CREATIVITY EXERCISE at the GT LANGUAGE INSTITUTE: SCENES FROM A DAY

Hallelujah for CREATIVITY and the celebration of diversity! As one of the final blog entries in my creative writing class at the GT Language Institute for Spring Session One, my class chose eight topics for photos to be taken by everyone over the weekend. The goal was to loosely capture the same “Scenes from a Day” in their individual lives in order to tell a story about themselves. We hoped this project would help us glimpse how different and unique each one is—being that the 15 students hail from Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Korea, China, Libya, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Spain.

We agreed to post our photos--one of the bedroom, a view from our window, shoes we wear every day, the fridge, an activity from the day, an object in the hand, our computer desktop, and writing or drawing on paper--on the same day at the same time in class, so that everyone would have the freedom to create independently. My desire was for my students to experience the quality of their own creative voices and imagery while at the same time collaborating with their classmates to make “one” class project—something like individual singers contributing to a chorus.

I asked them if they wanted me to participate and they said yes. Below are my photos and captions for “Scenes from a Day (February 26-28). First, however, I invite you to sample some of my students' imaginative responses: Blueberry Cellophane, Pitch Your Guts,  Butterflying to Infinity, The Footprint of Water, and Happy Stapler.

1. BEDROOM: COMPOSING AND REPOSING—WHEREVER!

Creativity dwells in my home, in my husband, and in my heart. We both write, make art, and teach. Our bedroom has two creativity stations. Here you witness my Chiboogamoo happily composing underneath a painting we brought back from the top end of Australia.

2. VIEW FROM YOUR WINDOW: UNHARNESSED IMAGINATION

SEES BEYOND BARRIERS

My imagination seeks companionship through my art and by SOUL BLOGGING. I greet ALL GUESTS—real and imagined—with “HELLO” and “GOOD.” In my physical world, my Chiboogamoo and I live in a condo in Decatur and can walk to the library and numerous pubs and shops in 10 to 15 minutes.

3. SHOES YOU ALWAYS WEAR: DEPENDABLE WORTHY STEEDS

I am a PILGRIM. I am on a SPIRITUAL ART JOURNEY. I depend on my sturdy shoes to take me to places of DISCOVERY away from the sole preoccupation of self to the UNIVERSALITY we all share!

4. FRIDGE: SAY YES

I say YES to nurturing the BODY and the SOUL! YES! Feed me lovingly one and all. I believe in the joy of mutuality and reciprocity. I believe in a steady diet of YESes and CREATIVITY.

5. AN ACTIVITYFROM YOUR DAY: CONNECTING WITH THE WORLD

At moments, TIME stops. Suns set. We breathe our individual happy breaths, but then we are compelled to connect with OTHERS…and the WORLD. The New York Times serves me indigestible facts--citizens are being killed in Libya by their own government. (See my blog entry about interaction with Libyan students.) It is warm for February. The early evening air whispers softly of approaching spring.

6. AN OBJECT IN YOUR HAND: THE WORLD

I’ve got the whole world in my hands! I feel so fortunate to commune with the people of the world here at the Language Institute at Georgia Tech! You broaden my experience of the self; you deepen me. You make me a better person, artist, and teacher. (Listen to Veronica Frosgren sing the song, “I’ve Got the Whole World in My Hands” in Dublin.)

7. YOUR DESKTOP COMPUTER SCREEN: CELEBRATION OF COLOR

Green excites and ignites me. My green “Celebration of Summer” mermaid greets me every day on my “virtual” desktop.  I absolutely adore COLOR. As an artist, my “real” desktop is an explosive song of COLOR and IMAGE. I am a primitive sophisticate!

8. WRITE OR DRAW SOMETHING ON A WHITE SHEET OF PAPER: YES

YES! YES, I say to myself. Not good. Not bad. Just is. Say YES! Lean into YES and see where it takes you! Say YES! (To see more on this topic of YES, check out Alice Teeter’s poem with the same name in a past blog entry of mine.)

Hallelujah for the JOURNEY! That concludes COFFEE WITH HALLELUJAH for today. SOUL BLOG with me and tell me about your JOURNEY today! 

COURAGING: SPEAKING HEART

Hallelujah for COURAGE! After completing just 2 weeks of teaching creative writing to my international class at the Language Institute at Georgia Tech, I am resurrecting the respect I have for the BRAVERY that it takes to SPEAK one’s HEART (see an early blog titled, I Speak Heart).

A loose theme for my course is “Identity and Sense of Place.” WHO ARE YOU?, I ask my students? Are you the same person in American culture and using English as you are in your culture and using your native language? Does the place where you live change who you are? Do you think differently when expressing your ideas in another language?

Right now, to develop my own ideas about “who I am”, I’m reading Brene Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.  Brown proposes that COURAGE (see her blog), compassion, and connection are three basic components of “embracing who you are.”  She defines the word COURAGE, first by looking at its Latin roots: COR=HEART! COURAGE, she explains, initially meant “speaking one’s mind by telling all of one’s HEART.” Less about being heroic!

Most of my class has demonstrated this COURAGE! They have pleased me with their willingness to EXPLORE their HEARTS using English. They have started their “public" blogs with imaginative names discovered while doing free writing exercises (Natalie Goldberg-style) in their “private” journals. Take a look at the glorious beginnings of some of these blogs: THE FOOTPRINT OF WATER, BUTTERFLYING TO INFINITY, BLUEBERRY CELLOPHANE, and THE WEALTHY GUARDIAN.

“You learn COURAGE, by COURAGING,” Brene Brown quotes theologian Mary Daly. How simple, and yet, how daunting! As an ESL teacher for 20 years, I have urged my students to learn to SPEAK English, by SPEAKING it, and subsequently observed their lack of COURAGE to do so! It is much easier to become grammar experts doing rote exercises and writing repetitive academic papers then to SAY SOMETHING MEANINGFUL in this “other” language!

In my creative writing class, I am asking my students to connect their heads—and HEARTS—to English by using it COURAGEOUSLY and imaginatively. To gain COURAGE, by COURAGING!

As a visual artist, I move forward in drawing and painting, by accessing my COURAGE. Yet, I have simplified the process. I start with the familiar. I open my hand to the ordinary in my life and psyche. I become ACTION in MOTION. I draw by drawing and paint by painting. Not good. Not bad. Just is.

The painting I am posting on my blog today borrows images primarily from two previous images (see 2011: Say Yes and 1^st Anniversary of Coffee with Hallelujah). What shall I call it? Let me try on some possibilities:

Saying Yes to the Great Mystery

Welcoming Myself

Active Beautiful Mind

Hallelujah Couraging Everyday

Celebrating Companionship

Speaking Heart Today

PILGRIMS! We have endless opportunities to create! Each moment offers the sparkling and amazing chance to think a new thought, to speak in a different way, to draw something unique, to move your body in a refreshing way…! SOUL BLOG with Hallelujah what you are COURAGING today. SPEAK HEART across the INTERNET! 

REVERB10 CHALLENGE: DON'T WE ALL FLOW from the SAME GREAT SOURCE?

The prompt for Wednesday, December eighth’s REVERB10 CHALLENGE is “BEAUTIFULLY DIFFERENT”: Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different—you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

Some people prefer milk chocolate to dark chocolate, or white chocolate to fruit-filled chocolate—but chocolate is still chocolate—N’est-ce pas? Hallelujah, who teaches English and art to international students from all around the world, adores differences—yet finds more delight in acknowledging the universalities, the truths, those startling similarities across the lines of “what is mine” and “what is yours.” My 52-year WALK in LIFE has taught me repeatedly that WE ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL!

I ACKNOWLEDGE US ALL for the FOLLOWING BEAUTY:

*Our PASSION to discover the MEANING in our LIVES

*The DRIVE to express what is on our HEARTS

*Infinite LONGING to be LOVED by ourselves and others

*DESIRE to establish what makes us UNIQUE

*Our inner SPARK that can ignite CREATIVE FIRES

*YEARNING to do good

*An unabashed NEED to CONNECT with OTHERS

ME ME ME? What makes ME “beautifully different”? Is it the “language of self” that I speak in my visionary art? Is it my blog, Coffee with Hallelujah, where I proclaim myself as a SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM seeking like-minded souls? Is it the wonderful fact that I am married to a brilliant paleontologist who cooks pasta for me, rubs my shoulders, and listens to my ideas with intense interest and compassion?

I am a TRAVELLER in my PRECIOUS LIFE meeting REVERED OTHERs and reveling in their OTHERNESS because of our universal human SIMILARITIES. As all chocolate originates from the same cacao bean—don’t we all flow from the SAME GREAT SOURCE?