

It just is.

Doesn't worry about being clear.

It just is.

Doesn't wait for "the right time" or "the right circumstance" it JUST IS....

The soft animal of my body tells me, "Create and Come back" so I will....

The soft animal of my body tells me to move my body, to create art with my body through movement. To laugh and giggle and "sell it" on stage (as Rikk said the other night, "I like watching you the most," I swore I blushed a bit. What woman doesn't want a very attractive man to enjoy watching her the most? Well, it was so loving I didn't even think "I suck" I thought, "I am charming when I dance," which I am and I do sell it once I know the choreography.

"What if you created the choreography?" this is what the soft animal of my body asks?

 

Really?

The not-so-soft, not-so-animal of my body looks away from the page, that is almost too much to bear.

The soft animal of my body takes me to a drinking place, a gentling place and allows me to replenish.

It leads me to create further with what I started yesterday. Together we find some floral gold spray and we leak it all over the pages of the book I destroyed yesterday, the author so snooty and filled with self importance I tore her book up and the soft animal of my body and I playfully took what I did consciously yesterday with what I felt urged to do, without thinking today. Oh, I love how it looks, even the mistakes.

The soft animal of my body hugs me. I hug it back.

I take photos of the pages, the pages by the screen, the pages by my hand written poetry, the one that says, "While I have you fear, you are not me".....

Amen. You ARE NOT me, fear. Sure, the soft animal of my body and I welcome you. You create some wicked playfulness to come out that we didn't even know we had in us to come out, olly olly oxen free!

The soft animal of my body wishes for plenty of time with me. To love, to create, to love, to love-create, to merge love and creativity.... to merge creativity and love... to be love, to be creativity, to reach that me-love-creativity, that love-me-creativity, that creativity-love-me into the world.

Yes. This is what the soft animal body wishes....

 
follow me on twitter - @juliejordanscot

　

　

 

Success Map to Keep You on Track

Prompt from Carry On Tuesday...

 

"Look, if there's one thing I've learned...."

.....people need to know you care and the way you show you carer is through showing up, responding, and including the people you care about from the idea to the execution.

Stay with me here: It helps if you enjoy those you love as you enjoy the process. Get to know them better by noticing what is most important to them. Is it saying "Fantastic!" is it by sitting and working together, silently, side-by-side for hours on end without words being exchanged; is it bringing gifts? Notice. And love the discovery of the noticing.

Furrowed brows and tightly clamped lips while making plans and implementing them doesn't usually add up to, "I am delighting in you!"

Listen up: It isn't in the words themselves, it is in the follow through of those words themselves. You can tell people you care but unless you take that telling and add some showing it just doesn't amount to much. If anything.

Are you ready for your finale?

Gratitude for all is the careful tucking in before bed. It is like Mom kissing you on the forehead and saying, "Goodnight, sweet dreams, I love you," as you watch the sliver of light and her face get smaller as she closes the door. You still feel the warmth of her words and the light when you close your eyes and snuggle in.

If you don't share sincere gratitude, there is always the "something missing", the vague discomfort.

Did you catch the caveat of "sincere" gratitude?

Good. I thought you did.

Now that we have looked, here is a Success Map to Keep you on Track.

1. Show up.

2. Include your loved ones in the planning.

3. Include your loved ones in the execution of the plan.

4. Give baths of Gratitude.

5. Repeat. Often.

= = = =

Keith's Ramblings brings "Carry on Tuesday" and this week it was a perfect essay starter which came from The Italian Job, a movie released in 2003. I don't know the movie at all, but I now know the line. To check out the prompt and other writings or to write from prompts yourself, please visit http://carryontuesdayprompt.blogspot.com/

The Life Coach/Teacher in me came pouring out. I had no choice here - - I simply had to put poetry aside for today and write this.

 

Celebrating Not So Secret Secrets from the Daily Passion Activator

Have you ever created something, left it and come back only to be jerked into "wow, what is tha... oh. that is mine!"

It happened to me last week with a painting. Here is an image of it, but it doesn't capture the vibe that drew me into the "wow"...

This morning I was drawn into art I created three years ago and art I created yesterday and I find myself needing, desiring, hoping to somehow synthesize it for you.

Or perhaps that is better stated as begin to synthesize this all for you.

Two days ago I took an essay I wrote five years ago and I wove it into a writing lesson for my And Now You Write program, which, by the way, you may still join. This dynamic community has three more weeks to write together yet and your participation would be phenomenal.

There is even a video component to this lesson. I facilitated the lesson yesterday morning and yesterday mid-morning I wrote the prompt in my journal and took a little "field trip".

The writing prompt was... "The secret of my life is..." and here is what I wrote, straight from my pencil:

The secret of my life is I hang out a lot with divinity. Perhaps this is why I rarely get lonely.

I started practicing this early, maybe in my languageless companionship with John. Like today "go under the bridge" I "hear" like I had earlier "heard" to turn the car around and fetch a chair before I left home so that I would be comfortable once I went under the bridge. Once I agreed, "ok, I am going all ready!"

It is relentless, sometimes, the divine nudging, cajoling, nagging so most of the time I just walk alongside it and follow what it says.

Today the divine brought me into one of my favorite spots to write. A loud silent place, under a bridge, graffiti on the walls. I love it. I can't hear a thing there except the sound of flow. I see in my notebook where I wrote, "Come write with me you crazy person, write!" I suppose that was divinity saying, "Write this into an essay, Julie! Write it I dare you!" so here, I sit and I do.

I remember when I discovered this place. I was grieving in stacks. Layers upon layers of grief and silence and absence and aloneness so sparse I almost lost my words. Back then, in fact, for a time, prayer was all I wrote. I lost my will to write peppy and perky and businessy and how-to. I became grief, I allowed it to find the still places in my body and to work me. People dropped like flies and I stayed. Silent. Praying. Waiting. Listening. More people left.



I looked at a photo I took then and compared it to a photo I took yesterday and the contrast startled me. It pummelled me with the truth of how it felt, then. It lifted me up with the truth of how I feel now.

I felt grateful for the gap in between the photos and all the work that has taken place in between. I have learned life isn't the best when it "feels" the best, necessarily. I have learned life is the best when loved as it is. Completely. Without wishing it to be any different than it is, but relishing the gaps instead as THIS IS WHAT IS and being grateful for exactly what is without the need to change it unless it is a soulful, inspired choice you are making - not a choice to fix anything that is perceived as wrong. The gaps in life are not inherently wrong. They are places to play and pray and be and move and create and love.

I have had a gap in publishing Daily Passion Activator. The world hasn't stopped spinning. And now, I am ready to be back. The gap has served me as a teacher. I am grateful to be back up and publishing again. I just needed to step away and didn't even realize I needed to step away.

Just like those two faces of me above are different, these moments are different too.

I smile knowing this place may have remained undiscovered if I hadn't been left alone to pray, to become grief, to allow it to work through me without shhhussshing it out too quickly.

When I was under the bridge yesterday with the water flowing I realized some people would label this little slice of heaven "smelly." Never, I say. Interesting smell. Sort of like decomposition and nature, changing form from one to another. I watch the trees sway above me and I realize I can't hear the leaves with all this flow around me. I call the sound of leaves in the wind 'God sounds' since so often I hear the divine in the rustling leaves.

Today I exchanged one version of God sounds for another. Sometimes we hear divinity differently.

Under this bridge I can't hear the Sheriff's firing range that was bothering me while I was above this spot. I watch as a leaf offers itself to the river and a blue dragonfly investigates the trees and settles on a large grey rock so I can see the dragonfly actually has a red body and its wings are blue. I look up and see some of last year's leaves freckling the green leaves and branches of a large tree above me.

I see a spider web bridging the river, too, echoing this spot where I am sitting.

Later, the web seems to have disappeared, playing a silent game of peek-a-boo with my pen.

I thought I was seeing destruction. I wasn't. I just needed to perceive from a different angle.

I stop to pause, noting my fingers first wrote a wrong word: angel. They meant ANGLE, as in moved differently to see a different perception.

"Now you see me, now you don't!" giggles the angelic spider web, so delicate yet so hardy.

The secret of my life is I can write volumes without noticing, without needing to converse with any humans, just me and the insects, the water, the leaves and that grand blue heron (or perhaps some family of egret) gracefully outstretching her wings and gliding up river from me when my arms lifted too fast and she lost trust in me.

I wrote that line and felt, when I noticed I started to hear cars on the bridge, its time to turn. Time to go home. Time to see what is next there.

Time to celebrate and be with whatever is and let it be just that.

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Yesterday I Cried During Yoga Class

Today I cried, almost uncontrollably, during yoga class. I had felt the urge several times during the session but I held on to the tears, mostly through nasty self talk. I was not loving these exercises we were doing and felt this anger bubbling over when the instructor talked about how relaxing downward facing dog is.

I moaned and almost shouted out and then berated myself in an internal self-talk lashing, loudly, "stupid" being the loudest epithet. For some of you this may not seem like a big deal but for someone who was raised to highly value the intellect, being stupid is an enormous insult, a very high-tiered bad word in my life.

My muscles are tightly wound. I know this. And in down dog I am not able to get my heels on the floor, my hands on the floor and my ass straight up while keeping my knees straight. It isn't physically possible. I am much better than I used to be, but my weight rests primarily on my shoulders and upper arms, which are very strong to begin with but settling into down dog literally becomes unbearable for me and a great strain. Whenever any yoga teacher chirps "down dog" I get into the position and work it, but hearing about how relaxing it is... well, it sort of started my downward (no pun intended) cycle.

I never think of speaking up in the group about what to do when I feel like I have to throw up or death is imminent, but another woman did and I finally received respite and an alternate pose. She suggested child's pose, but that is another relaxing pose that is anything but relaxing to me. Everything hurts me in child's pose. I can't think of any point of my body that feels good in child's pose. When I attempt to relax in child's pose, I wobble over and lose my balance and do a lovely sow-bug impression.

I am beginning to feel I am the oddest yoga-duck out there.

And I keep going back because I feel so good after yoga, my body benefits from it. On Wednesday time evaporated and today, time evaporated. I never look at the clock during Yoga like I do in other exercise classes. I simply follow the instructors voice and move into pose and grimace occasionally and breathe.

So today after the downward dog fiasco into opening moments we finally settled into savasana and tears erupted from deep in my gut. There I was on my back, attempting to stay still and relaxed while the teacher was talking about relaxing and breath and I was doing my best to not moan from somewhere between my feet to my lower abdomen. I writhed, I gulped, I silently wept. The tears coursed down my face as I refused to reach up and wipe them away.

It felt fantastic.

It felt weird.

It felt haunting.

It felt curious.

I have never heard of anyone else crying like this in yoga, so I wondered. And I asked and I continued to move through it.

I remember recently with a different teacher when we were doing hip opening exercises. I was bent over at the waist, crying into the floor. When she cued us to sit up, she must have noticed because I remember the teacher saying "When you open your hips, long held emotions will want to get out. This is totally normal" and I was thinking "no shit!" as the torrents came bursting forth.

I suppose I need to continue to love this practice, even when or especially when the tears burst out. I did a google search and found many people cry during yoga. I tweeted and facebooked and people responded. I didn't feel so alone.

Next Wednesday morning I will be more prepared and will openly welcome the tears. I may even find someone to help me out with a down dog variation so it won't be so painful, or a way to stretch the backs of my legs so I can put my heels on the floor and get that relaxing stretch I hear described.

There. That feels better even now.

Thank you for reading.

Response to today's Wishcasting Wednesday: Where do you wish to grow your confidence?

This morning in Wishcasting Wednesday, Jamie asks:

 "Where do you wish to grow your confidence?"

 

　Here is the irony: I have had "be confident" as one of my 43things goals for the last four years AND it is one of those goals others are surprised to find on my list.

 

"Julie, come on, you are ultra-confident" to which I retort, "No, I am an actor. I can fake anything."

I may appear confident to others and in some ways, I suppose I am... but more importantly is I don't feel particular confident.

It would be so easy (and not altogether fruitful) to say "I wish to grow my confidence in everyway" and while that is true, I know there is power in specificity.

I definitely wish to grow my confidence, primarily in my performance in dance and singing (with the musical I am in looming now five weeks away, I must) as well as in confidently kicking my publishing adventures up a notch. I wish for an increased confidence to rise above the barriers I have created in my mind. They are invisible, they don't exist, there is no reason to be anything less than boomingly confident about my abilities, my talents, my capacity to impact the world.

I wish to eliminate the negative self talk I have taken to using around my performance goals, like an upcoming audition that I continually preface with, "I know there is a snow balls chance in hell for me to actually be cast... and..." What is up with that?

My confidence may be exactly the key. I am wishing, claiming, growing and being confident in these specific areas of performance and publishing.