You are reading this because YOU were called to read them... and to respond. I firmly, fully believe this.
I think about wild and I think not about the wilderness out there, I think about the wilderness in here in this photo. In these women from long ago - the same dance troupe Martha Graham got her start - yes, her energy and life force still flows into my blood and out into whatever it is I am creating in that specific moment - as it does in yours, too.
I want to shout to women I see, just barely living, just barely breathing, smiling that “I know this is how and who I am supposed to be, at least that's what everyone (silently my husband, mother, teacher, life coach, boss, the media, my high schooll yearbook) says and respond, "Hey: you are safe here. Let’s play around in these waters, even just looking at what we see reflected is a powerful thing!"
Hold that image of you in that mirror you gaze into.
Look at one feature, tell me what you see.
What do you see in those eyes there, looking back. Describe them, carefully, minutely in every unique detail.
I hunger for those specifics: the flecks of gold, the slightly upturned downturn at the edge of your eye where that unspent tear from seventh grade still waits for you to say, “Julie’s tear, from that moment when she said that to you - you know the one and you know the what, it is safe. You are love personified. That tear and the others may all come now.” I want to hear about the rim of your eye, the outline. I want to hear about the specific shade of copper or brown or middle-of-the-Summer-night-before-the-moonrise color. Perhaps yours look like a dark rain cloud or the fog or maybe like the color of your sister’s woolen coat, the one she hated but the one you always wanted to wear.
Tell me about your eyes, the ones you see reflected.
This is where wildness lives. This is WILD: in your eyes and in the words you use to bring your eyes to life in front of me so that I can close my eyelids and see your eyes reflected there.
That - this - is the wild I want to see.
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming Spring, 2014 and beyond.
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