Springtime Conversation with Confederate Jasmine

What if you’re also watching me, making yourself flexible to peer around every corner observing the world and being observed.  What if the way you look expresses who you are, strong and flexible with powerful perfumed flowers like words arranged in sentences held in a diagram of green stem with conversations, messages and hallelujahs from tiny bugle flowers.  What if you are an experiment of light and air and earth and water and my blood vessels are fashioned like your vine, long and flexible and beautiful with hallelujah messages for every stop along this many faceted marvel that is my body.  I am grateful for your prototype of vine to vessel;  Spring to the body that is listening…

I am strong, quiet and flexible

I am from Kentucky

I am from a dysfunctional civil war family

My great, great-grandmother loves me dearly and prays for me daily

I am made of blood vessels that sing hallelujah along every stop inside my body

I am made of gratitude in the moment

I am made of my mother’s gaze and my children’s love

I am made of the breath of the women who sit in circle with me

I am truly hilarious but I sometimes forget to laugh

I am made of jasmine vine and flowers and perfume

I am made of poetry and imagination and standing hand in hand.

The Beat of Creative Passion

Rhythm is born on the island beneath the sea; it shakes the earth, it cuts through me like a lightning bolt and rises toward the sky, carrying with it my sorrows…..

                                Isabel Allende in Island Beneath the Sea

In this quote, Isabel Allende’s character is speaking of the rhythm of drums and her words carry me to the idea of moving to the beat of a rhythm that sets the pace for the day.  I long to move with a natural rhythm.  I find I can’t take a brisk walk at the beach; my body lingers, my breath slows and I dawdle, picking up feathers and shells.

When I taught in a Waldorf inspired kindergarten, the list of our day’s activities was called a rhythm instead of a schedule.  There was attention paid to the balance of outer rambunctious activity with inner quiet activity.  In their free play, the children created imaginary families and households with boisterous activity and then later spoke in hushed tones as they filled their watercolor pages with flowing vibrant color.  

I read, rhythm cuts through me like a lightning bolt and rises toward the sky – and I understand that this play of inner and outer activity is what connects me with the natural rhythm of the earth, as a soulful participant.  I stand on the earth to feel the power of the feminine and I write to experience the joining of masculine and feminine on the page in creative process.  I need the rhythm of solitude and peopled activity in order to connect with this power and let it flow.

Writing suggestion:  Go out into nature and notice with all your senses.  Balance the doing with being; be receptive and allow the environment to “speak” to you.  Write a few random impressions, don’t force complete sentences or correct spelling.  Later use those impressions in a verse, poem or paragraph – you could even lend your voice to nature and speak from “I”. 

Click here for author, Isabel Allende speaking on PASSION – she discusses women, creativity, and the definition of feminism- it is marvelous and only 18 minutes long.  You could take notes and use those words in a verse, poem or story.