What would happen if you spent the whole day NOT shopping? A-ha!!
A-ha moments come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are like thunderclaps. Some are like violent accidents and others are like the discovery of a waterfall during a long hike when you really wanted to take a break from walking but didn't want to look like a wimp to your fellow hikers.
This morning I was awake before the sunrise. I didn't wake up to participate in consumerist, Black Friday activities, I woke up because it was the usual time for me to begin my day.
Last night I had a difficult time closing the novel I am reading, the classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I literally can not remember the last time I did that - fought sleep because of an excellent novel reading experience.
In the interim I had weird dreams of Emma's former guidance counselor invading my unconscious and crying our for her new guidance counselor at her new school. There were also lots of kittens and Mama Kitties in my dream. They were everywhere. I think this is because of the baby explosion in my life: this aspect of my dream was quite similar to the dreams I had when I was pregnant oh so long ago.
I realized Emma was also awake very early via the fact she favorited a tweet I sent about my dream. Samuel is awake, too. I imagine Katherine at her friend's house in Vermont, probably still asleep though she is three hours ahead of us.
It came to me, softly and with strength: I don't want another shapeless day today.
I want a day with substance, with purpose, with a measurement in laughter, memorable conversations and forward movement. I still need to successfully figure out how to make paper cranes. I need to continue with my dollmaking project that continues to lie, inert and barely started.
I want to write and promote and network.
I want to spend time with my children.
I want to spend quality time with myself.
I am happiest when my days - and my life - has shape and form. I am grateful I am the one who continues to be responsible for sculpting most of my time. During December, my plan is to begin to build 2014. Its funny, in my mind I picture a house being framed not unlike I have seen in old fashioned barn raisings.
I believe I am onto something here.
Alice the cat has a thread dangling from her paw and it is frustrating her. I smile as I watch her struggling with it.
I wonder what a-ha is waiting for her to find it?
=====
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
This is yet another version than you will see in the collage below. It may, in fact, be my favorite. Which one speaks to you the most?
One of the lessons from Art Every Day Month I have learned this year is to look at my creations in different ways. I’ve been focusing on finishing and recycling my art projects as well.
I tend to do one of two things: start and not finish and stockpile unfinished gems OR finish gems and put them in a pile of finished yet unappreciated work.
I am in the middle of a mixed media work right now and I am not sure which direction it wants to be taken so instead of just setting it aside completely, I thought about what I might create with what I had.
1.Take photos of sections of the work of art, like cutting your work into pieces of cake.
2.Choose the “piece of cake" that tastes yummiest to you.
3. Playfully experiment with photo editing to consider and discover the many ways that particular art could become other art or serve other purposes both for you and also new products to bring to your art market.
In these examples, you will see how the same slice of my collage has been given three different makeovers.
I used pixlr. com, a very simple photo editing website, to revise my images. Each different one took literally less than a minute.
Once I had the main image the way I wanted it, the others were simply different filters. That's it.
Look at the variety of moods just from changing the filters:
I see the top image as the most conventional. It is romantic, feminine and probably the most favorable to conventional viewers.
The second image is using a newspaper style.
I wasn't wild about it at first and used it mostly to show contrast, but now that I look at it longer I see how well it would work under some circumstances.
It seems bleaker to me, more nebulous.
I can't see the clothing pattern as clearly so it seems more like mush that something creative. The dancer in the front looks sad, lonely, perhaps a bit lost.
There are some who may get the most excited from this particular image.
Do you see all the possibilities?
I like to think of the bottom image as perhaps the most interesting. I feel dizzy when I look at it, not unlike when I took dance lessons as a little girl and spun around before I learned how to eliminate that by strategic focus.
I also appreciate the more intense colors along with that dizzyness.
Looking at the complete ladder of images I also see how I could photo edit further by numbering each of the images - yes, actually adding a numeral - and some words right over each image.
I have heard wonderful reviews of PicMonkey but I have yet to use it. This weekend that is one of my goals. To check out PicMonkey and perhaps to begin using it.
Pixlr is so simple, I hope PicMonkey can match it. I used to use Picnik, which I heard is a lot like PicMonkey: another encouraging fact.
Between my use of instagram and pixlr and mixing them up together, I could play with images and create both digital art as well as 2D and 3D art probably all day long.
I know eventually a poem or an essay would come alongside me and slap me on the face to get my attention.... words are not ready to take "the mistress" position in my life. *Happy Smiles*
What simple image editing program do you most frequently use?
How could using one image in different ways spark your creativity both in your "play" and in your blogging and life work?
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
A practical way to stay unstuck with your blogging, writing and creativity as well as "out of the box" thinking.
Each day, a quote, an image, several questions and a writing prompt are offered to you to use for Your Blogging, Writing & Creative Inspiration in order to increase your creative thinking as well as your personal and soulful development.
Quote:
“Today and onwards, I stand proud, for the bridges I've climbed, for the battles I've won, and for the examples I've set, but most importantly, for the person I have become. I like who I am now, finally, at peace with me...” ― Heather James
Questions:
Using “bridge” as a metaphor, write a paragraph responding to this question: What bridge(s) are you most proud of climbing or crossing?
In what ways have the bridges you have crossed impacted the person you have become?
If you are writing for business, insert your business as the subject of “the bridge” and the impact is upon your business.
Lists:
Make a list of 5 - 10 bridges you have tried to cross and haven’t quite succeeded. Bonus: Make a second list with concrete reasons why you haven’t quite succeeded.
Make a list of 5 – 10 bridges you have successfully climbed or crossed. Bonus:Make a second list of concrete reasons why you were successful.
Traditional Writing Prompts:
Some people may only count successes as positive. I find my less successful bridge crossings to be…
In looking to the future, the bridges I would like to cross include….. (bonus: include why you would like to include them.)
# # # #
There are no rights and wrongs as to following the prompts here. There is only showing up for your life and your creativity and using what inspires you to fulfill your dreams, passion and purpose.
Brava for being here!!
This Blog Series was created to increase your creative thinking process as well as inspire writing and ideas to take form that may not have taken form without these specific quotes, questions and prompts. If you find them helpful, I hope you will pass them along to friends as well.
I’m so glad you are here, reading and creating.
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
Last Spring, my son Samuel waited patiently while I snapped a series of photos similar to this one: that was when my shopping cart love affair began in earnest.
I can’t remember exactly when I noticed it, but sometime last Spring I noticed an empty lot on the road to my daughter’s high school – which was adjacent to an old, rundown neighborhood and the county hospital. This empty lot faced a carneceria and.. a "tobacco and discount store. The second store was a bright green color, almost matching one of the visiting shopping carts.
Maybe that is what opened my eyes to this particular subject and art form.
This is a Dollar General Shopping Cart. I like how it looks near this particular tobacco and discount store.
Not many people would think of it as an art form, but I saw it both as beautiful and a study in community cohesion and also perhaps a game someone who appreciates order was playing while the other neighbors saw the utilitarian nature of the enterprise.
I started calling the vacant lot “The Shopping Cart Lending Library” because some days it would have more shopping carts than other days. The first day I went there I got close up to the carts, noticed the trash in them, the broken mirror on the ground one of the carts rested atop.
One day I noticed all the carts were organized by color.
I had a rule, in these photos I would not rearrange the carts, I would only rearrange myself as I clicked my camera to get different perspectives.
I drove by the corner again today - my daughter transfered to a different school - and the lot was empty except for the expected trash. There were no shopping carts in sight.
After I found the shopping cart library last Spring, I started noticing abandoned shopping carts.
I started to hear their story.
A rare sight: an abandoned shopping cart in the northwest. In a vacant lot, naturally and oh, so Bakersfield to be from The Tractor Supply Store.
Here in Bakersfield I found them downtown and on the East side of town, perhaps because this is where I spent the most time. I also noticed they did not appear in the Northwest, which my son calls “Casper-land because it is so white!” and more uniformly affluent.
I realized many people in my town didn’t know about the shopping cart lending library or its cousins, the shopping cart collections at highly frequented bus stops that neighborhoods shared as they got off and on the bus.
I saw abandoned shopping carts as a sign of cooperation or a sign of apathy or perhaps a little of both.
Until the night before last, I only photographed my shopping carts incognito, but when I stopped downtown Tuesday night, I couldn’t help but notice the most eccentric shopping cart yet. I was almost angry when the owner showed up, I thought the photo op was gone but it was simply too good to pass up.
“Hey,” I said to the glasses wearing man with the ‘CAT’ short for the agricultural caterpillar tractor, “I love your set up!”
This is John, the Sculptor and my new friend with his work of art.
He smiled wider than I could have imagined, showing his lack of teeth. I smiled back when he said, “Why thank you! I was on the news the other night, did you see it?” I explained this was the first time for me and he immediately pulled the greatest attraction – a mannequin head and a teddy bear– off the rolling sculpture and posed with it.
“Can you put it back?” I asked “That was what attracted me the most at first.”
He told me his name was John and he was quite congenial. He posed for me in several shots and laughed and we talked and I snapped a few more photos and he confessed, “I’m not even homeless! I live at the Decatur!” He showed me his room key.
“That’s great – you stay there at the Decatur! It’s an ok place!” I reassured him. It is a welfare hotel but it does provide him warmth, protection and a consistent shower.
He told me he took odd jobs sometimes and basically was one of the happiest people I have seen all week.
I suppose artists usually are the most happy and sometimes the most miserable people I encounter.
I had no money to pay John for the photo, but I forgot about it as we both just lived the moment fully.
I have thought of taking photos of people with their shopping carts, but I wanted to bring along payment in food and small bills. John and my friend, Kimberly taught me there are many kinds of currency. A conversation and a smiling face is one kind of currency that is never emptied from my pockets.
Like the shopping carts scattered around less affluent neighborhoods which I have taken to documenting, people like John are usually the ones people ignore or turn their heads when they are seen walking down the street.
I have committed to not ignoring the shopping carts or the people who use shopping carts as a different form of recreational vehicle. When we choose to see beauty, these metal contraptions become beautiful and the people who use them for shelter and as a larger and more grounded back pack may even become our friends.
This is one of the shots I took this morning. See the laundry, hanging on the fence in the background? The white house has a very neatly kept yard. We can not make generalizations. Just because someone hangs laundry to dry on a fence doesn't mean anything except for what we make it mean.
I certainly didn’t expect to meet John-the-Sculptor with a great personality. I expected an angry perhaps drunk man who wouldn’t let me take a photo without giving him money. I was surprised and I would bet John would be surprised, too.
What public art have you seen or appreciated lately?
Perhaps it is time to look again and see beauty where perhaps you used to see shame or humiliation.
Remember John and his sculpture, unique and profoundly perfect, instead.
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
Each
day, a quote, an image, several questions and a writing prompt are
offered to you
to use for Your Writing & Creative Inspiration in order to
increase your creative thinking as well as your personal and soulful
development.
The most helpful strategy is to read the quote,
questions, prompt and list and not to "take them on" all at once, but to
allow them to simmer in the back of your mind throughout the day. Sure,
you may "write" one immediately, but don't call it "done" until you
have allowed your powerful subconscious mind to bring up some unexpected
responses for your conscious mind to create within.
Quote
"The saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there's nothing to make it last."
-- Nicholas Sparks
Questions
What is it that brings you to life, stirs your passion into action?
What were some moments of recent satisfaction (hopefully deep satisfaction)?
In what ways do you bring your passion to your life work?
Lists
List 2 to 10 people, places, things or ideas you care deeply about:
List 2 to 10 people you know who are passionate and satisfied with their lives:
List 2 to 10 people you know who appear to be disatisfied
Traditional Writing Prompts
When I walk hand-in-hand with passion, I notice...
A day in my satisfying like looks mostly like this....
Life Coaching/Personal Growth Ideas
What action steps are you willing to take to create a life of increased satisfaction?
A call to transparency: On a scale of 1 - 10, how satisfied are you?
Now, what are you willing to do to increase it to one higher number on the scale.
This Blog Series was
created to increase your creative thinking process as well as
inspire writing
and ideas to take form that may not have taken form without these specific
quotes, questions and prompts. If you find them helpful, I hope you will pass
them along to friends as well.
Welcome to my twenty seventh post (of 31!)
for the October Ultimate Blog
Challenge. Watch
here for Your Writing & Creative Inspiration! Word-Love to YOU!
“There is no beginning and no ending, there is only infinite
passion.”
Federico Fellini
Below this first post for #31Days I include a list of Daily Posts from this adventure. Thank you for reading!
I had a dream the other night. The most memorable image was
a room that I intuitively knew was my version of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of
Her Own.” It looked like a combination of my current living room and a private
space I had in our overflowing with people (six children, need I say more?) in
our cozy house. We called it “The Doll Room” because I spent my time in there
with my family of dolls. It was a place I felt perpetually safe, sort of like I
do in this room today.
My space today, though, isn’t my own. The entire family is
in and out of here and while that’s to be expected, I have had a longing for a
room of my own for a long time now.
I pondered the paradox of that dream: going back to my roots
while being present in today.
I remembered back in 1999 when I started my life work
online. I had a thriving life coaching practice and a website named
5Passions.com. The concept of Passion + my name was my brand.
Life happened and things fell away, yet now with this 31
Days, I’ve decided to write a series on 31 Days of Living a Passionate Life.
The first stage of living a passionate life is to forgive
myself for all that time I forgot about passionate living and to allow myself
to receive that gift of self forgiveness. It is a tough one for me: I’m much
better at forgiving others. How can I live a passion filled life if I am
chronically worried about what a mess I have made in the past and how I
separated myself from passion much of the time?
Now is the time to begin.
Allow yourself to simply sit with these questions - no need to rush into an answer. Simply ask and let go, and watch what comes throughout your daily life.
Where will you seek forgiveness for yourself?
How has not forgiving yourself completely gotten in the way
of living a passionate life?
I am participating in #31Days, a writing challenge hosted by The Nester. I am writing in the Personal Endeavors category... which I am very excited to report! There is still time to join the challenge - I believe until Friday. Look on twitter for the #31days hashtag or visitThe Nester's Website.
>>>-<<<
Julie
Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy
and mixed-media artist. Her word-love
themed art will be for sale at First
Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow
her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the
idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
This is me, three days after melanoma surgery last September. My tactic in 2012, after my melanoma surgery, was to shut off yearning.
I read the prompt from Meredith today for AugustMoon13 – all about yearnings: what did I yearn for
last January, what do I yearn for now, what has changed? Or something sort of like
that. I actually read it and closed it, read it and closed it, read it and
closed it, which started my repetitive phrasing here and the search for quotes
from women writers I respect.
This is actually what Meredith wrote:
Have you
developed new yearnings so far this year? Let go of old ones?
Yearning.
“Where you used to
be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around
in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay
Yearning.
“Why is love intensified by absence?”
― Audrey Niffenegger
Yearning.
“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep
us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I
need someone to pour myself into.”
― Sylvia Plath
Such a word.
“I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was
palpable.”
― Sue Monk Kidd
Such a word.
“I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.”
― Amy Lowell
Such a word.
“Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in
or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s
loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its
twisted road.”
― Margaret Atwood
Yearning is one of those words that is so deep – it is one
of those words that makes a slow, careful incision in my chest, intentionally
scoops out my innards and then leaves me hollow inside but all stitched up,
almost like new again.
I found a quote from a writer who is not a woman and it was
as if a hole was punched into that hollow shell.
“Unopened gifts contain hope.”
― Jarod Kintz
Maybe this is why I have pushed my yearnings away or haven’t
chosen to recognize them as such. If I open the gifts of my yearning, the hope,
my warped belief taunts, will vaporize.
It is so interesting that AugustMoon13 arrives right on the
year anniversary of my melanoma and very close to the two year anniversary of
the darkest day of my life, September 30, 2011. On that same day, a giant
sequoia fell along the trail of 100 Giants at the Sequoia National Monument.
My hypothesis is my heart was squeezed flat by my
circumstance at that same moment that giant tree fell.
Because of my melanoma, I stepped aside from a lot of my
usual activities and cocooned with myself and my children. I stopped my
involvement in theater, I stopped working with coaching clients, I stopped
teaching almost all of my classes.
Here I am, writing at Workhouse Arts Center. This was once a notorious prison where suffragists were force fed and held illegally. Now, it is a space for artists to thrive.
This choice allowed me the space to if not examine my
choices with a searchlight and a magnifying glass, it did allow me to gently
watch the unopened boxes accumulate.
That’s where I am now. Sitting here, surrounded by unopened
gifts of hope which I now know will not vaporize, just like hope will not
vaporize for you, either.
The quotes from all these glorious women writers appear to
be written with the yearnings aimed at another human being to complete her in
some way. My yearnings are not for another, my yearnings are for me to come
even more deeply into myself and to continue to examine, gently, what I offer the
world in me simply being me using the gifts of my unique circumstances and my
one-of-a-kind way of looking at the world.
I look at the last quarter of 2013 with a completely
different perspective I looked at the last quarter of 2012.
In 2012 I yearned to surrender and retreat, to not be
compelled to be responsible to anyone or anything beyond myself and my
children.
In the last quarter of 2013, I am looking toward the “What can I do with
what I have in the circumstances I find myself in?”
I am facing at least one more surgery. I don’t want to retreat
this time nor do I want to surrender nor do I want to fight. I want to stand,
strong, with gifts opened and unopened, knowing each gift of yearning offers me
and my world more light and love and hope and authenticity than I can put into
words right now.
I have a love for storytelling and performance, both. I love
film and theater, I love going to galleries, I love talking about all of these
topics and how they intermingle.
I have been living the question, “Does ‘resolution’ have to
be a part of the process for the artist as well as the audience?”
I thought to a time when I was teaching Sunday School and a
very brave creator of children’s curriculum chose not to tie up the video for
the lesson with a big red bow. Some of the children spoke dissatisfaction with
that choice. They want and expect the resolution. They want to know the “what
happened” perhaps so they know how to move forward in their own lives.
Last Fall I told a story that put me in a very vulnerable
position. I had never told this particular story of my life and I was so afraid
to tell it. I felt as if I was opening my gut and allowing all that bloody,
stinky mess fall out onto the stage floor. I didn’t end my story with a big,
red bow, I ended my story with a question. “Was that what I think it might be?”
was the basic gist of the final line I spoke.
I remember the words of Adelaide Crapsey when she said,
“Artists give us not conclusions but evidence.”
Artists may leave breadcrumbs along the path, but they won’t
open the door to the cottage. You, the audience member, are charged with
opening the door.
Excuse me, what I meant to tell you is, you are privileged
to open the door.
Go ahead, open the door.
What will stretch you more, resolution or evidence?
Which will challenge you more, evidence or resolution?
If you feel stuck, write your responses to those questions, stream of consciousness style. Then tuck those two questions in the back of your mind, go about your business, and tomorrow morning write your responses to those questions again without thinking or judging or even thinking.
Let your pencil (pen, fingers on the keyboard) lead you.
This is my twenty-eighth post (of 31!) for the January Ultimate Blog Challenge.
Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing
Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.
It is so interesting to see the directions my art is turning as I
am settling into November and Art Every Day month.
Today’s piece is a part of a series I am birthing called
“Fragments” – I am taking a large painting I did about two years ago, doing
some retexturing, and slicing it into pieces to either collage or hang as is,
separate from the rest.
What is seen visually?
If you look here, you see fragments, you see half asked and half answered questions.
I also see a bit of rain and the sky and perhaps sunset in
the desert. I see tears, I see straight and curvy lines. I didn’t want to cut
apart my painting at first, but again the intuitive nudge (or should I say
tackle) made me do it.
My plan is to hang these separately and together, to offer
them to people separately and together, and trust the message will be heard no
matter where these pieces land.
This first fragment is tempera on paper mounted on masonite
and covered with a light glaze.
Keep watching here for more developments…. I am still
working on a piece I started three days ago, too – my house has lots of
art-in-process everywhere… thank goodness for a patient family!
It started with a strange tickle that lived in the back of
my throat and slowly crawled toward my belly.
It happened last Sunday when I had the not-so-sudden
realization I miss the stage. I miss performance. I miss creating collaborative
performance art.
This time, though, there is nothing I can do about it except
wait.
I am on the Disabled List: the DL.
No theater for me until my scar turns into at least slightly
more easily masked by make-up.
Now, before you “Pshaw” my thoughts – as I know some of you
will – recognize I am respecting the audiences first and foremost. After all, I
am the audience member who hears two people telling wildly divergent stories
both using the same metaphor within thirty minutes and it gets under my
nostrils in the most annoyingly itchy way.
I don’t want audience members to be distracted by the “is
that meant to be there?” or “does she have a smudge on her face?” or “did she
have some sort of facial surgery she doesn’t want us to see?” to distract from
the storytelling.
My job now is to wait and to do the best I can to enjoy the
waiting.
As my internal longing gets louder I know it might make it
more difficult to attend theater events. I haven’t seen a show since before
surgery and I have attended one post-surgery “theater people gathering.”
I have actually committed to do some storytelling soon
although I don’t know the exact date.
This is a step in the right direction: low key commitment,
not much time investment,
and even though I have written some intense pieces in
preparation, I know I can pull it off. I know I can pull it off well.
It is like I have told actors and directors before: because
I never know when my last time on stage will be, my intention is always to do
the best I am able to do each time I am out there and revel in the experience,
no matter what it brings.
For now, I’m benched.
It is up to me to be sure I make that the exact
place I want to be. For right now.
This is my eleventh post (of 31!) for the October Ultimate Blog Challenge.
Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing
Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.
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. She leads Writing Camp with JJS &
this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this
unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she
finds the passion & the interest.
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