Take Back Your Life!

I’m in essay writing mode, which means I’m reading a lot of essay/memoirish type books these days.

One with spectacular writing is The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy (2002, Pulitzer Prize Finalist). I majored in Anthropology and love the word. The clothing store chain spells it Anthropologie, which I like too. Funny how words become in vogue after sitting in obscurity for years. I’ve heard that anthropology is one of the most popular majors at my alma mater. I must be a trendsetter of sorts. When I attended the program had about 40 students majoring in it — if that.

I loved the classes and teachers and subject. We went to Safari type places, studied the Yanomamo on the Orinoco River, genetic drift, vervets, cultures and people. Offbeat, fascinating stuff that I’ve come to appreciate the last 10 years or so. I’m so tired of everyone saying all the jobs will be in math and engineering. How can that even be true? Imagine if everyone majored in one of them, nothing else. Would that create more jobs? I don’t think so. (more…)

Magic has surfaced as a theme for the writers taking my latest Story Circle On-line writing adventure: Grab Life By The Writing Gusto.

I believe Magic exists, we just learn to filter it out on our slog to the “Real World,” which of course is anything but real. Truth continues to be stranger than fiction, so I’m not sure why we continue to train the young for the real world when that’s not in our best self-interest.

Someone said to me that the title for my class wasn’t possible, that you couldn’t grab life by the writing gusto.

Why not? That’s how ingrained folks are to sort everything into real and not real. (more…)

I’ve been jumping around The Art of Recklessness: Poetry As Assertive Force And Contradiction. It’s due in two days and despite renewing it once I waited until almost the last minute to crack the cover. (Deadlines can be great motivators.)

The author Dean Young says, “We are all trying in the writing of poetry to bring about something that doesn’t exist, that will surprise us, delight us, perhaps, but we must always be prepared for its initial unrecognizability. The imagination is that which will not be subservient to so-called reality, so-called duty, not to expectation, requirement, prerequisite, obligation.” (more…)

Men write 75% of op-ed columns. For some reason, women have not broken through this journalistic glass ceiling. Op-eds require a strong writing voice. That may scare or turn some women off. It also requires a tough skin. Op-ed writers can get hammered by readers in the comment sections. Negative comments tend to be more forthcoming than positive ones.

I’ve learned to let these comments fuel my passion to write even more wild and disobedient op-eds.

Honestly, it’s my favorite type of writing. I get to unleash my voice. I get to be bold. I get to be sassy. I get to use my Nancy Drew investigative skills. I get to pull disparate thoughts together into something new. To me, it’s a labor of creative love. (more…)

Hello folks,

I’ve long thought that a lack of creative thinking ability has stalled the worldwide economy.

A multitude of problems need solving, yet we continue to prop up dead and dying industries or copy existing ones. It doesn’t make much sense unless you see the root cause as an inability to move forward, an inability to create a meaningful economy, an inability to dream up something new. (more…)

Something new here at the Muse to keep the creative juices flowing. I’ll start the story. Feeling game? Please add the next couple of sentences or paragraphs, leaving your last words to be a cliff hanger of sorts. I’ll post the new entries as they come separated by the tilde. Many thanks! G.

~

I’d been in the cave for 3 days. My food and water were almost gone, my portable lamps running low on batteries. Yet, I didn’t want to leave until I’d completed the Van Dussen Challenge. I thought back to the argument that led me to sign up for it … (more…)

I’ve been an oil painter for about 8 years. And while I don’t consider myself someone who can draw, I am able to use paint to create the shapes needed to make a painting come alive.

Yet, I’ve always longed to be able to sit down and sketch something from my own mind. My natural love for sketching got squelched in third grade when my science teacher sent me into the corner as punishment for laughing. I’d drawn some bold, bodacious, bawdy pictures of three movie stars in my art class and brought them with me into Science. The boys gathered around me and we were all laughing. That’s when the teacher’s need to control us hit the fan and I ended up languishing in the corner on a stool my paintings rolled up on her desk. (more…)

I got an idea a few weeks ago for the US to create companies where folks are paid to embrace their strengths. Whatever it is that makes them feel alive, that’s their job mission. It’s what I refer to as your Fearless Why.

We subsidize farmers, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies and others. Why not subsidize people’s strengths? Why not take our soul crushing economic model of forcing folks into pre-existing job categories and change it up?

Yes, I know what the skeptics will say. It won’t make a profit. (more…)

Hello all,

Billy Jack post needs to wait another week. After I perused my latest copy of Newsweek and the local paper, I felt compelled to write about the state of the United States.

46.2 million Americans now live in poverty. (15.1%, same as 1993, which I find fascinating. Was that a bad time then? Don’t think so.)

59 million do not have health insurance. (more…)

I’m in the throes of an abstract painting class intensive. Instructor’s right up my muse alley. He’s constantly uttering rebellious phrases.

And I’ve been writing a lot of them down, like “dare to be messy.” (Of course, I love this. As a messy person, I’ve faced serious discrimination beginning at overnight summer camp when the best candy bars went to the cleanest lodges. My messiness often resulted in my entire cabin sharing a pack of Wrigley Gum instead of us each savoring our own Snickers.)

(more…)