Theater in the Court

Julia Cameron, in her "The Artist's Way" recommends making a two-hour artist's date with yourself every once in a while. The purpose? To open your horizons to experiences and people who might inspire new writings. And these inspirations can lead to creative writing projects or serve as juicy fodder for your journal. Not ready to spend cash on a "date"? You don't have to. One special outing might be a visit to your local state or county court. Slip into a courtroom and listen to the proceedings of a criminal or civil case. A strange and exciting new world and all its characters may be laid before you to take note of in your journal.

And if you happen to be on jury duty and are going through the selection process before a judge and panel of lawyers, take journal notes on your fellow jurors as they answer the judge's questions. Those mild-mannered, newspaper-reading suburbanites you first glimpsed in the waiting room may reveal personal details about their lives that will make your head spin and journal pages ignite.

Librettist and playwright James Lapine makes weekly visits to his local family court in between projects and finds it "The best theater in town," according to an article in The Wall Street 1ournal. ◦

Theater in the Court

E-mail Journal

In a hurry? Who isn't? Create an e-mail journal. If you regularly communicate with friends and family through e-mail, those messages contain a hefty portion of information, thoughts and feelings that often go into a conventional journal.

Save all your e-mails as drafts before you send them along to loved ones through cyberspace. Once a week or once a month, print off your e-mails, three-hole punch them and place them in a binder. At the end of the year, you'll have a hardcopy journal of the places you visited, the people you've met, goals conquered, discoveries made and the heartbreaks and happiness that have accompanied you along the way.

Rather not deal with all the paper and storage? Cut-and-paste those e-mails into a Word file and keep them in a special sub-folder on your computer or portable disc drive. Again, you can group the pieces by week, by month, or just thread the whole thing together in one continuous document.

You can do the same thing with the e-mail responses you receive from others. Remember when people packed away stacks of letters in a cedar chest? This is a modern turn on a similar idea. ◦

E-mail Journal

Blog Update

A recent story in the Detroit Free Press reported that nearly 6 percent of U.S. adults have created blogs (short for Weblogs) and 16 percent of them read blogs. This 2005 data was gathered by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

A blog is a personal journal published on the Internet where people can write about any subject, including their personal live and jobs.

"Journal Writing Tips with a Twist" mixes a few personal stories in between educational tips on journal writing. The emphasis, however, is strongly placed on tips over the personal.

Some bloggers seem compelled to even venture beyond revealing personal information, by offering inside secrets about or potential products being developed at their places of employment, unflattering portraits of their bosses, or blasts against coworkers.

In more than one instance, such frankness has cost the blogger his or her job. Caution may be the byword when walking a fine line between free speech and slander or peddling proprietary company information for free. ◦

Blog Update

True Person of No Rank

Zen philosophy describes a "true person of no rank." I put my faith in Christianity, but I hold much admiration for Zen points of view of the world and of creativity. Deep inside each of us is a "true person of no rank," and we can approach our journal writing as such. Those of high rank and with many credentials need to remember that, as blessed as they are, they put on pants (or pantyhose) one leg at a time like the rest of us. Such a person is, deep down, a "true person of no rank." On the other hand, a person who has little schooling and a humble track record may feel unqualified to write anything worthwhile. But who isn't more qualified to expound on life than a "true person," and especially a "true person of no rank." By ignoring our rank or pecking order and focusing on our true personhood, we can look more closely at the world, pay attention to its beautiful detail and bring our observant meditations to life on our journal pages. ◦

True Person of No Rank

Poetry Leaves a Legacy

Journal entries are not the only way to record memoirs. Leave a family legacy for your children and children's children through poetry. It's more creative, more engaging and leaves behind a work of art that exemplifies your family for generations to come. Lord willing.

Here's an example. In my book of Chicago poems, "Swimmer's Prayer," I wrote a poem about my stepfather John. He worked for city government and oversaw operations regarding the Chicago River and bridgetender units. He was the one who came up with the method of dying the Chicago River green for St. Patrick's Day in the early 1960s. Since then, Chicago bears an emerald river every St. Patrick's Day and several others cities have adopted the custom using the same water-soluble non-toxic dye stepdaddy John got his hands on way back when.

The story is certainly one that family members can pass along, but they can also refer to "The Leprechaun from Blue Island Avenue," which tells the story through poetry. Here's an excerpt:
"Who else could it have been
to send out the speedboats
like crazed blenders
into the Chicago River
dumping bags of orange crystals
that exploded into its other,
churning up a new wardrobe
for the clang, clang,
workingman's river,
until now, clad in railroad overalls,
the river that found itself
wearing one, long Leprechaun sleeve
in time for the parade."
(Missing Spoke Press, 1999)

By the way, although stepdaddy John was a leprechaun at heart, he stood six feet tall. ◦

Poetry Leaves a Legacy

Practice Naikan While Journaling

Naikan (pronounced nye-kahn) is a Japanese practice that blends meditation and gratitude. The word means "inner observation," made up of nai (inner or inside) and kan (observation). Naikan creates awareness by helping you remember the significant people in your life.

In the book, "Wabi Sabi Simple," author Richard Powell suggests taking your journal to a quiet room and sitting comfortably with no distractions, preferably in a corner behind a screen. Write down the names of one to five people who mean a lot to you, whether relatives, friends, teachers or coworkers. Then ask yourself three questions concerning each person:
1. What have I received from _________?
2. What have I given this person?
3. What troubles, difficulties or worries have I caused this person?

Write down concrete examples, such as "My mother always made lunch for me for school and told me she loved me as I left the house in the morning." General statements such as "My mother was nice to me" doesn't work. Try to put yourself in the other person's shoes and try to feel what he or she has felt.

Through your meditations and writing, what you find important about your relationship to this person will become more clear. When the time is right, express to each person on your list your gratitude for the specific things that they have given you.
[naikan][wabi-sabi] ◦

Practice Naikan While Journaling

Travel Journal Shortcuts

One of the best times to start a journal is during a special trip or vacation. And when teamed with photos and drawings, the same journal entries will take on added power to fortify an artist's journal or scrapbook.

How do you start a travel journal, especially if you have never journaled before? Take a shortcut. This means writing short, brief phrases that describe the people, places and things you encounter on your journey, instead of trying to tackle long sentences and hefty paragraphs. And because you're on-the-go, you may not have time for anything more than short, pithy descriptions. Think postcard writing, but even more brief!

Here are a few examples, cited in "Creative Utopia," a book on maximizing your creativity by graphic designer Theo Stephan Williams. In her chapter on "Keeping a Journal," she includes a few of her own personal photos from a trip to Provence in France.

Describing her hotel Les Antiquities:
-- beautiful English flower garden
-- cherubs over bed
-- funny mustachioed check-in man
-- butt-shaped minitub

Describing Dominique, a photographer she met:
-- quick smile, slight space between front teeth
-- has supreme eye for lighting
-- Skecher shoes
-- worried about his health
-- fun, excited about his work

Refer later to your brief comments to write in greater length after you get back to your hotel room. Or you might try your hand at creating a poem or haiku based on one or more of your phrases. Or even take your snippets as is and use the words as borders for your photos in a scrapbook, writing with a colored or calligraphy pen along all four sides. Everytime you look at the photos and read the words, memories from your trip will come flooding back. ◦

Travel Journal Shortcuts

Active Versus Passive Voice

When you read your journal, you want to hear yourself speaking and not some narrator without a face or point of view. You want to feel part of the action instead of being some passive bystander. How can you make your journal more personal? Use the active voice!

In the passive voice, you're not really sure who commits the action. You only know the receiver of the action. An example:
“The car was hurled against the building.”
Something dramatic happened to the car and a building, but we have no idea how or why. Boring sentence.
Active voice:
“The tornado hurled the car against the building.”
Tells how car and building met. We can visualize what happened. Tornado caused the action.

Passive voice often uses forms of the verb “to be," is, am, are, was, were, be, being, become, becoming, also appear, seems, seems like, looks like.

Instead, use stronger and more active verbs.

Another example-
“Regina was saddened by the news.”
Instead “The news saddened Regina.”

Or “Tony was injured by the falling rock.”
Instead, “The falling rock injured Tony.” ◦

Active Versus Passive Voice

Japanese Pillow Books

In male-dominated medieval Japan, the ladies of the court kept journal-style books under their bed pillows, used as an outlet to express themselves. These pillow books contained court gossip, as well as the ladies' innermost secrets, hopes and dreams.

In lieu of crying into their pillows, they slipped their identities under them. Writing what they really felt was at least one effective way these women could keep a handle on who they were in this "be-seen-and-not-be-heard" society.[pillow books] ◦

Japanese Pillow Books

Words Paint a Picture

Another way to approach journal writing is through the use of "captured moments." We all have envelopes, boxes or albums filled with photos tucked into the bottom of drawers or the back of shelves in our homes. But even closer to home, far within the recesses of our minds, lies a repository of visual snapshots that greatly outnumber even the holdings of Getty Images.

Whether the images are memories, seeing the present with your mind's eye, or imagining the future, you can capture these visual captured moments on paper. One thousand words can indeed paint a picture. But your picture, just in the telling of it, will charge the atmosphere with far greater emotion and meaning than most static pictures ever can.

Dialogues, which were covered in previous posts, are good psychological tools for working on relationships and other personal issues. On the other hand, captured moments are excellent devices to use in preserving memories.[captured moments] ◦

Words Paint a Picture

Let Wabi-Sabi Happen in Your Journal

Wabi-sabi, the quintessential Japanese aesthetic, can be applied to journaling and is, in fact, an integral part of true journaling, whether we realize it or not. Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest, humble and unconventional.

Published writing is usually rewritten, edited and polished writing, set in symmetrical fonts and printed in uniform order and quality.

Journaling, most often, is composed of our raw thoughts or emotions, scribbled down in an unsteady hand on a commuter train or a dimly-lit kitchen. Perhaps the pages are occasionally smudged with ink or stained by drops of coffee. Entries may be heartfelt and passionate, but can simultaneously be random, incomplete, unconventional and bold, without need to please an audience.

In the long run, the journaling process may add up to a complete picture or an epiphany of revelation, but tracing any single journal's pages, one-by -one, can render a modest journey, the humbleness of following a foggy path with no promise of reaching a clearing.

Most distilled, the Wabi-Sabi of journaling embraces a sense of faith -- in yourself, in life, and in the promise of a future.[wabi-sabi] ◦

Let Wabi-Sabi Happen in Your Journal

Remembering Carlos Cortez

Poet, artist, Wobbly and journal writer extraordinare Carlos Cortez quietly passed away yesterday evening in his Chicago home. He used to own a large leatherbound journal/artist's notebook filled with journal jottings, haikus and pen-and-ink drawings that he lugged through Greece, Germany and his criss-cross excursions by train across America. He died at age 81, but Carlos' elder years were some of his best, with a prolific outpouring of linocuts, classes, tours of Pilsen murals and two retrospectives at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, fueled by his unlimited capacity for generosity and humor, even while ailing.[Carlos Cortez][Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum] ◦

Remembering Carlos Cortez

Scrapbooking Haibun

Scrapbooking is highly visual type of journaling. And somewhere between the visual scrapbook and the literal journal lies the artist's journal -- which goes back to Leonardo da Vinci.

Haibun is a Japanese form of journaling popular with poets from Basho to Jack Kerouac. Each journal entry is followed by a 5-7-5 haiku poem, which summarizes or crystalizes the moment.

Haibun can also be applied to scrapbooks. I created a scrapbook for my son's high school senior prom. Besides photos from before, during and after the prom, I included ticket stubs, names of friends who rode in the 20-person limo they all pitched in to rent, and a matchbook from the hotel where the prom was held.

My son had the usual adolescent stops and starts while planning for the prom. He looked dashing when he tried on his tuxedo rental, but the sleeves hovered two inches above his wrists. Within a day the tailor lengthened them and all seemed well, when my son received a call that his date had taken ill and couldn't go to the prom. He nearly resigned himself to attending "stag," when our pretty next door neighbor girl agreed -- the night before prom -- to be my son's date. She was a sophomore from another high school, but her mother was pleased to let her go if I would pick up the couple right after the prom. The girl had school the next day! She already owned a gorgeous blue semi-formal dress which just so happened to match the blue-ribboned corsage my son had ordered for the one at home with a fever. If his former date could only see how lovely the neighbor girl looked next to my son, her temperature would really boil!

Photos in place, I wrote this haiku in the corner of the last page of the prom scrapbook:
Girl next door said yes,
She wore blue in the limo,
You both danced all night.

[haibun][5-7-5 haiku][senior prom] ◦

Scrapbooking Haibun

Dialogue with Societies

As the holidays approach, we're surrounded by a whirl of activity, but more important and if we're lucky, we find ourselves warmly surrounded by friends and family. But perhaps, the holidays might instead open old wounds and unhealed hurts we've experienced with other people, making it awkward to be together. Perhaps the holidays are a time we renew our faith or, on the other hand, wonder how others can be so fervent. What better time to take a look at "that part of myself that is there before I am." Ira Progoff, author of the precedent-setting "Intensive Journal Workshop" made that statement in regard to his Dialogue with Societies concept.

Dialogue with Societies is one of Ira Progoff's six main variations of dialogue a person can experience with a journal. Using Dialogue with Societies means choosing your race, tribe, religion, ethnic group, socio-economic class, neighborhood or extended family as dialogue partner and musing, discussing, arguing or debating how these larger-than-self influences affect you and what role you play in their midst.

As with all dialogues, you take turns on paper. You write -- and the society writes back. What role do you play in a society and how does a particular society embrace or not embrace you. Do you fit in? Do you want to fit in? What type of dreams do you have that involve numbers of people? Can you be part of a society without being part of a crowd? How has a society changed over the years? Is it for the better or for the worse? Can you feel deep faith and be part of a religion without attending a church? Or can you be an active member of a church and feel cut off from your religion? Are the roots of your society in another part of the world, in another decade, or even in another century? These are all questions that can be applied to your journaling exploration of societies. [Intensive Journal Workshop][Ira Progoff] ◦

Dialogue with Societies

Dialogue with Persons

This is the third in a series of posts about using dialogue as a journaling device. Ira Progoff, the father of modern journaling, cited six main types of dialogues in his groundbreaking volume, "Intensive Journal Workshop," published in 1966. Dialogue with Persons is one of these six main types.

By a dialogue, I mean choosing a dialogue partner and writing back and forth between yourself and your "partner." In a Dialogue with Persons, your dialogue could be with a person of the past, present or future, a person living, passed on or not yet born. And you don't need to know the person to have a dialogue. This is not channeling or any other hocus-pocus, but a way for you to cut through preconceived notions to what you may discover is the deeper truth about a person, persons and especially about yourself. Think of it as a letter that can't be delivered, but somehow it is, and somehow you get a letter in return.

For example, you might choose to dialogue with a person you really admire, who may possibly serve as a role model for you, and perhaps you have never had the opportunity to meet. You may initially feel that you can never measure up to the talent or accomplishment of this person. But through your dialogue, you may discover that your partner tells you how hard he or she had to work, how long of a wait and how high of a climb it took to leave an impression. Perhaps it really did. Perhaps it really didn't. But this dialogue may at best give you insight into what you feel you must do yourself to progress to the next level of your life and your personhood! [Intensive Journal Workshop][Ira Progoff] ◦

Dialogue with Persons

Dialogue with Creative Work

I have a day job, but I don't necessarily want to dialogue with it. I may argue with it a good portion of the eight hours I punch in, but I have other avocations that make more appealing partners. One is musical theater writing. I'm currently working on a children's musical and besides dialoging with my actual composer/collaborator friend, which is the most satisfying, my journal serves as an ideal stage to work out the answers to what drives the piece in the first place.

Some of the questions I pose consist of "What does the main character want?" and "What is the musical about?" When I ask what it's about, I don't mean the plot. The plot is what happens, scene by scene. Instead, I mean what deeper meaning is the piece trying to bring out? If it's about belonging, does the character discover that he or she can belong or that it may be impossible to really belong. If it's about connection, what might a character do to continually reinforce disconnection before finding a path to connecting with other people.

If working on a play or musical, you might have a journaled dialogue with your character asking directly what he or she wants, believes, avoids or regrets. You may not only find out your answer, but also find ways to smooth any bumpy parts of the script your characters trip on or redirect their steps when they wander away from where they and your piece are ultimately headed. [Intensive Journal Workshop][Ira Progoff] ◦

Dialogue with Creative Work

Dialogue with the Body

Your body's wisdom can speak to you through metaphor. Writing dialogues in your journal can help faciliate the life lessons your body may be trying to teach you. Dialogue with the body is one of the six main types of journaling dialogues described in Ira Progoff's seminal book on modern journal writing, "Intensive Journal Workshop," first published in 1966.

First, choose a dialogue partner, whether it be a body part or organ, illness, injury or surgery, allergy, your sexuality; a body subpersonality such as thin self, fat self, addiction or habit; foods or nutrition; or pain, which always seems to be an important messenger.

Dialogue in writing, back and forth, with your dialogue partner. You will be writing both roles, of course! Your dialogue can be in the form of a thoughtful and direct "letter" or "instant messaging" back-and-forth dialogue if you thrive on fast-paced banter. If you feel like you're making it up, you're right. You are making it up, but it is a part of you. Don't be afraid of the unexpected or ideas that seem to come out of nowhere.

Having a dialogue with the body can be a form of healing visualization. Whether your dialogue partner is anything from an allergy to dust, a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer or the ache of a twisted ankle to an addiction to chocolate, the fear of hair loss or compulsion to wear too much makeup, your two-way dialogues can help you sort out the real from the imagined, the old you from the newer you, and help you decide what can be changed and how to go about it, or what may be inevitable and how best to face it. [Intensive Journal Workshop][Ira Progoff] ◦

Dialogue with the Body

Haibun Beatnik Style

Jack Kerouac was one of the Beat poets of the West Coast (although he was originally from Massachusetts) in the 1950s. Inspired by the Japanese haiku poets and haibun writers, such as Buson, he tried his own hand at haibun, which is a journal entry followed by a haiku poem. The following excerpt is from Kerouac's book "Desolation Angels."

"the wind, the wind--
And there's my poor endeavoring human desk at which I sit so often during the day, facing south, the papers and pencils and the coffee cup with sprigs of alpine fir and a weird orchid of the heights wiltable in one day -- my Beechnut gum, my tobacco pouch, dusts, pitiful pulp magazines I have to read, view south to all those snowy majesties -- The waiting is long.

On Starvation Ridge
Little sticks
Are trying to grow."

[haibun][beatnik][Jack Kerouac][haiku][Desolation Angels] ◦

Haibun Beatnik Style

Lunar Eclipse Party

I'd like to say that I had a fabulous lunar eclipse party on the balcony of my West Side Manhattan duplex overlooking Central Park, joined by several chosen artsy friends, a reflector telescope and eight bottles of French wine -- one to taste every fifteen minutes while we caught glimpses of the moon as it fell under the seductive shadow of the earth and turned red with anger.

Rather, I only imagined that party, but really didn't have a half-bad real time under this once-in-a-while total lunar eclipse, as viewed from my Chicago deck. Every fifteen minutes my husband and son took turns with me to spy through mini-binoculars we usually reserve for musical performances and plays needed for our nosebleed gallery seat vantage points. I made a salad and looked at the moon. I typed my husband's portfolio materials and smiled at the moon. We phoned friends from around the country and down the street to partake of the moon.

My Chicano husband warned me that, according to tradition, the rabbit in the moon (not everyone thinks it's the man in the moon!) was being eaten during a lunar eclipse and you need to wear a hat when you stand outside so spirits don't land on your head. It was a little difficult to juggle the straw hat on my head, take off my glasses and readjust binoculars to match my myopia. But I'm sure I did it a lot more deftly than if I'd had eight glasses of wine on that New York balcony.

But I did attend two parties at once. The real one and the imagined one. [lunar eclipse][rabbit in the moon] ◦

Lunar Eclipse Party

Letters That Can't Be Delivered

In my journal writing workshops, I guide participants in writing "Letters That Can't Be Delivered," which are letters written to a close friend or relative who recently passed away, to a favorite neighborhood tree, to an ongoing illness or even to a bout of blocked creativity. We can't expect an answer. Or can we? Every good conversation isn't a one-way experience. The best part of the dialogue is, indeed, the answer that comes back. And of course, the answer doesn't really come from the loved one, or the tree, or the illness, but from deep inside. And what we have to reveal to ourselves is often surprising.
◦

Letters That Can't Be Delivered