Light a candle in your window

Leave the door ajar to your studio

and listen….

The Muse may be finding her way to your back door…

New story from the Muse at the Backdoor series – it may take you 5 whole minutes to slow down read the story. So if you a looking for a little dash of sparkle in your cup, enjoy!

Wanna play in the land of the MUSE?

Online Intentional Creativity® with Shiloh Sophia

5/28: Gift Class – Drawn by Love

5/28: Dance of the Critic & the Muse – Voice of the Soul

6/20: ARTIFACT Painting Your Archetype starting Solstice

Join me for a cuppa?

BBQ’D WORDS + CUP OF THE MUSE

Her words come to me charred

Smoked blackened remnants

of a cosmic bbq

‘Am I what’s for lunch?’

I wonder, laughing

What do I do with this

flaming language?

I have no pen suitable

for the task at hand

My hand becomes black

as I turn phrases over

I gnaw on crunchy nouns

A stringy adjective is caught

on my wisdom tooth

A cascade of phrases

taunts me to walk on coals

They dare me with

fire breathing prepositions

and naked red proposals

I fall in love with the color black

the color of ink on paper

the color of the sky

Gathering my courage,

I brave to scoop

a handful of ash

as an offering

with which

to forge a worthy word

I see a glint of gold

I begin

by bowing

to the page

The Muse is at the backdoor

she slips through without sound

With a loud voice

not all together appropriate

She exclaims

“I see you have braved

playing with fire, finally!”

She gestures dramatically

to my notebook

and then to the kitchen,

piled high with dishes

from three meals,

my dog licking

a plate on the floor

I nod to the obvious

“Yes I have been working

with the bbq’d words

you left me last time”

That’s when I notice her outfit

The Muse is wearing

bright flaming orange combat boots

electric blue laces all the way up

the hem of her skirt is stitched

with new green leaves

Her hair is in tiny snake-like braids

with colored threads woven in

She is daunting, glamorous

and impossible to capture

with any word or image

I can’t find the right adjective for her,

perhaps that is part of her spell

Impossible to define,

so I keep seeking

She pours a glass of whiskey

She picks up a piece of cold cheesy pizza

She doesn’t seem to belong in this century,

this kitchen, yet she fits right in somehow too

Always a riddle

She raises her wing-like overgrown brows

and says “They always wonder

what happens to women

when they find their pen or their paintbrush,

their drum or their fiddle,

their wheel and kiln,

their vulva and their laughter,

their needle and their red thread

or their hammer and their chainsaw

They will say she has gone quite mad,

yet they will wonder at the smile on her face…

This is when you STRIKE!”

She raises her fist in revolution

and I see a phoenix tattoo

inside her wrist

“Sh*t, I think I am going to miss what

you just said! I have to get this down”

I say, rather anticlimactically

I start writing as fast as I can,

trying to capture her words,

I can’t keep up

When I look up and say

“Strike? Strike what?”

She is gone

The back door is ajar

the dog is sniffing her trail

the pizza is gone

her glass is empty

I hear her motorcycle flare

and zoom off, dang!

That was a short visit

but it is enough for me

Before she came

I was wrestling with words

walking with a limp

I looked up her word,

STRIKE!

strike (v.) Old English strican

“pass lightly over, stroke, smooth, rub,”

also “go, move, proceed,”

What exactly was she wanting me

to pass over, stroke, smooth, or rub?

Where did she want me to go,

move or proceed to?”

And how did a word like

that come to mean something else?

Then I get it

When people wonder about my smile,

I can tell them about the flaming pen!

About falling in love with language,

about wrestling with adjectives

how looking for gold in the ashes

may create a yield if you are lucky

So I write down what I can remember

and you are holding it in your hands

right now, yes this very page!

For the first time in a long time,

I look up from myself

long enough to wonder

‘How can I tell the others,

where to find the Muse?

Will you, like me, be willing

to leave the back door unlocked?

Let the dishes stack up?

Tell your family that

today is mommie’s art day?

I feel the smile she is speaking of

spread onto my face and I giggle

I feel good

I pour myself a dram of whiskey

in the cup of the Muse

I turn on the radio,

It’s the blues

and it goes well

with my bbq’d words

I wash the dishes

loving the warm water

on my hands

looking into the purple night

out my window

over the kitchen sink

saying prayers

for the awakening of creativity

in every home,

in my neighborhood

in the whole town,

in the state, in the country

on the continent

on the earth

throughout the milky way

I say

‘May all the Muses strike tonight!

Passing stardust lightly over your studio

Rubbing you with riddles

Stroking you with images

Smoothing you with a voice of your own

Moving you to making

Inviting you to proceed

Light a candle in your window

Leave the door ajar to your studio

and listen….

sshhhh…..

Here She comes….’

I must warn you, fellow traveler

Drinking from the cup of the Muse

could be dangerous

to current paradigms

Proceed with caution and prepare

to have your creations BBQ’d

for the good of all

by a phoenix

in flaming orange combat boots

that come to kick your ass!

Strike for the pen,

for the drum, for the dance,

for the lover, for the cause,

for democracy, for the child,

for the artist and the poet,

for the hope of making

something beautiful

or awful or mysterious

that leaves a smile on your face

that only Mona Lisa

and the Muse

will appreciate!

Strike!

~ Shiloh Sophia

Muse at the Back Door Series

Respond in the Red Thread Cafe

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Me in Paris in 2014, part of our honeymoon trip and a gathering of our community was with us – Photo by Jonathan McCloud

Red Thread Letter #806

Dear One,

I feel like I have so much to say and nothing to say. When I sit down to write you a letter these days, it mostly just comes out as some kind of prose. Rather than sound wisdom you can take and chew on in your life circumstances.

Crunchy nouns anyone?

Rather then fight it, and try to find something useful to say about what we are facing, I am going with it and trusting, that the Muse at the Backdoor might be just as much of what you need, as it is what I need. They are saucy but so healing.

Usually when I write these, a word or phrase comes to me in the morning, often waking me up. And then I work on them for days. By the time you see it, it has hours and hours of editing into it by me and others. That doesn’t mean there aren’t typos, it means with every minute more love is poured in to refine it as a present for you.

The words of this one that woke me up are, “Her words come to me charred” – I had to rush to the pen to try to capture what was coming through….which is not so easy with the Muse!

I hope the story provokes you to strike and pick up you pen, brush, drum…

To really speak to what is at hand in any logical way – a lot of reseach needs to be taken into consideration and it changes almost daily. Once source I trust that I have been going to for insight, is my friend Dr. Lissa Rankin.

I had a potent dream on the new moon, that the whole world awakened at once. It was such a powerful felt experience. So much joy! Then those of us with eyes open (edgewalking curiousity rebels) watched as the others blinked and slowly, with sleepy eyes turned away from what they now knew. It just appeared easier with more illusory perks and that was enough for many of us. Whoa. I saw and felt my lifelong dream. An Awake us.

This is not a commentary on human behaviour right now – although it may apply. I know many need to begin to find a way towards each others, with precaution. I pray for all involved trying to open, and then those participating. I hope to have an art event at a distance within a few weeks.

Writing you from my home perch, not rushing out just yet. Honoring the many we remember in honor.

Leaving the door open for the Muse…

With heart and sending love from my heart to yours across the cosmos Dear One,

I came across this photo of me with my cousin Bridget and my Aunt Janet and wanted to share it with you – these are two of the powerful women that have taught me so much.