Showing posts with label Julia Cameron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julia Cameron. Show all posts

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Filling the Well (National Poetry Month)

 
 
Hello, Friends!

I hope you've been well. I've been keeping busy with a little of this and a little of that—staying out of trouble for the most part. While I haven't been very good about participating in Poetry Friday lately, I have been watching the days draw closer and closer to National Poetry Month. The thought of not participating this year was too sad to contemplate, so I put on my thinking cap and came up with a project that I think will be both fun and manageable. 
 
Like many others during this pandemic, I've been revisiting The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I sort of gave it a mention in my last blog post, but today I'd like to be more direct and introduce a concept from the book Julia Cameron describes as filling the well
In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked trout pond. We've got big fish, little fish, fat fish, skinny fish.... As artists, we must realize that we have to maintain this artistic ecosystem....we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them—to restock the trout pond, so to speak.
I've borrowed that idea for my National Poetry Month project. Instead of celebrating poetry, we'll be filling the well and celebrating the genesis of poetry—the inspiration, the artistic ecosystem, the... trout. Or possibly goldfish.
 
ali mosavi sam px
 
Clownfish, perhaps?
 
Oh, you get the idea.



Yes, there will be some poetry, but mostly I'll be playing with the stuff that inspires poetry—
The language of art is image, symbol. It is a wordless language even when our very art is to chase it with words. The artist's language is a sensual one, a language of felt experience....In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun.
                    – Julia Cameron
I will be playing with quotations—pairing them with art, photography, poems, music, dance... anything that strikes my fancy and gives the words new life. I'm calling them inspirational musings. For those who are familiar with Today's Little Ditty, you will recognize these posts as similar to my Two Line Tuesday and Monday Musing series, with a touch of Poetry in Action to spice things up. The objective is to offer new perspective to the words, enhance our experience of them, and maybe even inspire some poems of our own.
 
I hope you will enjoy diving into the well with me.

Illusion-X
 
aquarium
 
Goldfish
Flash
Gold and silver scales;
They flick and slip away
Under green weed—
But round brown snails
Stick 
To the glass
And stay.
 
from all the small poems and fourteen more, by Valerie Worth
 

You'll find this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Soul Blossom Living, where Susan Bruck is previewing many other ways to participate in National Poetry Month.
 
 

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Raising the White Flag

 
"Surrender" by Jess

 
Hello friends.
I wasn't expecting to post this week, but it's been quite a momentous one, hasn't it? 
 
When my daughter was home for the holidays, she asked if I had chosen a One Little Word for this year. Until she mentioned it, I hadn't given any thought at all to a guiding word for 2021. I've hardly been in that frame of mind. As it was, I completely lost track of my 2020 word until Mary Lee Hahn indirectly reminded me of it with this post around the same time. Funny how that happens. I think my muse, or as Julia Cameron calls it, my inner child, might have something to do with that little coincidence.
 
“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” 
          – Julia Cameron
 
Even though I haven't been writing lately, I have been trying to get back in touch with that inner child (the one that loves creative play and happy accidents) in other ways. For me, the most difficult phase of embarking on a new project are the weeks when I'm walking around in creative limbo. When the ideas have not yet formed in a concrete way and I'm flailing around for something I'm not at all sure is even there. It's uncomfortable at best, this amorphous cloud of confusion. 
 
"Confusion" by Erik

 
You'd think that if I'm familiar enough to recognize and talk about it, I should be able to trust that it's just part of my creative process, and yet, time and time again, I cower under the dread that I may never again be able to connect with my muse.

Over the last several months I have discovered that life can be confounding in a similar way. Last year I came to a crossroads, and while I'm okay with the direction my life is taking, I am confused by the "new normal." I feel stuck creatively, overwhelmed by my to-do list, and anxious about the not-knowing. Is this, in fact, my new destination or am I still in transition—on my way to some place I've never been before? 
 
Yes, I'm a bit of a control freak. There's no doubt about that. I'm also impatient—especially with myself. But I'm also resilient. I'm determined and I'm a problem-solver. So what if, instead of seeing the future as something to be fearful of, I looked to it with anticipation. Amanda Gorman in her inaugural poem spoke of a nation—our nation—"that isn't broken, but simply unfinished." I take that to heart in my own life as well. My creative process is not broken—I am not broken—I am evolving.
 
Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say "yes" to life—and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
                                – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
 
 
 
 
What if I surrender to the changes in my life and simply trust the process?

 





 
From the Tao Te Ching (chapter 13):
 
     Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things.
     Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.
 
                       – Lao Tzu
 
Surrender is my One Little Word for 2021. Not in the sense of giving up, giving in, or losing hope, but in the sense of yielding to the flow of the universe and heeding the whisperings of my inner child. She's never let me down before. 
 
 
"Sweet Surrender" by Sarah McLachlan

Wishing you a perfect word to guide you through the next year of your life's journey.


This week's Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by author Laura Shovan.