June is coming to a close and so, too, is the experiment of The Domino Project's Trust30 Writing Challenge. Today my plan - for right now - is to spend part of the day catching up on prompts I didn''t engage with until now. The prompt from this morning arrived and I knew, right away, it was a kindred prompt. I haven't been posting prompts in their entirety lately for a variety of reasons, but today it feels right:
"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
and the response/prompt from Sam Davidson: "When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience? Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it’s time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand."
I sat at my keyboard and thought about this one. "Aliveness: a state of being, a lifestyle choice" I thought. I walked to my writing porch, notebook in hand, and realized coming up with one moment of aliveness would be like asking Baskin Robbins to come up with just one flavor rather than their current 31 flavors.
I started with this list of recent alive experiences and then noted more after I shot the photo to share here. It isn't exhaustive at all, it is simply a beginning/
Finally, I decided instead of choosing one, I would write a poem of what I have noticed about aliveness. Stream of Consciousness in form and style... this is what I came up with this morning:
Aliveness is
a way of being
a lifestyle choice
a noun and a verb
purple, orange and fuschia
profound and light
disorienting and intensely focused
meant to be caught
known by Linden trees, baby skunks
and bougainvillea
fast food workers understand it as do
preschoolers, some CEO's
is found in living the question without
waiting for "the" answer
aliveness is
holy
sacred
abundantly silly
salty and messy
infinite, without a pricetag
memorable
indelible
aliveness
is felt in
five minutes on a park swing
sitting in silence with "a stranger"
listening to the wind play
nature's instruments
watching yourself as
you do the unbelievable
reflected in your love's
believing eyes
aliveness is
received with hands raised
wet cheeks, choked voices
is in every smile - both
shared and unshared.
Aliveness is.....
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© 2011
Julie Jordan Scott
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