You Never Know Until You Dive In: The Glory of Morning Pages

Dive Into Morning Pages: What Looks Like Trash May Be Treasures You Didn't See Before.... I wonder if gorging on words and images too early in the day may actually slow my creative process to a slow, almost dried up trickle?

This morning, for example, I was so fired up from writing poems in my morning pages and really watching and looking and snapping photos of yet another picker going through my Wednesday morning trash among other things.

What is up with this?

I finally sat at my desk and nothing worthwhile is spilling from my fingers.

Including this.

I think I may go work on my garage organization or tape off some painting projects or get in my car and drive to the river.

Certainly here at the keyboard nothing is happening.

I quickly peruse my morning pages. I find this haiku:

Slice through needless words

Emma sleeps on, late start day

My arm slowly heals

Bicycle Riding, Shopping Cart Pulling Picker - in front of my house. Yes. I discover a couple unspent American Sentence poems (a form like haiku created by American Beat Poet Jack Kerouac)

First light goings, comings: two wheels, shopping cart, SUV, garbage truck.

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Thought of you as the sun hid behind the cloud. Please don’t leave me alone!

I find a typically random phrase, seeking a poem to appear within: “Staccato syllables represent my thoughts.”

I saw three pickers in total working my neighborhood this morning, hopeful they would find something recyclable. I don’t know why they don’t limit this hunt to the day when we all put out our recycling trash cans? It is much cleaner garbage and pre-sorted for them.

I saw a pregnant prostitute, doing a strange sort of belly dance for south bound travelers on Union Avenue. She was wearing zebra striped stretch pants and a tank top pulled over her tummy, protruding belly button and all. This tipped me over into “huh?” land and except for making my daughters lunch and adding these words to the page and writing a found poem, I haven’t created anything.

Yet when I look at that list, I realize I have been creative all along.

The goodies still pour forth, only sometimes they pour differently and perhaps not exactly like I expected.

My Morning Pages and a Found/Black Out Poem - from Today They are not a trickle at all – they are more like a sorting of ingredients into small containers like they do on cooking shows. A ramekin of this and a bowl of that and a spoon of this and I always wonder, “Do they do this preparation at home?”

It’s almost like this brand of creativity is the guys picking through my garbage. Sometimes they hit pay dirt: a lot of cans and bottles, and the other times they just stick their hands in a lot of stinky stuff. You just never know until you dive in.

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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

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