I responded to this writing prompt of my own making today after a full day of collaborative art journal activities.
This week I am participating in a Periscope Event for Art Journalers/Mixed Media artists. Five of us from across the country each scoping about our experiences with mixed media and art journaling. It is quite a rush, with each of us sharing and we're all learning bits and pieces from each other's varying expertise. If you would like to join us, visit YourDori.com for the replays and search the hashtag #CreatingFearlessly on Instagram and Twitter.
I am the least experienced of these though my willingness and comfort with being the least serves me well.
I have been haunted by the images that are appearing and the words that randomly were on the pages I selected randomly.
Here, I will show you a dictionary page with a theme I hadn't noticed until I took ink to the page.
Here, I will show you another, a page from a book by Denise Levertov with a slice of a poem by William Carlos Williams.
I pulled the print (original colors) on the scope with the flowers being born later. Do you see what I see underneath?
I asked my companions today what they wanted me to do with this page they helped to create and I was given the task of writing a poem. I sat with the prompt I created above and from the page itself and this is what was born in a five minute brain dump.
My wild things are appearing in the painted pages.
Everywhere they seem to either mock me (if I held that opinion) or hold the curious loops of a question mark in their letters. H – D- A – E –T. When I put them like that, not so scary. Not so scary.
H-A-D-E-T- is that the word for womb that has lost its usefulness?
Is T-E-A-H-D the word for mother who finally has children who have simultaneous social engagements so she may address her work, listening to harp music as she likes in the room she truly wants to be in?
Maybe so.
Synchronicity doesn’t normally speak with such insistence unless it’s important.
Stop turning your face from me, she says, Julie look.
Julie. Look.
Look. Julie.
Look.
Like a Mary, Mike and Jeff primer when I was finally allowed to learn to read.
I could have taught myself if someone gave me permission. My children did, after all.
My shoulders turn in on themselves. I huddle in, chin to my heart. I don’t want to look.
Somehow I know in the looking comes the healing, the looking is part of the bridge that takes me to the freedom of rebirth, the beginnings that come after the tears spill off my chin and onto my calendar, empty and waiting for this season. This. Season.
Job well done, Julie.
Job well done.
Life really is a series of little deaths, over and over and over again.
With each death, rebirth follows. Rebirth won’t follow unless we allow the death shroud to fall to the ground, the blanket for our feet to step upon.
I sit with my face in my hands. My elbows on my desk, knowing my time is up and yet not wanting to move.
These wild things, these losses big and small and someplace in between. These layers of skin, shedding. These scars, ragged and often unnoticed.
= = = =
I am not sure what tomorrow will bring, but I look forward to the discovery.
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Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in early Summer and beyond.
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t tomorrow will bring, but I'm looking forward to the discovery.
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