If Passion had a fairy godmother she would be curiosity: an avid interest in life itself and the lives of those she encounters.
Last night Emma and I were at the First Friday artfest/street fair here in Bakersfield. When we don't have time to go visit galleries we stick to the sidewalks where off-the-grid artists collect. I get lots of hugs and we usually buy some small things to encourage the artists to continue creating.
I met two eleven-year-old young women entrepreneurs selling their creations. I was immediately excited and sharing my enthusiasm with the girls and their parents. Emma told the second mother-daughter-father trio, "My Mom likes to interrogate my friends like this, too, and for some reason they really like her!"
The Dad agreed with Emma's friends saying, "Well, she takes an interest."
People love when they are the center of your curiosity, your interest.
Have you heard the truism that if you have a conversation with a person and simply ask them questions about themselves they will go away from the discussion thinking you are the most brilliant, fabulous person they have met?
The thing is, if you make curiosity a practice, you will become closer to people immediately. You will feel more connected to the world, immediately. You will find yourself delectably wonderful as well.
See? Curiosity IS Passion's fairy godmother!
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.
“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.
I have several mixed media pieces in the works. It feels like
I am chronically working toward them being done, but the very thing that makes
me love working with mixed media – all the layers and the complexity – is what
also drives me crazy about it.
What I’ve also been playfully creating with is editing
images via the Paper Artist app on my phone which allows me to "finish" within moments.
It’s so weird. One day I updated my phone and the next day,
here was the Paper Artist app, one I had never seen or used before and now,
there it was: ready to entertain me.
Here are three photos I took and edited this week. What do
you think?
Do you like my 3-D glasses in this A Mother and Daughter Selfie?
Do you see Sarah Bernhardt in the beginnings of the mixed media piece on the left? Having a frustratingly good time with my artistic endeavors.
Emma, Samuel and Pillow Pet on the Top Bunk
I'm so happy to be posting to Creative Every Day today. So often lately I've just completely fallen out of posting rhythm and am grateful to be joining the fun today.
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?
My fireplace in the morning light. Not perfect, but lovely in its own quirky way
I love how the light streams through the lacey curtains in
my living room in the early morning. It is Sunday – extra sacred feeling – and my
house is quiet. There are three teen-aged girls sleeping in Emma’s room: young women who
chose to spend the night after a very raucous, clean, alcohol and drug free
party filled with choir kids, student government kids, theater kids.
Some teens enjoy drinking Capri Sun rather than alcohol
Emma has hosted three parties here so far this year, study
groups and a “getting ready for the formal” get together.
I love that she enjoys having her friends here and they
enjoy having been here. It was so loud and buzzy in here when the party was at
its most full. From my spot in Emma’s room, reading and writing, all I could
hear was the hum of voices coupled with spurts of laughter. I know they watched
Monty Python and Pitch Perfect and played a couple games.
Emma’s room has a bathroom attached and through the bathroom
there is a door to the pantry and kitchen. I call it “Hazel’s room” because of
this, but it also allowed me to hear into the kitchen. Normally I don’t like
when people rummage around my kitchen, but last night, I didn’t mind at all. I
got to hear quiet giggles and smaller hums of kids who needed a break from the
big clump of kids congregating on the sofa, the chairs and the comforter and
pillow covered floor.
My Writing Oasis, My Sanctuary in the corner of the living room. Painting by Nyoka Jameson
What I love the most about these parties Emma hosts are the
mornings afterwards when I wake up and breathe with such contentment. There is
nothing that makes me happier than my children being happy.
When you add the sun reaching in through the windows, I want
to burst with simple joy.
I can hear the girls waking up now. It is early yet, but
they are laughing and talking. Apparently they are discussing snoring sounds.
My fingers move across the keys, glad for each moment.
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.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to
your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the
Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational
essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe
here now -
Reverb Prompt: Which
little detail — something you saw… a look… a touch… a fleeting moment — from
2012 would you like to remember in the years to come? The most difficult part of this prompt is remember where it greeted me... ohhh... there. Day 17 from Relish12.
For just a moment I was dizzy with unsteadyness. I looked up and spun around, attempting to figure out where my body was in relationship with the glorious vibe of San Francisco
From the San Francisco Financial District - Can you believe this man is casually texting while leaning on the Robert Frost Memorial? Ay!
Unbelievably for me, I was visiting San Francisco
with no destination in mind. I had several possibilities but nothing was in
stone. I have sort of learned my way around the City but for some reason I didn’t
want to bother with navigation and after a lovely greeting from native son
Robert Frost I noticed a cable car had appeared so without thinking, I jumped on
it.
A few moments later at the
intersection of California and Mason, I jumped off the cable car, feeling an
incredible urge. Even with that incredible urge I did the “should I shouldn’t I
shuffle” before I leaped from my six dollar seat of a rather short cable car
ride.
I scurried across the street
and my eyes caught the Fairmont Hotel.
If you take away the Christmas Decorations, the Fairmont looked exactly as it did on that July day in... 1988? I believe?
I actually gasped the forty
degree misty air straight into my gut.
This is where Mel and Tom got
married on a Saturday in July before I knew how challenging many of the
upcoming chapters of my life would be.
From that moment on, I went
where I was divinely directed. Every single destination I found had some
personal connection with me, as if my past was reaching out to massage my ever
tense shoulders, saying, “You are a survivor, you are one who loves a lot and
loves well. Continue your journey knowing that you are love incarnate.”
I will remember this “eye-to-eye”
glance from my past, present and future for a long time to come.
Now that I
have written it, I will more than likely remember it forever.
My friends have heard me repeatedly talk about my usual
“relationship trajectory.”
I have lived by a pattern over my lifetime: usually I am
very excited about someone (or something) in the beginning. I am passionately
drunk about the person or idea or activity. I rearrange life to make space for
the object of my passion and for a while I can’t imagine life without it.
This is like a firework that flies up in the air and
explodes…. And falls to the ground.
There are also fireworks that zoom up into the air, seem to
disappear and then KABAM!
Their booming demise is remarkably loud though not very
colorful.
Then there are trajectories that go up… and up… and up… and
float around up and up and up… usually profound friendships, love for my
children, appreciation for my parents look like this.
Finally, there is my love of language and all things
word-based.
I can’t even put into words the passion I feel for words,
but today I was in office max, copying pages of paper I have painted, I have
sprinkled, I have torn and photos I have printed over a painted sprinkled page.
I found myself stroking the paper: the originals and the
copies.
I loved how they both felt: very different but both
absolutely heavenly. As I made more copies, I spread them out on the table behind
me. This may have gotten on the nerves of other customers there at Office Max
but I couldn’t help this public display of
paper affection going a bit over the
top.
More paper and more paper and more paper all in varying
shades of pink and purple: so feminine. The pages were such a reflection of me.
I actually had to self-talk myself away from the copying
machine. My frugal self met up with my creative self and said, “Julie – these
are enough copies to start with, really.” So my creative self rearranged the
papers on the table and taking photos of the paper.
Each satiny sheet of paper delighted me. The multiple copies
of the same pages arranged differently delighted me. The resounding shout of
the click click click of the camera fueled me more.
You might think the two images I posted here are the same. They are not. The bottom image includes one of the very first pages I painted and created with several years ago. It was from a book I thought I would love that I ended up hating. I thought making art would help my feelings for it and it did.
In the bottom photo, you see a heart from that book, with a quote that reads, "A poet must be more useful than any other citizen of her tribe." Those words both ground and inspire me now like they did when I first read them.
My relationship with word-love trajectory goes beyond
anything quantifiable. There are no metaphors or illustrations that can capture
it. My romance with words is longer
lasting and has more of a future, perhaps, than any relationship outside that
of
my children.
I can’t even put into words the passion I feel for words,
but today I was in office max making love to them in a blazing display of
public affection.
It has been a while since I have allowed myself to become
possessed by a vision outside my family or local creative pursuits. I am not
sure the genesis of my resistance or my fear, but today it lit up like that
perpetual light bulb waiting for me to flip the switch.
I believe my resistance is this: if I work hard to build it
all up again, something bad may happen that will knock my breath away again. I see
I am playing the game I abjor – the all or nothing game – instead of simply
putting my head down, running. Assessing, Revising, running some more – without
attachment to the initial results.
I used to be able to make all of this into a game but now I
have forged it into a large, ever-present, slippery wall covered with moss and
with bricks that don’t necessarily stay in place so you may fall down at any
point of the climb.
Now that we have that conflict identified, it is time to
continue seeking and allow the possession to continue sweeping up me from the
soles of my toes to the ends of my shorter-than-before hair.
Even with all of this as I write I feel the energy of
passion prickling my veins.
I take a moment to stretch my neck.
I stretch both sides.
I breathe into the tension.
I let the tension out as it rides the wave of my breath.
I remember a long ago meditation when I held my head off the
massage table for about five minutes. My neck felt like heaven when I slid back
down the table for more body work.
Relaxation was no longer a necessity it was a given.
I am on fire with the creative process.
My embers are crackling with passionate creativity today. I
had forgotten how good that feels.
This is my twenty fifth 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.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your
inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the
Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and
poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
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