One of my favorite exercises at the end of a 21-Day Journaling with Collage Course (next one starts on March 1st) is to switch things around by having the participants who I've spent the previous twenty days sending daily prompts to, study a posted collage and then send ME a prompt. (I call it the "What Have You Learned Dorothy?" exercise.)
I got some really great ones from this collage, including: Write the conversation between the boy and the Giant Fish. Tell whether the Boy with the Shovel is digging something up or burying something (I confess, my mind went immediately to him burying a dead body. And -then- digging it back up again!) And what song is the Girl in Black singing to the Universe? (do you also see an 70's version of Stevie Nicks?) But my favorite prompt out of the bunch wasn't even a full prompt, per se. It was a single phrase within the prompt, describing the foliage at the bottom of the piece as looking like a bundle of "floating mistletoe."
Floating Mistletoe!?!
Wow, did -that- get my creative mind flowing, to which I responded to (and yes, I actually do work the prompts that students give me) by writing this:
"Floating Mistletoe"
When I think of the phrase “floating mistletoe”, the song “Love is in the Air” starts swimming through my head. “Love is in the air … everywhere you look around. Love is in the air … every sight and every sound.”
This thought, in turn makes me ponder the omni-presence of love. That it doesn’t –have- to be attached to any one person, place or thing. That it is indeed, everywhere, that we’re breathing in love spores with virtually every breath we take.
But can I come to –live- in that realization? Can I get to the place where I –look- for love, and like a child stumbling upon magic with every step, expecting to, and managing to –find- it?
Can I let go of the concept that this person, and this person, and this one, and that one over there, is somehow loving me “wrong” and look instead to having my love needs filled by the simple majesty of existence?
Can I walk my days as if there were a bundle of floating mistletoe above my head, giggling like a school girl every time I get mysteriously and magically kissed?
Can I let myself be kissed by life, by love?
I’d certainly like to try.
I got some really great ones from this collage, including: Write the conversation between the boy and the Giant Fish. Tell whether the Boy with the Shovel is digging something up or burying something (I confess, my mind went immediately to him burying a dead body. And -then- digging it back up again!) And what song is the Girl in Black singing to the Universe? (do you also see an 70's version of Stevie Nicks?) But my favorite prompt out of the bunch wasn't even a full prompt, per se. It was a single phrase within the prompt, describing the foliage at the bottom of the piece as looking like a bundle of "floating mistletoe."
Floating Mistletoe!?!
Wow, did -that- get my creative mind flowing, to which I responded to (and yes, I actually do work the prompts that students give me) by writing this:
"Floating Mistletoe"
When I think of the phrase “floating mistletoe”, the song “Love is in the Air” starts swimming through my head. “Love is in the air … everywhere you look around. Love is in the air … every sight and every sound.”
This thought, in turn makes me ponder the omni-presence of love. That it doesn’t –have- to be attached to any one person, place or thing. That it is indeed, everywhere, that we’re breathing in love spores with virtually every breath we take.
But can I come to –live- in that realization? Can I get to the place where I –look- for love, and like a child stumbling upon magic with every step, expecting to, and managing to –find- it?
Can I let go of the concept that this person, and this person, and this one, and that one over there, is somehow loving me “wrong” and look instead to having my love needs filled by the simple majesty of existence?
Can I walk my days as if there were a bundle of floating mistletoe above my head, giggling like a school girl every time I get mysteriously and magically kissed?
Can I let myself be kissed by life, by love?
I’d certainly like to try.
"Digging up the Tree of Life" by Dante Jericho
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