11/29/2016 0 Comments Hearts Desire: First Thoughts![]() I'm not comfortable making this confession, but I said I was writing for 5 minutes and I am. So. No editing, plenty of judgment and several hours later, here goes. It has been a long time since I allowed myself to have heart’s desires of any size or shape or color or flavor. I’ve been willing to accept, to step aside, to settle for whatever shows up (or doesn’t) as being fine. To hell with fine! My heart and her desires are worth more than fine - that apathetic, not believing in much other than status quo fine. My heart’s desire is for more. More what, heart? More relationships with people who “get” my vision and who are not easily swallowed up by scarcity and lack and shoulds. My heart desires passionate people with ferociously mindful appetites for laughter, words, complex discussions and are devoted to optimistic, aligned action. My heart desires independence from conventionality. My heart desires an open home, open to others – guests welcome – especially ones like I listed above for five minute couchsurfing relationships to lifetime connectedness. My heart desires belly laughter, purple and orange and yellow and green? Where does green come, not usually a favored color. My heart desires compassion. Understanding. Loving impatience. My heart desires blank pages, organization and abundant prosperity, passion and purpose - - - and the timer goes off and my heart desires more attention... more to come.
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![]() “The writer/poet knows that names confer magic. Or fail to confer magic.” Joyce Carol Oates Write of…
= = = I didn’t start using the name conveyed to me by marriage until five years later. I wanted to move, I wanted to escape, I had to get out of the place my daughter died. I couldn’t be in that place where I had committed the ultimate, biggest failure of my life. Anything, anything to release me, even if that meant giving up my name so that we could get into a house, this house I still sit in twenty-six years later – the house that has become my only constant. I was Julie Jordan. Sung to, admonished, not wanted by humanity. Birth control failure – I discovered at 13. A name. I had a name. Julie Ann Jordan. Claimed kin to Julie Ann Drews. Quirky, earnest, optimistic. Loved easily and often until looks mattered and influence mattered and money mattered. I am distracted by a mourning dove and remember the hummingbird who paid a visit a moment ago. My name. Magic. It happened when I added Scott to Jordan. I took Jordan out of the hope chest at the end of my bed. I fluffed it up and proclaimed “Julie Jordan Scott” (I worked for the county then, Susan Gill helped me. She never changed her name I don’t think she has yet, either or maybe who knows.) Julie Jordan Scott. My made up magical claimed I like it name. Merges me with my children and my history. Never say Scott without Jordan please. Reclaimed with twenty-eight seconds to go. Remembering characters I’ve played. Grandma Betty, Jack’s Mom, Woman. Eunice, Mama, Present. 11/25/2016 0 Comments The Secret of Life & Alice-the-Cat![]() Today's #5for5BrainDump Prompt: My secret of life is… There is no secret of life. It is all out in the open, praying to be heard to be seen to be witnessed to be copied and morphed and most of all loved. Like the scene in “The Sound of Music” when Maria spontaneously gives the Captain a thing or two that’s on her mind, all about parenting from a young governess who has no children herself but knows a whole helluva lot about love – even though we don’t know the under pinnings of that character’s story, we know she knows a lot about the present moment (singing all over Salzburg, parading around in matching clothes made out of curtains that none of the teen kids balk at wearing?) There is no secret of life, there is just action or inert stuck in whatever present moment we are living. Me writing while it is still dark out, listening to jazz courtesy of youtube while drinking coffee. My cleaning up the cat’s puke – she attempted to be neat and tidy and put all her puke in a clean coffee cup sitting on the counter, empty. This single act of love (even if accidental, who has ever heard of a cat being so careful?) made me smile as I cleaned it up and tossed the mess into the trash. The secret of Alice’s life is she has an owner who adores her so one musn’t make a mess when one must puke. Instead, do one’s best to puke into this empty container right by that thing she visits every morning. At least she’ll see it before the day has progressed too far, right? She slept on my hip this morning. I imagine her waiting in my bedroom, quietly sans purr, to see how I would respond to her gift. I silently cleaned it away, smiling. My secret of life is forgiveness, grace and acting as love in each moment. And now, you. Write to this: My secret of life is…… (add any links to your writing in the comments).
11/24/2016 0 Comments Writing Abundance on Thanksgiving![]()
"Gratitude builds a bridge to abundance."
Roy Bennett - 5 minutes, free flow writing, Thanksgiving morning. Actually, the timer broke - well, human breaking as I neglected to click start so it is slightly longer than 5 minutes at work. ##### I woke up snuggled under a comforter, close to love. Abundance is skin touching skin, sole of the foot reaching out to a familiar calf muscle or pinky toe, knowing it is there and glad for that knowledge. Abundance is the blank page, waiting for words to meet it. Words of praise, words of anger, words of thundering tempestuousness, doesn’t matter. The page is grateful for being used for it’s distinctive purpose. I don’t see pages thrown into the trash with the panache of the past, the days of typewriters. Abundance is typewriters, still being used, keys like a motorboat, between twenty six curvaceous letters. I typed with too much force as a child so my dad bought me my own computer. I still own it, though it lives on a shelf in the garage. I need to bring her back into the house – bought on her late 1970’s version of Craig’s List. The classified ads of the Newark Star Ledger, I believe. Abundance in the classified ads, which people don’t use as much as Craigs list anymore or the ubiquitous facebook marketplace where I may find nearly anything any time of day or for some, ebay lust. Abundance. I wonder how these five minutes can not be over, I feel like I have been writing this for a long, long time. Writing abundance is easily filling the page. Looking up and out and smiling, still. Flavorful words. Crunchy some melting, some too hot to touch. Some we close our notebooks on before they have their due (and we pray they come alive again later, somewhere deep inside ourselves we pray for courage. Sometimes the timer breaks. I remember last Thanksgiving. Views, gorgeous. Cold, orange towels from Ikea which became my new measure against which all towels would be held. Photos on a falling apart swing set. Hidden entryways. Emma announcing we needed to walk to the lake and watch the sunset, Samuel grabbing attention, wanting his photo taken on one of the many decks on the seemingly unassuming house which I completely fell in love with, completely. Oh, how it woo’ed me and I woo’ed it back and am woo’ing it back now. Pacific Ocean thanksgivings. Kern River thanksgivings. Thanksgivings I pretended weren’t thanksgiving. Letting go, my girls growing up Thanksgivings. My last Thanksgiving without a son-in-law. Inner city Los Angeles Thanksgiving, my first turkey, twenty-one people including two newly graduated college friends like me – all stuffed into my small one bedroom apartment. Loved every moment. One of my favorites. Thanksgiving right after Marlena died, another full house, Darcy that year. The reset timer hasn’t gone off. Writing abundance gives us the chance to re-live memories. Spit polish them, hear the refrain with a jaunty lilt we don’t really think existed but it makes us feel better to claim it now. We forgive our frowns of the past that weren’t completely aligned. Writing abundance claims optimism in a gulp of coffee. The timer rings right then. The perfect time. Writing abundance and gratitude – a bridge to infinite expansion.
It felt ungraceful at first this morning. My neighbor, attempting to be of service or at least felt like reciprocating, decided the time I broadcast - which he didn't know was the time I broadcast - was the perfect moment to use his very loud leaf blower right by my door.
Ironic that we were discussing and writing on the topic of grace - love and kindness just because. Compassion because it is what we know in our hearts is to be. How perfect. And frustrating. And challenging. And... insert your adjective here. Participate in this morning's grace-filled (and sometimes loud!) brain dump here -
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Julie Jordan Scottis the founder and creator of 5For5BrainDump. She has been inspiring artistic rebirth since 1999. Archives
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