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
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
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.
Recent Red Thread Letters from Shiloh Sophia:
A Mama Day Blessing for All Kinds of Mamas #805
This One Thing Can Change Every Thing #804
Praying for the End of Suffering #803
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