Julie Unplugged

Day 30 ~ #trust30 A Bold Proclamation: "Julie! Brava! Job well done!"

My future self has beamed in and told me (not via text or tweet but via loud, melodious vocalization.. a divine sort of thing):

"They're grown: each one satisfied, content and beyond any expectations you could have had, Julie! Brava! Job well done!"

I am a Mom, first and foremost. I may be a performance poet, a product developer, an actor, a creative life coach working for individual and world transformation but above it all are three lives I brought into this world.

My eldest is going to be 20 on Christmas Day. It struck me, once I started whining that today's prompt was unsatisfactory, that she and I would both be at big birthdays and my son, ten years from now, will be her age. He will be two years out of high school... and Emma will be 23: either done with her undergrad work or on the way...

Perhaps I am different than most parents... I don't have any specific life goals for my children. My only somewhat goal is that they are content. They can sweep streets and if that finds them satisfied, brava!

We have so much fun together ~ my daughters are old enough now to be included in activities I take on with my friends, like last week's trip to the Getty Museum. They are a joy to be with and we truly enjoy each other's company. When we couchsurf, out hosts almost universally comment on what a pleasure it is to host our family: that we go with the flow, that we are thoughtful and each member is unique and respectful of other people's uniquenesses.

 

 

 

On this final day, I have to throw in a transcendental story.

During Spring Break we visited the Manse, in Concord. This is the home the Emerson family rented to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his young bride, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. We heard tales of a young Waldo (as in our young Ralph Waldo Emerson) running down these very hallways, laughter ringing out. I imagine him talking to his Grandfather when he left the Unitarian ministry.... and after this tour, we went to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to visit the graves of Emerson and his contemporaries.

As much as I love Emerson, I have an intense love for his younger friend, Henry David Thoreau. My younger daughter, Emma, had a headache when we were at the cemetery and stayed in the car. I thought it was fine, I don't force my children into my quirky likes and dislikes.

 

We were standing by Thoreau's grave when Emma walked up, saying she knew how important it was to me to be here and she didn't want me to experience it without her.

Yes, yes, yes.

I'm smiling and living those words, even now:

"They're grown: each one satisfied, content and beyond any expectations you could have had, Julie! Brava! Job well done!"

= = =

This blog post was inspired by the #Trust30 Writing Challenge. Click there to see today's prompt.　

 

  Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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Wednesday #Wishcasting: Letting Go of the Tyranny of Time

 It is the weekly exercise in Wishcasting with my friends at Jamie Ridler Studios. I look forward to this event each Wednesday. Today was no different!

I read today's wish-prompt and thought... I am taking a break from what I wanted to take a break from: the theater. I have nothing coming up, my slate is clear, and I am able to settle into creating more of what I want to create as well as free space to be with and take care of my family. I could have stopped right there and marked my slate DONE! but that would be the non-weasel-y way out of responding to the question.

I am also on sabbatical with a friend whose behavior was the straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back this weekend.

She doesn't quite get it, which is another reason for the sabbatical itself!

I am taking a break, therefore, in a relationship that isn't working for me. For us.

I am going to see what my fellow wish-casters are saying to see if anything clunks me over the head with, "Wow, why didn't I think of that?"

Well, I never got to my compadres pages (yet) but I did get to my wish for myself...

I wish to take a break from the tyranny of the clock.

I am so tired of hearing myself say, "There isn't enough time," or "I don't have enough time" or any of that nonsense.

I want to get lost in time so I may expand each moment and simultaneously squeeze the juice from each one.

It reminds me of expand, breathe in deeply and exhale... even more deeply... and then open again... and again... and again.

I think if I look at both my theater sabbatical and my friendship sabbatical, both point in this same direction.

I wish to take a break from the tyranny of the clock. Summer is the perfect time for that... ahhh, yes.

This deepens my earlier response and brings my clarity that much more into focus.

I wish.....

 

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How to Find Peace through Principled Living so You May Discover Strength is What Lives There #trust30

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Warning: I do not use the prescribed Trust30 prompt for today because it is another fear-based prompt rather than an Emersonian based prompt. I was hoping these final few days would be different so I was rather disappointed to find us back where we were before, like returning to junior high after high school instead of moving along to college.

I hope I am not insulting you when I say that. Perhaps the prompt worked for you today and was exactly what you needed to read and write from, but on June 18 I wrote a blog post with this title: "The Courage Trail: And Why I Won't Address Redundant Fear-Worship for the Remainder of June" and today, I stand on the principles I addressed then.

Please understand what I am saying here: when my goal is completely in alignment with who I am and what I want to do-be and experience in the world, fear and uncertainty are par for the course but not so unsettling that they stop me. They are like stepping stones. My principles are fuel for my passionate pursuit of the gifts I offer the world. The gifts of life goals completed as tangible offerings and experiences that make this world a better place for others to do their life work, to live their passions, to not be ruled by fear and uncertainty but rather ruled by, as Emerson says, Principles.

I take time to strenthen my principles and in doing so, I am sure what I am doing and who I am being matches up with what is right for me. It naturally and without effort whisks the uncertainty/worry/fear right away.

It is as Emerson said, I am left standing with peace even if my knees are knocking. If I am giving a speech in front of a huge audience and I believe in what I am saying, my knees may knock and my voice may shake, but the principles I stand on are so firm, there is no question of whether or not I will take action.

I promised a week or so ago I would no longer worship at the temple of fear during this writing challenge because so many of the prompts seemed to take us straight into that place. I was sadly surprised to see yet another prompt with "fear" as a primary component. I don't see fear in Ralph Waldo Emerson's words, do you?

What do you see in today's quote?

I see strength, I see clarity, I see steadfastness and I see accomplishment borne from those qualities.

I also see fear and uncertainty as too different things. Uncertainty is as ambiguity - smoky, rough terrain, perhaps. That feeling of sea legs when setting out into something new. Uncertainty is often one of my muses, not something to turn from or worry about, it is something to celebrate. It offers me questions to live, challenges to rise toward and eventually either realize are companions on the road to my goals or sometimes they are blessings in disguise that say, "No, this really isn't what you wanted in the first place."

Emerson wrote of Triumph of Principles - when we lead a principled life, when we know what our principles are, uncertainty is less of an issue and fear is a playmate much more than an enemy.

Let's spend some time with Emerson's "Triumph of Principles" concept.

From Answers.com

" You are responsible for making sure you live by your own principles. And the exercise of those principles will bring you the greatest happiness in life."

And the definition of Principles from Dictionary.com:

 

1. A fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

2. A rule or belief governing one's personal behavior

In re-reading Sean Ogle's prompt, I note his gentle approach to breaking down uncertainty.

I certainly appreciate that intention. I wonder what would happen if instead there was restoration of principles. If there was a curiosity built around the concept of being clear on our principles so that we know from our gut (or our heart) that this is the life goal we truly want to go for after all. What I have found repeatedly in my life is that when I think I want something, but am not sure I want something, this is when fear and uncertainty show up and the waffling become overwhelming.

Too often people create life goals based on shoulds or other people's opinions or the guidance of someone else and these goals match, they don't fit. Its no wonder people get stuck. It is like a little boy wearing a man-sized-suit and continually falling down or a woman giving her all to become a CEO of a cosmetic company because that was her mother's dream when she is blissful working out and at yoga classes but hates the drudgery of putting on make up.

Isn't it obvious?

Personal peace is achieved through principled living. It is achieved through knowing what we want and being perfectly clear that our principles are our own: not our parents or teachers or pastors, but our own.

If the voice of uncertainty or fear is louder than the voice of our principled action, look at the goal and ask yourself, "Is this really what I want?"

My guess is it isn't.

 

 
　

 

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Aliveness Is.... a Poetic Response to @samdavidson 's #Trust30 prompt

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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Birth of Another Artful Challenge: Silent After All These Years & Me #CED2011

This afternoon I took my most recent visual art creations and delivered them into the hands of my friend, Michelle Guerrerro Tolley.

It felt just like my other births: I was slightly disoriented right before I gave the final push. I know I saw, and hugged, and interacted with people I knew. I can see their faces and hear their voices, but just like when I had my human children, I am not entirely sure what was said or if I behaved in a civil manner.

I just know I had to give up these works of art that had been growing inside me, slowly showing themselves to the rest of the world, bit by bit.

 

My friend and Gallery Director at the Empty Space, Jesus Fidel, had a great idea for an art show. Inspired by lyrics by Tori Amos and an organization called RAINN (Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network) artists were called to create work using inspiration and imagery from songs Amos wrote about her own rape and finding her own voice again. My art is a combination of images from the songs married to other images that came up throughout the time between our first artist meeting and today's art drop.

Reminder: I have never completely bought into the concept of being a visual artist. I am a Mom who writes and occasionally acts (and works hard but never feels quite good enough there, either) and directs and sings and writes and performs poetry and splatters her creativity around but visual artist is something I generally leave for my more talented, educated and/or know-what-they-are-doing friends.

I wouldn't have even tried to create visual art if it wasn't for my beloved friends  Jen Raven and A.S. Ashley. I felt so outclassed when I first started playing in this playground several years ago that I stifled my efforts a lot until this show, for many reasons, yanked at my core and I responded.

This is why I drove and cried this morning at the thought of letting my art go, let it be seen by others all the while the thoughts running through my head, "What if people don't get it?" and "What if the metaphors are lost to everyone?" and "What if it is plain old bad?" and "What if people point and laugh when I walk into the gallery?"

Last week I was in tears because of the steep learning curve I had to overcome as well as the steep comfort curve. The methods and styles I was choosing meant I got caught up in the how-to's. My eyelids stung when I asked my dear friend, Cameron, to recognize why I was so flustered  - because so many times in my life I let the "but I don't know hows" to stop me and the story this art wanted to tell felt too big to be drowned by my fears.

The subject of the art simply grabbed me by my throat and opened it up, breathing the "oh yes you can's" into my fingers and pumping me up with injections of discomfort-overcoming-vaccinations. I fell in love with my heroine, my she-ro, a conglomeration of an "every girl" in the form of Johnny Gruelle's Raggedy Ann meets a Hymn Singing Tori Amos, You, Me and Her, over there, hiding behind the oversized glasses or carrying that violin case.

 

I don't have photos of the completed art yet - they will have to wait until the opening of the show (on July 2 and I won't even be able to be there!) but I am thinking I may blog more about the creative process and how it unfolded. It was such a wooing, so many synchronicities... and like the birth of my human children, something happens when we give birth that makes us want to share the story over and over and over again!

 

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SOC Sunday: Posed & Unposed ~ Two Wishing Photos Inspire Me

 
 
Two photos: Same place, literally seconds apart... completely different story.

Yesterday I visited the Getty Center in Los Angeles with my daughters and my friends. It was separate worlds of mine, intersecting.

Writing students of mine who became friends ~ Adela, who lives in New Jersey who has been a writing student then companion now intimate writing friend since 2003 who I have never met in person; Paula, who Adela connected with me, who lives in Los Angeles who has attended my virtual writing camps who went with Emma and me up the Kern River on a writing adventure about six weeks ago; my daughters Katherine and Emma (who Adela has read in my writing for years) and then my theater and art friends, Julia, Jennie and my dear Cameron, who isn't pictured here because he was behind the lense. It was people meeting people knowing people coming to know people in one of the most glorious cultural settings on the West Coast.

And I decided I wanted nothing more than to make a wish with all these women in my life.

So we posed. Get a load of the lovely posed photo. We are all so happy to be together, all poised and ready with the pennies, dimes and yes even a quarter I handed out with excitement bubbling through this offering.

It was a "Wish on three!" sort of thing and we all tossed our coins over our shoulder to the fountain below, beautifully sculpted by an artist.

I love the post-wish-release photos even more than the posed one because we are all showing ourselves, so vividly, unposed, raw... and lovely.

We are each fully immersed in the wish, in the moment, in ourselves and our own wishes and yet loving the context: the gorgeous Los Angeles June day, these beloveds all around us, the what we had seen and what we had yet to seen and that childlike belief in the simple act of tossing a coin in a fountain.

Oh, there is so much more to say, and I am sure I will!!

but my five minutes are up....

  

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Extraordinary Ordinary: Clever and Bewildered, Boldly Yourself ~ #trust30 @pattidigh + you & me

I reached for my smart phone this morning to read today's trust30 prompt.

When I read it, I immediately thought of a favorite quote from my friend, ancient Sufi Mystic, Rumi. He wrote, "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment."

I love the quote so much it is written in gold pen upon the purple front door of my home.

 When I share this quote with my writing students, I am chronically surprised that their response to bewilderment has a tendency to opt toward being afraid of it. They think of bewilderment as confused, disoriented and that ever unpopular ambiguous place coated with thick grey unknowing covering their minds and hearts. Somehow this lovely bewildered place becomes a dark land of fear where one is relentllessly caught without a smart phone or GPS or google ~ just first hand experience of "what is"...I see some other people - certainly not you or me - run away with their arms akimbo and flailing at the mist screaming... "not that, please... I'm not ready to leap without a net, to improvise in front of an audience, to not have an exact recipe for someone, anyone's brand of success!!"

Our trust30 prompter today, Patti Digh, wrote:

"We are our most potent at our most ordinary. And yet most of us discount our "ordinary" because it is, well, ordinary. Or so we believe."

One of my a-ha's through this Trust30 experience is I am pretty darned comfortable with being afraid. I don't mind wobbly-sea-legs when trying something new.

I still have some familiar fear blocks, but I am working on them. I certainly don't buy into fear-worship.

One of my gaps left to bridge is noting when these ordinary aspects of life are awfully extraordinary.

I just saw a tweet where someone scoffed, "I refuse to accept ordinary" or something like that.

Well, I see ordinary as extraordinary.

I see ordinary as blissed out wonder. In my coffee cup, in my overly-hot, blisteringly dry Bakersfield, I see gloriousness. I don't need to go away to a mountaintop because what is inside me - how I look out from my nearsighted, oddly colored blue eyes is ordinarily extraordinary.

Just last night I sat across a table from a friend of mine, helping her through a challenge. "Scrape away all the opinions, all the judgments and tell me  the facts here. Each fact, plain and simple. No extra embellishments."

The ordinary is extraordinary. The ordinary gives us clarity.

As I wrote, a fascinating a-ha just happened. I was about to list all the ordinary extraordinary things here in my home sphere:

My lavendar crop, my poetry fire sculpture I didn't know how to do and did it and now I discover is cutting edge in the art world, my son Samuel's continued success even with his fabulous extraordinary ordinary atypical neurology, my first pumpkin plant growing roots in this Bakersfield heat.... and then I thought..

Wait: this prompt is about my ordinary-ness. Those parts of me I tend to overlook as "the same as everyone" because I believe anyone can do what I do, yet at the same time I am naturally gifted and can use these gifts to offer my ordinary-extraordinaryness back to the world.

Like my story-telling, both in writing and how about that victory at the first story telling slam I ever intended?

How about guest lecturing/experiencing at the college last week and after reading Alice Walker's Rilkean inspired poem "Reassurance" I poo pooed my own read of it saying, "I am an actor, which is why I read this like I do but you could learn how, too, with practice." Both are true. My Divinely given vocal chords are my ordinary extraordinary and my use of them and practice with them is extraordinary ordinary which I am so willing to share with others.

How many people have to tell me what my writing classes have done in changing their lives and work before I admit "My teaching has extraordinary value simply by me being ordinarily me?"

I simply AM. And living inside that I AM and continuing to practice who I AM is what will enhance my world as well as my experience of the world because it just feels so darn good!

From Trust30 today:

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Patti Digh:

We are our most potent at our most ordinary. And yet most of us discount our “ordinary” because it is, well, ordinary. Or so we believe. But my ordinary is not yours. Three things block us from putting down our clever and picking up our ordinary: false comparisons with others (I’m not as good a writer as _____), false expectations of ourselves (I should be on the NYTimes best seller list or not write at all), and false investments in a story (it’s all been written before, I shouldn’t bother). What are your false comparisons? What are your false expectations? What are your false investments in a story? List them. Each keep you from that internal knowing about which Emerson writes. Each keeps you from making your strong offer to the world. Put down your clever, and pick up your ordinary.



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Hi, Me! Intuition Meets #Trust30

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands

. – Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 If intuition was a person, she would look exactly like me. She wouldn't tell me anything, she would ask me questions before telling me anything. She would look like you: a handsome man, a stunningly beautiful woman. Your current weight, your ever-always ethnicity. She may be dressed slightly differently: wearing the clothing you favor. Her hair might be slightly different but the face is unmistakeably right now ~ you (or me.)

She wouldn't say much of anything using conventional language. She would look at me straight in the eye, unwavering. She would giggle and say, "Hmmm..." if I was on to something. She would use phrases like, "Tell me more..." or "Interesting" or "You are onto something." She would be covert. She would ask a question and the wind would blow across my arm, gently. I would notice an Iris in bloom or a bumblebee, buzzing and moving or a bird flitting across the city scape.

This isn't an entirely original thought though when I tried to find the genesis of a similar concept thanks to YouTube and Google, I couldn't find its root.

I remember it as an episode of the 1980's St. Elsewhere television show with Howie Mandel. When I first started writing, I remembered this as Howie on ER. I would have sworn he was on the show, early on. Vaguely. Thank goodness for tenacity and IMDB.

Anyway, he had a dream sequence where he met God and God looked just like him, was another him actually. "Well, you were made in my image." God-Howie reasoned.

Intuition-Me teaches me the joy of discovery through not-knowing.

Intuition-Me teaches me the passion of creativity without a distinctive formula or recipe. Certainly there are guidelines and suggestions, but there is not a formulaic "You must do it this way or die!" sort of thing.

Intution-Me, and life, is not like that, after all.

I know marketers insist their secret is THE secret and their formula is THE formula. It may be ridiculously successful if you follow it.

AND it isn't the way for each and all of us.

Intuition me is raising her eye-brown. She has her tea cup lifted to her lips and I can see her smile-crows-feet as a sign of "Yes-ness!" over the brim of the cup.

If intuition was a person, she would look like me. Or like you. She wouldn't tell us anything, she would ask us questions.

 This blog post was inspired by Project Domino's Trust30 Writing Challenge and the combined wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson and today's prompter, Susan Piver.

 

Wednesday #Wishcasting: My Summertime Wish....

Here in Bakersfield, Summer begins in the early June. School gets out the same week as Memorial Day, so for me it feels as if Summer has been in full swing for a long time yet I haven't been able to be intentional about it yet.

 

I am grateful Jamie asked us to wish now, so that I don't wake up at the end of August and wonder, "What happened this Summer?" I am on "sabbatical" from many of my normal activities, so part of what I wish for is a reconnection with my core interests: my poetry, my poetry performance and my creative life coaching practice.

In fact, the theme which continues to resurface is Connection. Abondanza Connection. If you didn't know, Abondanza, the Italian version of Abundance, is my theme for the year. I wish to deepen connections with people with whom I am currently in relationship, forge new connections with new people with whom I feel compelled to invest in relationship and reconnect with those I have lost or need bond-restoration.

I also wish to be willing to let go of those connections which no longer serve me or which don't feel compelling anymore or simply don't fit.

It is perfect, because my neice is getting married the last Saturday in August, so this will book-end my Summer. Once she gets married, Katherine will return to Smith College and Emma will be in her third week of high school and Samuel will be resettled in his elementary school routine.

In a way, this Summer Abondanza Connection is more about preparing to restore my life as a full-time artist-creative-preneur than anything else, since with Emma being homeschooled for the past two years and dealing continually with Samuel's educational battles, it was difficult to devote myself whole-souledly to my life work.

Wow. When I look at my Wish with this Ooomph, it completely excites me... takes my passion to an entirely different level.

I wish to experience abondanza connections this summer. Reach out, Restore, Replenish and Invigorate.

Ahhh, deep sigh of breath bliss.

What do you wish for this Summer?

I look forward to wishing alongside you.

 

 Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot

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What I Know: The Facts of Love I Learned from the Steps my Feet Have Taken #Trust30

Today's Trust30 prompt from Jen Louden reminded me of what I know, first hand, from visiting the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I have visited Concord, Massachusetts twice in the past year. I have walked in homes where he walked, crossed thresholds he crossed, walked down streets and paths where he has walked.

I even visted his grave and the grave of his family members at Sleepy Hollow, one of the most beautiful cemeteries I have ever visited.

 
I have a fervent belief that I know him better because I have experienced first-hand the places he has been, the places he has lived, the ground he walked upon, played upon, loved people within the walls that also held me.


(This is the Alcott's home, as in Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women. This novel was groundbreaking at the time. Emerson visited the family along with his friend Henry David Thoreau and others. My children and I posed at this threshold Emerson walked through many times.)

Somehow it feels like his breath and his heartbeat (or at least the echoes or shadows of them) are left behind for me to vibe into, although that may be too hippie or too transcendental or just too odd for many of you to agree with today.

 This is Ralph Waldo Emerson's home in Concord, Massachusetts, where he did much of his writing. After visiting the Alcott's last Summer, I walked down the street to visit at the Emerson's. I still am amazed at this.

The prompt also reminded me of what I know via my sensory experiences: right in this here and now, what do I know?

The facts, as told to me via my ears, my eyes, my skin, my bodily receptors - not my opinions, my judgments, or what other people have said or thought or felt.

In honor of my friends, Emerson and Louden, I sat with my notebook open this morning and quickly jotted the words you will read below ~ and I will take Jen's "What do I know?" question into my life and live it for the next several days.

 

I know I don't enjoy how glue feels when it is wet and sticky on my fingertips, but I love the art I make with it.

I get a strange pleasure to gaze upon my fingerprints, sculpted, when it dries and I pry it loose.

I know nagging gets on my nerves.

I know my day starts and ends better when I begin with this: scribing in my notebook, writing whatever happens to flow from this ancient office chair and crumbly desk that live on my front porch. I know some of my neighbors think I'm nuts (I don't care) and others think I'm quirky (I don't care) and still others find my steadfast-me-ness inspiring (I don't care).

I know the personality of the blue jay who visits my porch daily.

I know a grackle family has moved into my neighborhood.

I know the time of day the guy in the ancient Ford leaves for work everyday. I don't know his name, but I know I enjoy when I am out on my porch at 6:44 am and wave to him, his lit cigarette and jaunty hat both seem to smile.

I know the seemingly secret power in simply speaking these simple things I know.

 

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© 2011
Julie Jordan Scott