The Awe-manac: A Daily Dose of Wonder

Let your creativity roll.

     
The Awe-manac: is a book by Jill Badonsky. More about it here.
Sign-up for the Monthly Muse Flash here

Deadline Approaching for Book #3: The Muse is IN

The Absurd

Scoffing at what seems illogical is what skeptics throughout history have done with blind ignorance when ridiculous things like the car, the tv, the airplane, the internet, the phone and Ben Affleck as a director debuted. And look what happened. Is that the crowd you want to be associated with? 

Sure, absurd notions that actually turn into something grand are not the rule, but the permission to suspend logic and consider the ridiculous is good creative sense. Plus it’s entertaining.

• Terrify your inner critic with your bold creative actions that defy the conventional and confuse the conformers.
• Borrow the audacity of the artists who just don’t care what people think, you know who I’m talking about. Explore making at least a little of it your own. 
• Roam outside stifling limitations, there are scenic routes that will astound you and inspire you to merge with unyielding originality.

(c) 2011 Jill Baodonsky

 

"It is a blessed thing to have an imagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed."

The title up there is a quote by Mark Twain - free PDF at the bottom

The Pleasantly Plump Lady And The See-Saw:

Want to get rid of ridiculously painful obsessions with an elaborately whimsical plan that involves that illustrious accessory we humans come with ... the Imagination? 

If you’re creative, chances are you’re also sensitive. High sensitivity is a gift in the creative process.  Intense feelings are amazing triggers for poetry, painting, music, plays, writing, and large portraits of our moms riding Harleys.
 

Sensitivity is also a pain in the ass.
 

The unpleasantries of life can be amplified when you're a deep feeler.  Experiences some people just brush off like lint can be experienced by the sensitive creative person like a haunted house where the same unnerving thought is lurking behind every corner, jumping out at you from under the sofa, and ruining a day that could be filled with reverie, laughter, and papaya. 
 

Ever have one of those awful thoughts that won’t leave you alone?  
 
Or your blood pressure gets out of whack because you're rehearsing a squabble in your head with THAT- THAT person?.
 

Or sometimes you let your self-criticism buzz around your brain like a mosquito circulating your ears  in the middle of a restless night?
 

If you answered yes, read more. If you answered no, you're done here.
 

So I’m going to share with you kindred creative-sensitives about how my slightly eccentric imagination saves me from life’s cruel and merciless moments (which is a creative person’s melodramatic way of saying, "life's stuff that happens because we're alive.") 

So take a thought that bugs or terrorizes you. If you don’t have one right now, apply this at the appropriate occasion, (Thanksgiving with the family?)

First, make friends with the thought by neutralizing it.  We’re human and we sometimes get caught up in treacherous mind storms, replaying things over in our minds, and then coming down on ourselves for what we think we ought to have said, or we blame, resent , or engage in other garden variety self-flagellation at it’s very best. Acknowledge that you are human and know that as a human, self-torment is kinda normal.

Welcome to the species. Now that you're aware of it, try something creative instead. 

Next, imagine that you could put the thought in a little tiny box with shiny silver wrapping paper, (perhaps with a hologramatic sheen), tie a multicolor ribbon around it (I prefer satin). Attach a little card that says, “Okay then, bye, bye. “

 Place the little gift box with the treacherous, (now neutralized), thought on the down end of a seesaw (Remember those? Popular before injury lawsuits applied to playground equipment)   … and stand back.

Look up, out of the white fluffy cloud-shaped clouds is a pleasantly rotund woman wearing a tutu, holding an umbrella, laughing wildly and I mean raucously guffawing and falling at just the right speed down to the upside of that seesaw.

Boing!!!

The little gift box with the treacherous, (now neutralized) thought goes flying through the air to the nearest ocean which is conveniently located within your sight (because in the creative process things are NOT linear, they are free to be where we need them).

The gift is flying through the air, (as I said earlier but I have a short attention span so am repeating it again just in case you do too) and some sea gulls are batting it back and forth until they get bored with the little gift box with the treacherous.. (you know) and it falls into the ocean where dolphins nab it and tag team it around in circles for awhile before they TOO get bored with the little gift box with the now, rather pureed thought and it falls to the bottom of the ocean and is eaten by a large sea turtle named Cecil because this happens to be on his diet this week.

(Sea turtles have a very hardy composition and annoying thoughts are filled with calcium which a growing turtle needs for good shell maintenance), and because it IS in fact delicious. Cecil breaks out in a huge smile so wide that his eyes narrow into two little happy slits.

By this time the thought, because of this elaborately absurd (and yet delightfully entertaining- at least to the author) story, has completely lost all of its negative charge. If it hasn’t and it comes back, I just think of Cecil’s happy eyes.

And that’s how the imagination acts as something that can salve (“save” with an added “l” for love) the highly sensitive creative person's obsessive thinking.

Other short cuts:

• Brush the thought off as if it is lint.
• Swat it like it’s a mosquito.
• Replace the thought with an image of you flying over a field of radically majestic beauty.
• Do a yoga balancing pose like Tree. (Yoga  muses wipe self-torment clean with a spiritual cleaning fluid you won't find in any store). 
• Imagine the thought in a cartoon bubble over your head, a seagull comes by and eats it, and then watch as the seagull flies over the ocean and poops it out).
• Give your cat a bath.

 Free PDF of the image above: Download Imagination

Back to the November Muse Flash

 (c) 2011 Jill Badonsky www.themuseisin.com

Writing Roads

 

You write a sentence that paves a street where 

Verbs and nouns drive their cars over the bumpy

Gravel of the first draft  

Traversing avenues that didn’t previously exist before

a thought took this off-ramp and with it brought

an idea who had an opinion needing a ride and now the street continues

 Making known the unknown map of your mind.

 

And before long you’re at the intersection of Lost and Found

But the words back up into a bottleneck because Found has heavy traffic

And Lost is a one-way street in the wrong direction

And some adverb sticks his head in your window asks you if you want your windshield washed,

And a large predicate is tailgating a little too close,

And you sideswipe some thoughts you had forgotten were there

So you decide to run the light.  

 

But there are not enough words on the other side so you end up in a ditch 

Unscathed because there were no verbs written there yet to hurt you

And a cop on a motorcycle appears and asks for your registration 

and you tell him

I’m the writer here, sir.

 

He says you were writing recklessly…

You almost hit a conjunction,

And there were KIDS on that street and you say,

I wrote that street and he arrests you,

And the judge gives you a sentence that you don’t like,

So you revise it

So that now you’ve sailed in with the next wave and 

Are resting on a beach, adjectives all very tropical, 

verbs wafting, minding their business,

And thirst quenched by a delicious noun. 

 

Doodling To Wholeness

 I removed the password:

Download coloring book

October Muse Flash Click Here 

Hi,

This is about the healing power of doodling during a time of loss. As we lose people, or as we move from one stage of life to the next leaving things behind, creating things .. even simple doodles, can give us the experience of gathering wholeness, healing or maintaining our sanity. 

Remember in grade school when we used to draw big looped doodles on white paper and then we colored in the loops with different colors? Well I did. It was kinda relaxing. This exercise is similar, but first you doodle inside of the loops... symbolically what you're feeling or simply doodle without thinking. Then you might want to color it in. It's an exercise of construction during a time when we might feel we are falling apart.

 

Join me in Parallel Universe time:
Tonight at 8 pm pacific/11pm eastern sign-up here
Tomorrow at 8 am pacific/11am eastern click here 

Notice

Inspiration from Unlikely Sources

Can police reports inspire poetry? When I lived in the country north of Kansas City, the police reports consisted of people's tools being stolen or their vegetable gardens being harvested. This was refreshing after growing up in Miami where I was desensitized to death and murder because it happened so often in my high school. 

Police Notes. An idea inspired by Alice N. Person.

************************

September 2011: Police Activity

Jed Thompson’s hammer was stolen on the evening of September 5th and returned the next night, placed under his workbench as if it had been dropped there.

Lucy Peterson’s tomato crop was harvested without her knowing it on September 6.

In a gesture of generosity, Kate Blarington delivered salsa to the homeless on September 7th.

Julie Farmingtune’s car keys were stolen at 8 am September 4th and placed in her refrigerator later that morning, same place her sunglasses and missing sock were found the week before.

Clarence Hoffmore stole a sideways glance at the short order waitress at Mac’s Bar and Grill on Center Road on Wednesday and his wife clobbered him on the head with her purse.

Gail Henderborrow was arrested for assault and battery on her own self-esteem on September 10th. She was sentenced to 20 hours of community service clearing clutter in her closet.

Kayley Smith was caught  allegedly breaking and entering into the heart of Brian Elliot and according to Elliot last Saturday. The damage is irreparable.

Marge O’Reilly lifted a spaghetti sauce stain from her sister, Glady’s white blouse and pawned it for a moment of clean thinking after the Baptist service on Sunday.

Perry Fontaine’s Weeping Willow is held for alleged treeson and may be in for some punishment if the judge is paying attention.

Jill Badonsky attempted to make sense on Monday and ended up in the middle of someone else’s month-long sentence. She is held without punctuation  

The Care and Feeding of Your Creativity

If I waited for big blocks of time in order to get to my creativity, my skills of spontaneous expression would be rather mushy. I keep my creativity fed by regularly ingesting small moments of practice. 

Often I warm up to writing my book with poetry or haiku. Just a short excursion into the world of poetry doesn't take long but it easily removes me from the ticker-tape of mental- chatter-reruns that is mundane, unimaginative, and not creative. The same thinking, worrying, judging that replays over and over, does NOT feed my creativity.  

A short departure into poetry or free writing is nutritious to creative thought. Haikus are especially good because they are meant to be short and compact and yet they can leave you with a powerful mood, a feeling, a completion of thought.  Good snacks for fortification. They leave me with the reward of having used my creative muscles to fit words and meaning into a small space. They light the fire of wanting more creativity and then I achieve a greater fluency of ideas for other areas of writing, painting and entertaining cats. Haikus are 5 syllables first line, 7 syllables second line, 5 syllable third line. Like this:

Impressionistic.
In landscapes of fleeting light
They paint me breathless

Right now I'm having fun writing captions for funny photos. Some may think FaceBook is a frivolous use of time but to me, if we are inventing phrases, captions, and titles, we really are practicing being creative. These small moments of waxing clever add up to more creative fluency in my other expressive and imaginative adventures. The fun of it just makes it easier to show up and hone our creative chops without even knowing it - minus the pressure and, for many, the fears.

Feel free to visit my FB page and scroll down to see how amazingly clever my friends are. Add some captions yourself. Don't judge whether they are "good enough"... it's all practice. 

Here's a recent example:

Captions:

Jeremiah Ion: And then, with a shutter of ignition, the world's first automated snail was unleashed.

Jill Badonsky: At some point, actually paying for cable TV makes more sense.

 Jeremiah Ion: Four hours later they realized that the wheels were useless because it has to remain plugged in.

Shannon Bates: Landshark.

Eber Lambert: The most significant delay in Time Travel is airport security

Jeremiah Ion: Maybe we should have included seats...

Jill Badonsky: Acme Roadrunner Catching Machine Model# 3333

Steve Fix: A real man's teather-ball.

Jennifer Farr-Jones: Not many remember how far Gottfried Schmidt in the shadows of Thomas Edison.

Jennifer Farr-Jones: EEEEEVA? WALL-E?

Tracie L. Bennitt Take me to your leader....

Jennifer Farr-Jones: Typical, when you're already late for Burning Man and the items they've asked you to take off carry on are still sitting on the tarmac.

Steve Fix: After hitting the big Four O, Arnie had no clue how far down his testicles would hang.

Steve Fix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzHYZcOaQ9Q&feature=related

Sherrie Phillips: This looks like something the Picker Sisters could turn into furniture! haha

Liz Fulcher: ‎"Your new hat is here Ms. Gaga."

Jackie Bouchard: Found at the Abu Ghraib yard sale

Michael Topic: This siege engine is hybrid powered and gets ninety miles to the gallon, with low carbon footprint. Perfect for those cathartic, prolonged wars against modern heretics.

Kristy Quinn: She did not make Joe Bob's final five e-dating list. Something about the eyes...

Kathleen Hueser: I told you not to make them mad...they are too creative!

Jennifer Farr-Jones :S & M stage 4

Jennifer Farr-Jones: We simply couldn't afford a DeLorean for the sequel, Mr. Llyod.(and then a slightly non pc joke about blowing the budget deblurring MJF ♥)

Ed Coonce: The time machine sits idle on the tarmac, waiting for parts that will never come/never came/will be ordered/won't be ordered/were never ordered/couldn't possibly be ordered.

Jennifer Farr-Jones: wonder if I can get this into the recyle bin

Jennifer Farr-Jones Elephant sale item....check

Ed Coonce: You puny earthlings dare to put yellow crime scene tape around me, the mighty Globutron?! I'll show you...yeah...gimme a few minutes while my battery recharges, ok? Cool.

Jennifer Farr-Jones: It practically parks itself!

Gary Johnston: A paperclip designed by a committee.

Jill Badonsky: You can tell who got help with their Science Project for the fair.

Jerri Pittluck: It`s finally here, the portable thether-ball! For just a nominal fee, the white cords from the ball are unplugged and, voila!

Jerri Pittluck: I put the ball on the back of my prius so i can find it in the parking lot.

Rick Christensen: From the video...Engineers gone wild

Lynda Treger: Take me to your leader.

Lynda Treger: cause I have no eyes. Can't see a f_____' thing.

Leslie Trippy: onto Burning Man!

Katherine Economou: Now where did I put the flex-capaciter? And what is it again..88mph???

Wickie Stamps: Steampunk rocks!

Denise Lumiere: boing

Alex Bosworth: Banned from supermarket entrances throughout North America, David Cronenberg’s Self-Cannibalizing Carousel finds new use as a luggage shuttle at Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Baggage Claim Airport in Figueras, Spain.

 Back to the September Muse Flash

The Salve of Poetry

I'm warming up to writing my book by writing poetry daily.
I love it when I feel like I'm not in charge, I'm just scribing. Ever have that feeling?

CANISTERS

My metaphors are confused.

One of them flies kites while laying concrete

and the other attends parties wearing hoodwinks and dangling participles.

I ask that they go to a conference on Consistency and instead they

crash a Three Ring Circus and set free the tigers,

and befriend the elephants,

and now it’s down to only one ring...

that no one answers because it’s a wedding ring

and everyone knows THAT’s the end of freedom and yet

they do,

they do “I do.” They answer anyway ... inconsistently.

Life rolls on canisters of flour and tea and coffee

each placed in descending order on kitchen counters.

Turned on our sides we spin along in canister compliance

with the expected until one day we encounter

the pothole and the tea spills and the flour wilts

and the coffee does nothing because no one actually

puts coffee in the canister marked Coffee.

But the pothole is a portal to freedom.

What you do with the porthole

defines you

because you must find your way back to yourself.

That’s where you decide who you are and build a life

based on the satisfaction of letting go of the kite string and trusting

that the breeze knows what it’s doing.

Your indelible expression matches the sky’s apparent magic

and wipes free all ambivalence, so simply believe

the breeze knows what it's doing.

 

Why Creativity?

Because in creative dreams, the circular thinking that has fallen to the ground like a tired hula-hoop is given mouth-to-muse resuscitation.

And when this happens the sky collects songs sung from the earth

and plays them into a soft thunder

that seems to be miles away

but is in your backyard.

Next to the Weber.

Inside the empty planter where the spider plant used to be.

Your name is called in thunder dialect,

deep and brave,

ominous.

Your name is called to fulfill a creative destiny, maybe two.

You begin to eavesdrop a little more on the voice calling to you

You begin to pay attention to resilience and splendor,

You let pass the negative jabber of stranded souls knocking against the walls of hard metal containers of the cynicism that they think is required or cool.  

You shift to the thunder

You let tone, tinge, touch trace the edge of possibility

 

Its horizon melts dark into light

Your alchemy changes pain to poetry, anger to art, melancholy to music
The toes of golden existence dip into a lake of miraculous light and the ripples

Send waves of connection to the world where you can taste prose,

wear thought,

feel belief fiddling it’s strings like there is no tomorrow… unlived.

Pain is no stranger

But awe is a constant companion.

 

(C) 2011 jill badonsky