Sometimes I forget the simple bubbles of contentment that
float from my core when I sit at my kitchen table when the day is new and
write, free flow, without thinking, for three pages. Julia Cameron taught me
about “morning pages” about twelve years ago. I wish I could say in that entire
time I have been completely faithful to the practice, but that would not be
true.
Natalie Goldberg simplified it when I finally read her book,
Writing Down the Bones. I resisted this book for the longest time
because I didn’t like the title. When I finally surrendered to it because
everyone told me I should read it, I not only liked it, I loved it. I cried
when I was finished. She taught me I could write any time of day, with a timer perhaps, and aim to fill a 90 page notebook in a month. Basically, morning pages without the morning attached.
I got a new kitchen table at a yard sale last weekend and
this morning was the first time I tried it out with my notebook. It felt beyond
words wonderful.
It was like stacking all the notebooks I have loved and used
up over these past twelve years were sitting in an audience applauding me for
making the choice to sit at my kitchen table and write. Not to rush around
vocalizing and annoying my children as they prepare for their school day, but
to simply let things be and let words flow.
It doesn’t take a long time and I feel so much better all
day long simply because I let those words fall off my pencil and onto the page.
Not on a keyboard, but the old fashioned way.
I think back to the many writers across time who sat at
kitchen tables and wrote in little snippets of time, selfishly unselfish when
she or he might have been dusting or folding laundry or writing a business plan
or corralling children.
Yes, I meant to say “selfishly, unselfish” because sometimes
being selfish is the absolute least selfish thing we can do for the world. I
know my contributions today will be offered with more positivity and love if I
hadn’t simply taken the few moments to let the words inside me out, to set them
free on the page, letter after letter after word after word after sentence
after paragraph after page.
Writers and Non-writers alike - Tell me about your
resistance or your enjoyment in daily free flow “without a purpose” writing.
The backlight from the sun blocks the view of this enormous homeless city. I'll go back next week and photograph it when the light is better.
Dear Mom,
I wasn’t expecting to find you when I was focused on my search for
a hiking trail recommended by my friend, Michelle. All I wanted to do was catch a good shot of the sunset. When
I scrambled up the hill to what I thought was the path, I caught my breath. A
virtual tent city, a shanty town – an enormous complex of people’s homes
underneath this bridge I cross daily.
Other people might run away. I hesitated but I stayed. The lighting
wasn’t good under there or I would have taken photos.
This sight had “compelling”
written all over it and might wake some people up who are completely unaware of
the homelessness right in their neighborhoods, hidden away.
You were waving your arms at me, to get my attention.
I saw you and could recognize the ravages of
methamphetamine. “Can you take me to 19th and M street please? They
took all my things, all I have is here… they took all my clothes, everything,”
you told me.
You had a suitcase.
You had a trashbag filled with recyclables.
You had no shame, no embarrassment at asking me: owner of a
new car, an expensive smart phone and much more than I bet you remembered ever
having.
I asked what was at 19th and M. “My Uncle,” you
told me. You mentioned your son, and your daughter, and your other children. I
had no idea where they were, no idea how old they were because my guess is you
were probably much younger than you looked with your hair neatly combed albeit
in a very offbeat style.
“I built this place and they wrecked it!” you said, seeming
to not want to stop talking for fear I might vaporize.
You do see things that aren’t real, you told me. You do hear
things you don’t think are here.
We put your broken suitcase empty of clothes and your collection of cans and
plastic in the back of my car.
We drove two miles to where you needed to go. I asked your
name. You told me. I told you my name.
You said you recognized me. Perhaps you do. Or perhaps I am
another of those things you have seen that aren’t real. It doesn’t matter to
me. You had enough sense to not smoke your cigarette in my car and before we
had gone a mile you started calling me your fairy godmother.
I took you where you asked to go and you surprised me when
you pulled out a cell phone. I wondered if your children had called you today
on this Mother’s Day. Maybe you weren't aware it was Mother’s day.
I took the suitcase out and carried it to the side of the
building as you asked me.
I told you to take care. We hugged, a real heart-to-heart
hug. “I guess I do believe in fairy godmothers,” you said.
I smiled and went about the rest of my business of the day.
You, dear Mom, will forever be a part of my lexicon now.
You are in my prayers as are your children.
Finding you and helping you, another mother, was so much
more important than finding the perfect sunset shot – even though I managed to
get a pretty cool image there as well.
There is creative fire in friendships, just as there was between Elinor Wylie and Edna St. Vincent Millay
It has taken me longer than I thought to this experience on paper.
Sometimes it works like that for me: I find something too evocative to put into words, so I don’t. I wait for the right words to come. I wait longer. What I have discovered about myself is sometimes I never get to writing them down. I wait and then forget.
Slowly and meanderingly, the memory and the core feeling it brings up in my belly stops itching like it once did.
It was several weeks ago I sniffed out a place that has haunted me for at least eight years. Since the first time I “got to know” Edna St. Vincent Millay – because she haunted me and wouldn’t let go – I have had a yearning to visit her home at Steepletop.
The Home at Steepletop
In 2008 I wrote of her haunting:
“Someone from history will start tapping on my shoulder and over time I hear the name enough times that it becomes like a familiar song on the radio, the one you didn't know but all of a sudden could sing along quite well without even thinking about it. Edna St. Vincent Millay comes to mind as another woman who haunted me, as did Martha Graham for a time.”
I noted back then there was an artist’s colony there, but no tours of the home or grounds for literary travelers such as I. I tabled the thought, although the idea of an artist’s colony stuck with me. I still haven’t responded to that yearning: an artist’s colony for multi-generations so that parents and/or grandparents and caretakers who are responsible for their children could come and so could the children.
This is how my writing camp idea was initially born and now has been thriving for several years both virtually and in person.
So Lovely! The office across the street from Steepletop.
I also became a fan of Elinor Wylie via my series on Literary Grannies from 2012. I noted her friendship with Millay and I bought her poetry collection Trivial Breath. I was fascinated by her history as a mother and then, her many children that never came to be. I felt an odd kinship with her as I suppose was her haunting.
I literally stumbled and then tenaciously stalked Steepletop that day in April. I was so close I simply could not leave the Berkshires without a visit.
What I got was better than a visit.
I backtracked after reaching Auesterlitz and couldn’t find my way to Steepletop. I drove back to the hamlet and telephoned, expecting to get an answering machine. Instead, I got the warm voice of Peter Bergman, the Executive Director of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, although I didn’t know at the time to whom I was speaking. He gave me simple directions and invited me to tour the grounds “anytime”. With my heart pounding and my passion guiding the car’s forward movement, I found myself able to experience the grandeur and silent wonder of a place I have dreamed of visiting not on my own or with a crowd. I was blessed to experience Millay’s home on a one-on-one tour with the curator. When I found more of Elinor Wylie’s work on the shelves in the store I literally shouted, “Elinor!” as the reality of their friendship wasn’t at the forefront of my mind until I took her book off the shelf.
Millay was the more famous of the two women, but she loved Elinor with a strength beyond what many ever come to know. In the home at Steepletop there is a bottle of wine meant to be shared with Elinor but instead shared by her widowed husband and Millay shortly after Wylie’s death. It has been left empty on the mantel ever since as a forever altar in honor of their friendship.
I cried several times during the tour. There were times my feet seemed to be glued to the floorboards as I didn’t think I could take another step. When we arrived at the doorstep of Millay’s library, I literally thought I couldn’t go inside.
I’m not sure when you are reading this, but I am writing to you on Mother’s Day. It seems fitting I share this poem written by a woman who was never a mother – Millay, and her friend – who left her three-year-old son with his father and only faced stillbirth, miscarriage and infant loss after she left.
Mr. Bergman recited this poem as he stood next to the spot Millay was found dead on October 19, 1950.
“The courage my mother had," by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Collected Poems (Harper Collins).
The courage that my mother had
The courage that my mother had Went with her, and is with her still: Rock from New England quarried; Now granite in a granite hill.
The golden brooch my mother wore She left behind for me to wear; I have no thing I treasure more: Yet, it is something I could spare.
Oh, if instead she'd left to me The thing she took into the grave!- That courage like a rock, which she Has no more need of, and I have.
Motherhood and friendship, friendship and motherhood weave through the lives of women whether their art form is poetry or mommying or quilting or being a book keeper.
May we all have courage like a rock – to remember our literary grannies and our sisters, mothers and friends of today with a similar passion as these remarkable women shared.
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.
It was a day like countless other days. Get up. Get the
kidlets to rise and shine. Get in car.
Go south, turn left. There, at the end of the road almost
like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow is our first stop, Emma’s school.
I rarely expect for anything new to arrive on the short
trip, but earlier this year I noticed a flock of birds sitting at all four
traffic lights at an intersection. Every day we would watch them swirling and
following each other and landing and the next set swirling and following and
the next set in a natural synchronized flying adventure.
Lately, though, my eyes have been caught up and intrigued by
an entirely different form of eye candy.
There is an empty lot on the way to school that is in a
rather “sketchy” neighborhood. I use that term because that is what my
daughters would say. In this empty lot there has recently been a shopping cart
convention underway. I watch it every day to see if any new “members” have
arrived or if anyone has carefully arranged them or pulled them apart.
The view changes each day.
The first time I noticed, I was drawn by the rainbow of
shopping cart colors. Someone had arranged the carts in a tidy almost bouquet
looking arrangement.
Yesterday in the afternoon when my son and I were driving
there, we saw a little girl and her father there, in the empty lot. The father
was emptying out
one of the blue carts – from Petsmart – and was apparently
going to use it in some way.
Maybe it isn’t a shopping cart convention, perhaps it is a
shopping cart library where you can check them in and out as needed.
For me it has been another fascination to follow both
creatively and sociologically. It is a sign of the times in my town and a sign
of what to you?
My creativity has certainly been heightened. First, it was a
sight that begged to be photographed. I responded, naturally. Samuel was
patient with me – again – as I pulled off the road at a random place for the
great shot I stumbled upon.
Choose to be aware of even the smallest change
along your usual routes or in your usual places. I am literally never bored
from living this lifestyle of being alert and awake. Instantly the most mundane
turn into fascinating subjects.
Ask others what random surprises they have had
lately. If they haven’t had any random surprises lately it is like an invitation
you have both issued so that random, interesting “stuff” will begin to show up.
Change your conversations from pop culture talks to what is true and tangible
in the world you share daily with others.
Create SOMETHING from the surprises you find. Write
a poem, a couple sentences in your notebook, a sketch, a photo, a conversation
with others. Post your words or images on facebook and see what your friends
see and notice.
Make connections – sometimes the odd images that
pop into our surroundings actually have a message for us when we use our
intuition rather than our logical, thinking brain. Think of synchronicity as
defined by Carl Jung the experience of two or more events that are unlikely to
occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together in a
meaningful manner.
Continue to engage yourself and your curiosity
in conversation” about the surprise you encountered. I know after I found the
shopping carts I had an incredibly wild, detailed and refreshing dream. I
haven’t had that sort of dream in years with so many scenes and vivid colors,
characters and textures. I can’t stop thinking about the shopping carts nor can
I stop looking at them. As crazy as I sound, I can also tell you it also fits
in the ridiculously fun category – and that is enough for me to pursue almost
anything.
It would delight me to know how you replace boredom with aliveness and passion. What are your favorite strategies?
Why not try one of my suggestions and report back here?
"What makes you reach for a comfort food?" is the question the folks at BlogHer's NaBloPoMo are asking today.
I reach for comfort food for a variety of reasons.
The most obvious is I treat comfort food like a security
blanket. The irony is continued use of this practice has made me anything but
comfortable with myself. This is why I haven’t had rice with butter and salt in
months. I miss it, but I am now reaching – usually – for other things.
I was remembering this morning when I was the most
disciplined (and the most self loving) around food. I was visiting New Orleans
and all I wanted to eat was a salad from a salad bar. Gosh and golly, we found
a place with a salad bar and for that moment all that crunchy, dark green
goodness soothed me – much like rice with butter and salt soothes me.
Now, to live the question, “What will be the most
productive, long term method to getting back to being comforted by food that is
healthy rather than foods which are traditionally not so healthy?”
What can you do to shift your thinking toward Healthier Comfort food?
This month with NaBloPoMo from BlogHer.com the theme is
Comfort. So far, I have completely enjoyed answering the prompts - they are all
bringing back surprisingly clear memories that had been tucked away for far too
long.
The theme today? Comfort Food - from my This is Comfort series using prompts from BlogHer.com
Today's NaBloPoMo question is: What is your biggest comfort food?
It is ironic to be asked this question on this day. It is my son
Samuel’s twelfth birthday. A week before he was born, my Mom rode in like the
cavalry to help me. She usually didn’t show up before the baby was born, but
this time it was different. I was alone with my three older daughters. I was
enormous at this point and felt most comfortable sitting on the couch.
She opened the door to my house on that Spring Day and came
to me, her younger daughter who was hugely pregnant at thirty-nine years old. I
imagine I looked as pitiful as I did when I got my tonsils out at age 6.
“What can I get for you?” she asked. Naturally with a Mommy
the first thought is “What can I feed you?”
My request?
I asked for steamed rice with butter and salt AND an egg
salad sandwich.
It was so simple for her to create and so comforting for the
very pregnant me.
These are still two of my most commonly requested comfort
foods.
There are no recipes necessary except love and I am
supremely satisfied.
What is YOUR favorite comfort food?
This month with NaBloPoMo from BlogHer.com the theme is
Comfort. So far, I have completely enjoyed answering the prompts - they are all
bringing back surprisingly clear memories that had been tucked away for far too
long.
I watched Samuel walk from the car toward school this
morning. I still carry incredulity in my front pocket when I realize this is
the very last month of my career as an elementary school mother. I’ve been
doing this elementary school mommying gig since 1990 so it is more than a wee bit shocking to realize,
especially with my beloved son being my final elementary school student.
I often equate his schooling with pain and sadness and
fighting and exhaustion and wondering “Will this ever get better?” The girls
were a breeze. I never thought about it with them much. Now, with Samuel, I am
nearly always on red alert for the school to call to tell me something
happened: something bad, either to Samuel or because of Samuel.
Then I watch him on a hiking expedition with friends and see
him energetically lead the way. I see how he gives all that leadership fun up
in order to “help me” across the creek. I watch him create videos and laugh and
write comedic scripts and I realize there is so much more to him than he
usually shows. I watch his concentration and joy as he rides his bicycle.
Tomorrow I will be visiting the junior high he will be
attending. I told him this morning I would be going there. “Why?” he asked.
“I need to check it out before you go and make sure it is a
decent place!”
He seemed satisfied.
I hope I am satisfied.
People tell me they can’t tell he has autism. This is one of
the challenges of not being neurotypical. If you are high functioning enough,
you just seem like every other child until you are watched more carefully.
Today is Samuel’s birthday. He is twelve years old. He has
taught me so much about both deep, profound pleasure and deep, profound pain. I
need to remember the pleasure more as well as make more opportunities to
experience pleasure with him.
Jana
hosts the weekly Stream of Consciousness Sunday which is a chance to
just write write write for only five minutes each week. Usually I write
to the prompt she offers. That is what I did this week... and it was far
too much fun today.
Earlier this week my friend, Kimberly, texted me saying “I respect
your ability to deal with expectations.”
We had been texting back and forth about disappointments,
about sometimes sadness. I literally leaned back in my seat to think about that
for a moment. I had never really thought of it lately, although in the past I
told people one of the secrets to my happiness was having the lowest
expectations as possible or have no expectations and then when great stuff
happens it is a HUGE reason to celebrate.
I basically wonder, “Why should I receive anything, anyway?”
probably after a childhood of somehow intuitively understanding in a family of
six kids where we heard repeatedly about the “austerity program of the week” it
is better not to hope for the best and instead hope for whatever.
I know, this sounds incredibly pessimistic but if you flip
it on its side and really look at it with your eyes wide open, you’ll be able
to see it differently.
Some of my theater friends get very upset to not be cast in
a role.
I’m usually shocked anyone would want to cast me.
Some of my work friends get upset because they don’t get
published or don’t get rave reviews.
I’m grateful to be published and figure reviews are not
objective, anyway, they are based more on who the reviewer is than who I am or
for that matter, who my work is.
I see getting sad about expectations is a choice. If we
choose to have lower expectations while working towards the best possible
outcome, we will be so much more grateful when that best possible outcome
happens. I call this whole concept “passionate detachment.”
Again,a paradox, and again, it works. To go for “it” –
whatever “it” may be, while at the same time not expecting any sort of
evaluation more than your experience and the lessons learned along the way. The
experience and lessons need to be enough. Once you train yourself to be this
way, your life will be immeasurably happier. All you'll have the deal with then is an increased level of contentment and joy in your life.
(Thanks, Jana, for helping me to remember all this!)
(Timer sings!)
This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s
five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the
rules…
Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
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.
This month with NaBloPoMo from BlogHer.com the theme is Comfort. So far, I have completely enjoyed answering the prompts - they are all bringing back surprisingly clear memories that had been tucked away for far too long.
Today's query: Which would you rather have: a super-soft pillow or a warm,
fuzzy blanket?
I still remember the moment I first covered up with a down
comforter. It was my senior year in college. I was staying overnight at my
friend’s home. She was actually my friend/employer. I cleaned her daycare
center which was in the first floor of her mansion sized Morristown home.
She and her family were gone for the Thanksgiving weekend
and after I returned from Boston – where I spent Thanksgiving – to the
Morristown area, my dorm was still closed. She offered me to have free rein at
her home and I could still, then, do my steady Sunday cleaning gig as well.
The comforter was white. Clear, crisp white like I wouldn’t
have ever seen in a home I lived in. It seemed crazy, to have something not
only so white, but something that begged to be cuddled only I didn’t even have
to wrap my arms around me, it felt like it automatically cuddled me.
I can replicate a pillow with a purse or a backpack or even
a roll of clothes: I can’t replicate that feeling of being hugged by my
bedding. A down comforter, anyday.
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