Tag Archives: Intuition

Circus

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judy14

This is a piece I did a few years ago entitled “The Circus.”  It deals with that part of us that wants to run away and join the circus.  The porcelain doll has my mother’s face superimposed on it.  Over my mother’s face, I put several layers of Frida Kahlo’s face, peeled off in varying degrees.  Over Frida’s face is a miniature antique paste mask that can be pulled aside or allowed to fall into place.  In her hands are a tiny pair of silver scissors and around her waist is a tiny bag woven of morning glory vines.  She rises out of a toy chest decorated with Loteria cards.  On the chair to her left is a small clown figure with wings.  He is painting a portrait of Frida. Many discarded portraits of her lie crumpled and discarded on the floor. They are all the same. Below him are circus animals and a juggler who have spilled from the pages of a tiny journal that has a story written inside about creativity, sides of the brain, intuition vs. reason and imitation vs. unique inspiration. The overall piece is about the importance of coming from a unique place in ourselves rather than depending upon judgement and imitation. For me, the purpose of art is that experience of going into new realms of ourselves—to allow ourselves to do what most of us couldn’t do when we were young—to run away to join the circus!

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/circus/

This Poem is a Sort of Street

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(Click first photo to enlarge, then click on arrows.)

This Poem is a Sort of Street

This poem is a sort of street.
I wonder who I’m going to meet
as I walk down the dust of it––
plod along the “must” of it.
I do not know where I am going.
I follow it while never knowing
what’s around the next blind bend.
I do not know how it will end.

Each line is a new adventure
leading to acclaim or censure.
The GPS that’s guiding me––
determining what I will see––
is lodged so deep and far inside
a road stretched out so long and wide
that it must guide or I’ll get lost
in ruts of words and pay the cost

of trying to control by mind––
a street that’s meant to twist and wind
guided by a force within
that is intuitive and yin.
It is a guide that’s mostly lost
in this world so tempest-tossed.
The drop of it that I infuse
in rhymes that others then may choose

to read and ponder is the way
that I have chosen to try to pay
the toll for this tremendous gift
of life where I have learned too well
the lessons of the school bell.
I’ve learned to turn a deaf ear to
what pedants say I need to do
and take each day a road that’s new.

I’m led by dreams and intuition
down streets with no thought of fruition
but instead careen and ramble
without an outline or preamble
into places I’d never go
if I just reported what I know.
Then I record all that I see
so you can learn along with me.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/street/

3:08 AM (On the Night of the Blood Moon Eclipse)

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IMG_56513:08 A.M.
(On the Night of the Blood Moon)

A donkey’s bray saws through my dream,
opening sleep’s creaking door.
Three hours slumber is not enough.
I float the night in search of more.

Like a porthole letting in the day,
night’s shadow cusps the bloated moon.
Its light invades my stubborn dream.
I am awakened too soon, too soon.

A message honed on the strop of night
slices through my dream’s light gown.
My mind’s eye heavy with lost sleep
sees truth disrobed and writes it down.

When waking we feel taught by dreams,
it may not be as it appears.
Who knows what sophistries have been
whispered in unwary ears?

IMG_5663Skype conversation on the night of the Blood Moon Eclipse, 9/28/15

[1AM] Judy: Isn’t it weird how in my photograph, the clouds seemed to form a moon shape around the moon?

[1:01 AM] okcforgottenman: OK here’s my prompt for tomorrow, “She cusped the bloated moon.”

*

Seer

Her statement that she’d had a vision
was met by general derision;
so though she tried to warn them all,
they heeded nothing but “last call!”

So while she stocked up her provisions,
they hemmed and hawed with their decisions
and had a round of boozy toasts–
gave their laments, boasted their boasts.

Then they went west while she went east
and thus were eaten by the beast
or overtaken by the flood.
Soaked in water or in blood.

The moral of this little tale
is heed your mystics, or learn to bail
or run faster than the beast
lest you become his morning’s feast

or starve to death in time of drought.
Her warnings met with only doubt
instead of action to stem the tide,
by those who stood as one. And died.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Decisions, Decisions.”How are you more likely to make an important decision — by reasoning through it, or by going with your gut?

IMG_1314

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Kindness of Strangers.” When was the last time a stranger did something particularly kind, generous, or selfless for you? Tell us what happened!

I was about to tell a story and then had a fleeting memory that I’d already written about this occasion, so I searched backwards in my blog and although I couldn’t find that story, I did find a poetry version of two kindnesses by strangers that changed my entire life.  If you’ve read it before, I apologize, but since I don’t even remember my own poems and stories, perhaps you’ll read this with new eyes as well. It’s a bit long.  Sorry, Ann and Audrey. I’m trying for more brevity lately and I have shortened this by one stanza. Hope you enjoy this or get something from it, be it new for you or a repeat:

Unsolicited Kindness

The stranger on an airplane in the seat right next to me
never said a single word, and so I let her be
until our arrival, when I prepared to stand
and she produced a paperback—put it in my hand.

“I think it’s time for you to read this,” she said, then went away.
I didn’t say a word to her. Didn’t know what to say.
That book, however, changed my life and attitude and choices—
encouraged me to listen close to interior voices.

Buscaglia, Jampolsky and all of Carl Jung’s books
drew my mind away from appearances and looks
and into that finer world of instinct and of mind;
then drew me westward to the sea and others of my kind.

After a writer’s function, a stranger sent to me
“The Process of Intuition,” which I read from A to Z.
I read it twenty times or so, then sent it to a friend.
Then bought up every copy left to give as gifts and lend.

I don’t remember talking to the one who sent it to me,
but if I need a proof of faith, I guess that this will do me.
For if I follow instincts that hint and prod and clue me,
I believe there is some force that draws the next thing through me

I don’t believe in any faith that has a name or church.
I do believe, however, that I’m guided in my search
by something that unites us and sets our pathways right
so long as we listen to our own interior sight

that urges us to follow the right side of our brain
even though those choices are logically inane.
I know that it takes many types of brains to run the world,
but for me it’s intuition that when carefully unfurled

guides me best—towards art and words and unplanned days and oceans
and prompts me make a Bible of what others may call notions.
And so to simplify I’d say it’s vital to have faith in
that voice we’re all a part of that leads us from within.

Away

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Away

Written in the morning, long before the day
sneaks in like an intruder, intent to have its say,
words born in the nighttime flower on their own,
bursting into bloom as soon as seeds are sown.

Truth is there behind us before it ever shows—
in words before they’re spoken, in wind before it blows.
Once recognized, I free these words to flow over the world—
off on their own to have a life wherever they’re unfurled.

Sent swiftly to their different spheres to live a life apart
from one who followed after, like a horse without its cart—
I like to set my words loose to canter on their own,
to feed upon wild grass that also roots where it has blown.

The Prompt: After an especially long and exhausting drive or flight, a grueling week at work, or a mind-numbing exam period — what’s the one thing you do to feel human again?

The Dogs Are Barking (May 19,2013)

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The Dogs Are Barking

They break the morning––a daily rite.
It’s just a warning. The dogs won’t bite.
Two strangers talk but pass unseen.
I doze, they walk, with a wall between.
I lie here posed between thought and sleep.
My eyes still closed. I’m swimming deep.

I resist the trip––that journey up––
preferring to sip from the dreaming cup
whose liquid darker and bitter thick
reveals a starker bailiwick
than schedules, crafts, menus, schemes.
Much finer draughts we quaff in dreams.

I try to sink back into sleep,
once more to drink of waters deep;
but the dogs still bark. They leap and pace.
My dreams too dark for this morning place.
Those dreams lie deep and intertwined,
wanting to creep back up my mind.

But its slippery slope is much inclined
and provides small hope that I will find
again, that world well out of sight
where truth lies curled, still holding tight––
as oysters cleave and then unfurl
with mighty heave, the priceless pearl

of that other mind that slips the knife
beneath the rind of our daily life.
Time is a brew of present, past
and future, too—whatever’s cast
to stew and steep the story rare
that’s buried deep in dreams laid bare.

Dreams are stories we tell ourselves
that draw our quarries to bookstore shelves.
Pinned to the page, they reach their height
and bring our sage self to the light.
But the dogs are barking. They’re hungry, cross.
When I rise to feed them, the poem is lost.

Uncaught, dismembered, it blows away.
Like petals, scattered in the light of day.