Category Archives: life

The Creative Epiphany – Moms

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Just a few words today about Moms. No matter what your Mom is like now or was like before she died, she experienced that moment of heart-stopping news, “You are going to have a baby.” She knew instinctively that her life would be forever changed by the arrival of you and she was more than willing to make the sacrifice of her freedom in order to be your constant guide and guardian for the rest of her lifetime. Some believe that we choose our parents; a thought provoking concept. Theoretically, just for the sake of fun and conversation,  let’s say that you did choose….and you chose your Mom. We must ask “why?” What was it about her?

It must have been because your Mom is perfect! You have always been thrilled with your brilliant choice! You would change nothing about her…..What? She’s not….?

She’s not the perfect specimen of a Mom?

If you are not always pleased with your choice, you will learn by what you did not get in a parent every bit as much as by what you were given. Our own parenting is often guided by what was absent for us as we were being raised. An awareness of what was missing in your childhood is a very effective way to understand what all kids need to feel loved and protected, and if you can manage to use that vacant kind of information to make positive changes for your own children instead of repeating family history, you will have learned one of life’s big lessons. Your Mom was your teacher one way or another, even when she was lost and had no clue what she was doing, she was teaching. What she so apparently lacked is what you can learn to provide. She was the ever-present example, whether it was always worth following or not. She was a product of her flawed nature and nurture as are you.

Mother’s Day celebrates the wonderful Moms we would all prefer to remember or pretend we had – the happy, giving, joyful, strong, wise and loving person we pictured for our lives. We celebrate the concept of Motherhood; the daunting task, intense pleasure and constant wonder of raising a human being. We honor all the fine examples – the best of the best – as well as the noble attempts and even the dismal failures, because the job of mothering is creativity personified. Some are gifted at it and some are not. Today of all days, I hope that your choice was divinely inspired and you got a good Mom. But even if you did not choose your Mother wisely, you will benefit from knowing in your heart that she loves you and wishes she had been a better Mom.

The Creative Epiphany – Through the Mind’s Door

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Mixed Media Collage titled Mind Migration, by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

In the introduction of my most recent book, titled The Creative Epiphany – Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations,  www.epiphanysfriends.com  I talk extensively about the process of creativity and our  mind’s ability to use or ignore the gifts it was awarded free at birth. It has always seemed to me, since I was young, that the door of our mind is opened wider and wider by one illuminating realization after another as we grow and change. An epiphany is often defined as a door in your mind being opened, a light coming on in the darkness, a discovery, a bit of brand new information being received, a missing piece to a puzzle. It is all of those things and more.

An epiphany can enter through the door of your open mind with a whisper or a shout.  An epiphany can take time to percolate up from the dark depths of your subconscious, then “suddenly” reveal itself and give you the solution to a long forgotten problem. Or it can overtake you in a stunning, life shaking event that arrives with such power it takes your breath away. It can even give you a call to action in times when you are in danger, revealing a way to save yourself or someone else. Epiphany is best friends with intuition; everyone has them. The two hang out together.

Some people, however, ignore  them both. But the information you receive in the moment of epiphany is always, without fail, useful to you. If you choose to ignore it, you might pay the consequences later. If you choose to listen and learn, you can only reap the benefits. You must live in the NOW, remain alert, listen to that inner voice and pay attention in order for epiphany to walk through the door of your mind. If you become epiphany’s friend, she will be your friend for life.

The Creative Epiphany – Neon Pink Post-It Notes

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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On a daily basis I have been writing a few lines in an engagement calendar  – the one titled “Under The Tuscan Sun”, by Frances Mayes – for over twelve years now. It doesn’t provide enough space for anything lengthy so I have to choose the best or not best part of each day and distill it down to basic information with few adjectives. Since that is difficult for me, I somehow get a bit of extra satisfaction by adding a bright neon pink post-it note to the page when something quite startling has happened. It gives me a mental marker reminder about some big deal kind of thing. I stick it on there so some of it peeks out above the page and screams at me. It can be a really oddball reason or a monumental one. Bad one or good one. Funny one or serious as a heart attack one. Sometimes it even means something happened to someone else who means the world to me.

There are days in your life, my life, all of our lives that deserve neon pick post-it notes. As you look back over things, certainly a selection of spectacular days come to mind. Lucky be you. They ought to make mud-brown post-it notes for the days that are, quite frankly, crappy. Normal be you. You don’t have to keep a journal to remember the good, bad and the ugly – your mind has a place where you catalog all of your days for reference allowing you to pull them out at will and review them for what they are – rare and wonderful or miserable, maybe a day that taught you a difficult lesson. Neutral days don’t ever get post-it notes, but of course they are remembered.

It is already too late for me to die young, so I am fortunate in that regard and supposedly wise for the years I have logged in my life. I remember my mother used to say, “The stories all repeat themselves – the names just change.” Her way of saying that she had seen it all. But I am constantly surprised at the things people do and various things I could never have imagined keep happening. Is it the times we live in? Or am I just a late bloomer who is constantly in awe of life? Have things really changed that much from when our parents were our age? I believe they have. I say that without judgment – things have just changed. Amazing life, incredibly amazing times we live in, based upon other amazing times….I guess it is all relative.

When a neon pink day happens in my world, and it is spectacular and rare and energizing and never to be forgotten in all the best of ways, then that is to be highly valued.  I’m talking about a day when nothing is “off” one single dot from 100% perfect, and it flows as smooth as creme brulee from morning until long past dinner. I had one of those days yesterday. I was with my favorite artsy people, all of us expressing our love of life and our appreciation for time spent together as I prepare to end this chapter, change my residence and move onward. People spoke and said wise things, people joked and said crazy things, some made toasts and everyone made delicious food. Peach tulips graced every cheerful table where we dined. Each laugh filled the room and escaped through the windows of our open hearts. Lovely words were etched in our minds and many thanks were given. We ennobled  the day with our gathering, and we gave wings to our faith in the future. I had never been to such a heart-warming party, much less one in my honor. But the party honored us all and our common desire to create a neon pink day to remember. You must do that whenever you’re able because it’s all precious and life goes by like a candle in the wind.

The Creative Epiphany – Places I Remember, Simpler Times

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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The Beatles’ song lyrics that always grab me go like this:

There are places I remember, all my life, though some have changed

Some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain.

All these places had their moments, with lovers and friends, I can still recall

Some are dead and some are living, in my life I’ve loved them all.

As I sort and pack and sort some more (during this difficult week of bad news) in preparation for the move back to Colorado, I am finding boxes of photos and mementoes long forgotten of a simpler time. Look, here is Thunder, my mean little pony, appropriately named, jet black in  temperament as well as his horsehair. That pony threw me over his head every chance he got. I grew to hate the sight of him, but eventually we arrived at some level of tolerance for eachother. Still, I always believed he was a killer at heart.

I remember the tallest pine tree just off our flagstone terrace, a tree that overlooked the backyard hill of our big country house on Munger Road. In the summer the tree dripped with sap, and I climbed it barefoot. My feet were sticky until school started in the fall when I had to wear shoes again. Nearly every evening I would climb to the very top, a considerable height for a skinny young girl. My parents sat just below having cocktails as the sun went down. From my perch at the top of my world I could hear their conversations to perfection, no one aware I was there. I learned a lot about life and I owe it all to that tree.

Oh the hayloft in the barn. Early morning sun filtering through the cracks between the wall boards revealing the random dance of dust motes in the air. Watching my kittens run to me from across the hay strewn floor as I brought their daily saucer of milk, weaning them from their mama. That hayloft was a retreat from the world for me. I would spend hours there with the horses, the kittens and the roosters crowing in the chicken coop nearby. It was in that barn that I got my first kiss when a boy from my 6th grade class walked miles to visit me, sweetly and respectfully becoming my first boyfriend.

The attic under the high pitched roof of the main house, where we needed help to open the trap door at the top of the stairway, our entrance to another world. As the rain pounded and roared on the roof just above our heads, hours went by as we played “pretend” wearing props such as wide-brimmed hats with feathers on them and black capes and using old furniture for the walls of our forts.

Of course my playhouse out in the horse pasture, nestled under some trees, far enough from the house to feel isolated and adventurous, close enough to run home if a thunderstorm came….the neighbor’s cows often escaped their pasture, wandering onto our property through the same hole in the fence that never managed to stay secure. When the cows surrounded our playhouse we looked out the windows and pretended they were horses being ridden by Indian warriors, and we, the cowboys, staged an entire afternoon of wild west show-downs wearing the cowboy outfits and six-shooters in holsters that Nana and Grandpa had given us for Christmas. We won when the cows finally wandered away and the ranch house was secured.

Mr. Kress, our beloved caretaker and man of few words, in the winter months would knock twice at the back kitchen door every evening about 5:30, greet us, then come in to tromp down the basement stairs and shovel enough coal in the furnace to last until about 7am the next morning when he would come back and do it again. Many nights he was covered in snow accumulated in the walk from his house down the hill to our back door. In the summer months he spent his evenings mowing grass – acres of grass – sometimes until the sun was down. As soon as the front yard was done it was time to do the backyard again. Mr. Kress is a character lovingly remembered; when I was able I followed him everywhere, watching him and occasionally exchanging a few sentences.

These are just a few of the favorite places of my childhood – the ones that shaped me, enhanced my  imagination, fueled my creativity and made me the independent tomboy I was and still am. The tomboy grew up to be an adventurous young woman who decided to go west to college instead of staying in Ohio as my parents strongly wished. In that one decision, which was hard-fought and finally won through downright pleading as well as presenting relevant facts and information, my life changed forever. I knew instinctively that I needed the wide open spaces of the west. When I landed in Colorado to attend CU in Boulder, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be. Next to the mountains and a mile high – with vistas worth painting at every glance.

Still my favorite places from childhood fill my thoughts in the wee hours when I can’t sleep. The common thread is the peace, comfort and freedom these humble but rare places brought to me then, and continue to bring now in their remembering. From all the memories that fall away over the years, the ones we keep are the ones we need the most. And in the words of Jeff Probst of Survivor fame, “The adventure you are ready for is the one you get.” And I am ready to go back to Colorado for the next chapter. It feels like home to me.

The Creative Epiphany – Not Quite Sophie’s Choice

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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This post should be sub-titled, “Moving, Part II” since it is another installment about the process of changing my residence from northern CA to Denver. In a deeper sense it is about choices in general – difficult choices – and the agony of making them. Did you see the film “Sophie’s Choice”? If you did, you remember the painful circumstances and how her impossible choice was made. My recent choices cannot compare with hers, but still they are weighing rather heavily on my shoulders.

It seems to me there is seldom a clear-cut easy decision about life’s pivotal transitions, because the pros and cons often seem almost equally balanced. That’s one of life’s little tricks when life is being a bitch – offering two alternatives that for all practical purposes might each work out just fine…or not. Which is which? After some thought the pros flip to being cons and then a day or so passes and they flop back again. Would it really matter what your decision is, you wonder? I believe the bottom line has to be to ask yourself which alternative might haunt you the longest and forever be second-guessed. Wouldn’t  just one  clear choice make you unquestionably more happy? Either way…you have to live with your decision for a long time. Perhaps you need a third choice. A compromise. There was no compromise for Sophie.

As an artist I consider my art collection my most precious group possession – each and every piece of it. I own a modest assortment of things that have been carefully selected down through the years based upon what was always my  emotional reaction to that piece. The collection includes just one piece that my gifted father created, some art by prominent artists I admired and could afford, some art gifted to me, and a lot of my own art – images I just can’t part with, which I would never sell. My own art is the art that is the problem, of course. I don’t want to be an art hoarder – a wacko, wild-haired artist who keeps producing paintings like cats keep multiplying, and then one fine day I don’t have room to sit down and I can’t even locate my bed. There is art crap everywhere and the neighbors are talking. They swear my art has begun to smell; paint fumes fill the house.

Most artists have done pieces that feel like multiple umbilical cords to their soul – it’s not uncommon. Your own art carries great significance because it chronicles your life – you the artist can recall exactly what you were about when you worked on it. Much is recalled to you in the character of each image. So there you have the issue – leaving behind some of your own best work, your most revealing work, your “art journal”, does not happen without a struggle. Hanging on to your own art is absolutely an exercise in honoring your life and times – egocentric to be sure. But all the “greats” – the true masters – did it too. After their deaths the families often reveal hundreds of paintings and sketches squirreled away in some attic or barn. And aren’t we glad to see what is in those stacks of stuff? Hell yes we are. But I am not a master.

Whether you sell it at a good price or too quickly and maybe even dirt cheap for the sake of expediency, or flat give it away to admirers who are also friends and collectors or donate it to charity, there are choices that need to be made. Gut wrenching choices. This or that. Too many to move…too few to keep…which ones will make the cut? The train is waiting at the proverbial station. Hurry up and make a choice. If you can’t get all your baggage on the train it will leave without you.

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The Creative Epiphany – A Moving Experience

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

stuffbrushesartpaperskitchennative  Were you listening when I told you I was moving? If you didn’t quite get the enormity of that statement – if you can’t imagine the chaos and the boxes and the agony of the process – the stacks of stuff that don’t deserve to move to Colorado measured against the stacks of stuff that get to go – or if you have not done this recently, in this new century,  then I bet you are clueless. After moving out here to northern CA. in 2006 with my husband’s job transfer and settling right in, thinking I would be here for the duration, I proceeded to bloom where I was planted, as the saying goes. I really did bloom. I have loved being in California. But my husband died, other family members shifted from their Tahoe location to a more exotic locale and so now I am ready to return to Colorado. This time truly for the duration. I am so busy that it’s hard to justify taking the time to make a blog entry.

I am working my way through this 3 bedroom house, including an art studio filled to the gills with paint, brushes, collage papers and canvases, books and art teaching materials. I have a kitchen where a lot of cooking actually happened – these days you see gorgeous kitchens looking like no one ever even boils (a yummy pan of) water in them. There are dishes here for several different types of family meals, both casual and elegant. Linens – I love nice bed linens. Towels must be comfy and thick and plentiful. Art? Are you kidding me? Every wall was arranged with art. Sculpture done by my father and even me, including a tall skinny Massai type woman who I sculpted in college – she has lost her head several times in various moves (I have almost done the same) and I always glue it back on, because where I go, she goes. Masks and tribal finds from Africa and continuing unique gifts from my children’s trips, and those kids of mine don’t go just anywhere. Well actually they will go just about anywhere – one of them is on his second passport now and the other one has 40 countries under her belt. They bring me the weird and wonderful un-noticed items that only they would know I will love. An amazing hunk of stone from Yemen that resembles a petrified brain, if you can imagine that. Taken from the ground in a land of nothing but sand. A nice-sized chip from an ancient pot, gathered from an historic southwestern place where such pieces still casually litter the ground. Both from my son of course. A beautifully embroidered, little bit dirty sleeve of a tribal dress, sold at a market in the hill country of Viet Nam. Just the sleeve, because you see they throw nothing way. So I have this sleeve, which I cherish, from my daughter who knew I would put it out somewhere and honor the intricate beauty of it and that I would also leave it lovingly dirty with authentic Vietnamese soil. Just a few of my treasures collected over a full lifetime. It all has to fit into a truck. Driven by someone I do not know from a hole in the wall. Will he be sober? Does he drive too fast? How’s his vision? Can I please just meet him and look him in the eye before he takes off across Utah and Wyoming with all my things? He has to go over Donner Pass into Reno, then those Utah salt flats, then through that desolate part of Wyoming…

The other night I dreamed that my moving truck went off a cliff. All was lost. My globe-traveling son would hold me in higher esteem if I had fewer possessions – he admires those who live quite simply. He doesn’t own a TV. Even my daughter has  streamlined her environment since she and her husband have begun to live abroad; it is a scary crazy thing to move an entire household of your goods in containers stacked up like chicken crates on the outside deck of a rusty old ship headed across an ocean. Still I have my own humble concerns about the journey  my things will take. I would hate to experience the simple life as a result of my truck going off a cliff. But I am sure I would survive and maybe be the better for it. Although maybe not. I would try to be better for it but…it would be hard to live without my special rock and my tribal sleeve.

The Creative Epiphany – Soul Food

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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This mixed media collage is titled SOUL FOOD – I did it several years ago and it is now owned by one of my favorite people. It is a large painting, it makes a strong statement,  and requires a dedication of space, much like the various things that feed my soul. If you examine it closely it reveals details about the passions in my life. I could not get them ALL worked into the composition of course but there is a selection of clues. Sort of like Cliff Notes. But my life is an open book…always has been. If you ask me a question I answer it honestly – if  you know me it does not take long to figure out what makes me tick. I reveal a lot in my art and my writing, and of course those “life journals” are pretty much out there all over the damn place so it is already too late for me to be mysterious even if I claimed I wanted to be. I am a communicator. It runs in my family – the genes from my straight-up-tight English Lit and correct grammar teacher mother combined with my artistic, musical, eccentric risk-taking furniture salesman father gave me no choice in life, really. My dad could tell a story – always a true one – and it would be hilarious. He was charismatic, handsome, romantic and a naughty boy to the very end. So the fact that I seem to be drawn to that very  type of guy is no big surprise.

But I digress – soul food is what is on my mind today. Cravings – soul food places and faces and things that feed me and fill me up, leaving me satisfied and content. I hope you all know what your soul food is, because when you need symbolic comfort food and you need it NOW then you probably know just what to do with yourself. I guess my equivalent of the old tried and true comfort soul food mac & cheese has got to be the BIG SUR COASTLINE of California. When I move back to Denver this summer I just don’t know what I will do without it. There is a very special place to stay as you travel south on highway 1 – it is a charming cluster of motel cottages perched along the edge of the sand dunes  on a desolate stretch of beach overlooking my Specific Ocean, as I call it – it is going to beckon you again and again once you go there. The place is THE SANCTUARY, just a bit north of Monterey and Carmel. Visit the website at   www.thesanctuarybeachresort.com

Oh and by the way, as you begin your drive down the coast, in the town of Pacifica just south of SF (that place that is always on the news because it is losing chunks of real estate into the sea)  be sure to stop for BBQ at The Gorilla BBQ place, 2145 Coast Highway 1, Pacifica – located in an orange railroad car on the left if you are headed south – the best BBQ I have EVER had. They do have mac & cheese.   www.gorillabbq.com   They even have their own theme song available on the website.

Another must-visit place, farther down the coast past Carmel by almost 2 hours is Nepenthe – you can Google or Bing it and read to your heart’s content – I cannot possibly do it justice with my mere words, but I will say that the word Nepenthe means to alleviate pain or sorrow….to cause to forget trouble….and it does live up to it’s press. The views are beyond belief, and on my last visit there for the occasion of my late husband’s memorial day spent along Big Sur with dear friends, my pain lifted and I felt lighter than air when we settled in there for a very long dinner on the terrace. Go there to feed your soul. Go.

There are many areas here in northern CA that I consider my soul food places. In the 7 years I have lived here I have soaked up a lot of rare and wonderful memories. Yosemite leaves me breathless, Tahoe of course is my family’s playground just an hour and a half from my front door. Wine Country – Oh my goodness. My favorite art supply store of all time is FLAX in San Francisco – it is like a candy store for me. The exotic collage papers imported from all corners of the world are my magnet, pulling me in and holding me hostage there for hours. That store is responsible for changing my artistic life and direction. And it is so much more than papers – it is a great place for kids and for wrappings,  ribbons and albums, books, journals, paint of course and canvas and every single thing you can think of in art.  www.flaxart.com

This blog entry will be continued – so much to say and so little space. Emotional Soul Food is a concept that I highly recommend you explore – if you find a safe and comforting place to go, a particularly wonderful person to visit, something satisfying to eat, a lovely location to sit for awhile or a midnight walk along the beach – if you know how to employ your special people, places and things for your own peace and comfort – well then you are taking care of yourself well. And I believe in taking care of yourself. There are few people who will do as good a job of that as you do, and it is indeed a full time job.

 

 

The Creative Epiphany – Loose Cannons & Wing-nuts

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Part of the reason the internet is such a magnet for our attention is that it can deliver us juicey news items well before the TV and radio broadcasts are able to do so, and of course we Americans are news junkies of the highest order. We have the attention span of gnats and we like our news fast and furious. Each breaking news item must be more intriguing than the previous one and if it is not we become impatient. We tremble with withdrawal and shake with news hunger. We need lots of info, arriving 24/7! Even with a globe the size of earth, on any given day, there might not be quite enough stuff happening to satisfy our appetite for rapid-fire news excitement. So therefore we have assembled our own entourage of loose cannons and wing-nut freaks that we can fall back on to supply us with ongoing sad sagas, shocking quotes, substance abuse spectacles and train wreck disasters. They are our side-shows, positioned adjacent to the main event three ring circus world that is already crazy enough for Pete’s sake. They parade themselves in front of our eyes performing one outrageous, twisted act after another and we eat it up like M&M’s.

You know who they are – the spoiled substance abuser “Lindsey Lohan” poor little beautiful but brainless types and the Justin Bieber “baby brat” types who want so desperately to drop their pants and reveal their bottoms to the world. The “loud-mouth” types like pouty lipped Donald Trump and his counter-part angry as hell Rosy O’Donnell. Then you have the political blow-hards who announce that authentic rape is not really an act that can result in actual pregnancy and the wanna-be-dictator-son-of-the-big-daddy-dictator who threatens to send his nukes our way if Dennis Rodman does not have the leader of the free world call him “maybe” on the phone, as the pop song lyric goes. There are many varieties of these dysfunctional news dominators, and most of them are having babies and making more just like them.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? How come they get so much PRESS when other far more uplifting and informative stories go unnoticed? The fruit loops of the world get the attention because we love watching insanity play itself out up on the big screen, day by day so we can see every sweaty pore up close and personal, as we wait for the final meltdown. We love us some meltdowns, now don’t we? We are fascinated to see that bad behavior really does get rewarded by getting most of the attention. The squeaky wheels DO get the grease, don’t they? If you asked each of the people mentioned above what their contribution has been to the world – what non-material “good” they have accomplished – I doubt if they could offer any convincing answer. They are the examples not to be followed and what a distinction that is.

I really like the new Pope, although I am not Catholic. He seems like a nice man who knows what a powerful message his pure humility delivers to the world. He seems to be walking the walk that he talks and I would like to hear more about him. You do not have to be a Mother Teresa or a Pope, however, to deliver a life message of simple gratitude and love that says you are indeed truly, joyfully alive and feel profoundly blessed to be living here on the beautiful big blue marble we call earth. There is plenty of room on the humankind yardstick between the Lindsey Lohans on the far left and his divine Holiness, the Pope at the far far right. The rest of us can all just jump in there somewhere, hopefully far to the right of center, and begin to do the right things with our lives, making breaking news for all the best reasons even though it might not ever be reported. I can never understand how someone can squander their life – waste a precious life – spending valuable time on negativity, violence and self-destructive behavior. There are no excuses for that, whatever our circumstances. All we have to do is to gather our courage, rise above our circumstances, and live our lives the best, most positive ways we can, touching other people’s lives in such a way that we leave a positive and memorable mark where we passed.

The Creative Epiphany – Moving Back To The Future

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

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Living creatively means always keeping your options open. It was Yogi Berra who said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  See more of his “yogi-isms” at www.yogiberra.com/yogi-isms.html  After realizing he was often being quoted, he also said, “I didn’t really say everything I said.” Well I agree – neither did I.

As many of you have heard me say, I live in a very active 55+ community in Lincoln, California. This is an idyllic place, situated at the western fringe of the Sierras in northern California. We enjoy rolling hills and delicious scenery that feeds our souls and fills us up. San Francisco is just over an hour to the south and west and Tahoe is equal distance to the north and east. We have the best of both worlds and everything in between. Wine country and Yosemite are our neighbors.  The people here are intelligent, delightful, supportive, and for the most part enlightened about life and how it works. Many high-powered careers have settled down here. Wisdom comes with years and we live around a wealth of wisdom and insight. When my husband died two and a half years ago I could not have hoped for a better place to be to lick my wounds and recover.

But now I am planning a move. HUH? What? Why? AND WHERE? But you see I have a history of never choosing the easy, predictable path. Call me crazy, but do call me. I am “all in” this thing called life. 100%. Let’s get goin on the next part.

I am moving back to Denver, not where I was born but where I was born again when I arrived as a young woman to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder. For me, an Ohioan, the west was wide and free and full of promise, so I never looked back and proceeded to settle right in.  My mother, brother and sister eventually joined me. That  was the pivotal decision of my early adulthood. I have never regretted it and I am more at home in the Denver and Boulder area than I have ever been in any of the other five or six states across the country where I have moved for marriage and career.  The Rocky Mtns. are my comfort zone. My art career took hold there and provided me with the second most pivotal decision in my life, to pursue lifelong careers in various fields related to the arts.

So. I have decided to move “off the reservation” as we affectionately call our community consisting of 6,783 homes here in Lincoln. We also refer to ourselves as a campus, because living here does fit all the required criteria of a campus. We have many amenities, many avenues for continued education and pursuit of hobbies, umpteen  social events and sports available, trips to the city and local entertainment right here as well.  We gather, we learn, we socialize and we party. Life is full. Life is precious. Every single day counts.  We value time. Most of us would trade our most valued possessions for more quality time. We take nothing for granted,  because we see it all and we know that time is not to be wasted.

And as with any community we have our lovable eccentrics, our local celebrities, our tragedies, our celebrations, circumstances and stories. Have you ever been cornered by an enthusiastic “Viagra-ed up” 75 year old man who is determined to have you go home with him under the pretense of seeing his backyard waterfall? I will grant you that things move a bit slower here and yet they do still move – the same wild-eyed infatuations that you see in the eyes of testosterone driven sixteen year olds are evident everywhere – just a bit weathered over time. And you know you can out-run them if you want to. Conversely there are amazing specimens of physical fitness who defy the odds and continue to be all that they can be. We offer the full spectrum of human beings – don’t discount us because we are 55+.

Perfect strangers here will strike up a conversation with you in the check-out line at Safeway over any number of different personal subjects and ailments, offering lessons learned and warnings and pointers – how to prevent this and that and what to do for what, when some wierd new “thing” happens to you practically overnight, as things do when you are over 55. Everyone is eager to be helpful.

And then you notice in the check-out lane next to you that some elderly gentleman is handing out dog biscuits to anyone who will take one, announcing proudly and loudly that he has some great dog biscuits, pulling an endless supply out of his bulging pockets, nibbling each one as he extends his handfuls to virtually no takers. You just have to shake your head and realize that this could probably happen anywhere – it perhaps has nothing at all to do with Safeway being located in a 55+ community, does it?

I could go on – but I will just say that I am returning to Denver once again not for a love of my life but for the simple love of life itself. For me. I would like to live off-campus now. I would like to live among all age groups. I would like to not constantly be asked how old I am. I would like to blend in and make age a little bit more irrelevant. Instead of being a teacher of art, I would like to once again be a student of art. I have a lot I want to learn.

Instead of no one showing up at my door on Halloween, next fall I would like a couple dozen trick or treaters, because I usually have great candy to offer – no dog biscuits at my house.

And here are my marbles – I haven’t lost them.

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The Creative Epiphany – Be Careful What You Wish For

Posted on by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

recentfolder 013  Time Weavings, mixed media by Jo Ann Brown-Scott

They – whoever they are – say that our lives are shaped more by the prayers that are not answered than the ones that are. When I say “prayer” I use that term loosely – because I think of the word “prayer” as a visualization, a power of positive thinking, a goal strongly sought after, a long-term dream you have chased. But indeed it is a focused request to yourself, or to your higher power, and/or the universe or your soul for something you greatly desire. Well that is kind of a scary thought. Makes you start going back over all of your unanswered prayers, trying to remember what happened or did not happen after you realized that one particular prayer and probably others were never answered. I would guess that in some cases what came instead was a far better thing, and perhaps in other cases it was just a void. Nothing much seemed to take place. But at the time you had no perspective. You were so far under the mountain that you could not see the view.

But let’s just say that, lucky you, your dream sort of comes true. Maybe it isn’t the total 100% super duperest extra special perfect version of your spectacular technicolor  dream, but it is this —- close —- to the dream you always had. What are you inclined to do with that? Did you believe you deserved the absolute perfect answer to your prayers? Are you that entitled and that lazy in your requests to the universe? You must have the best, the very best, or nothing at all? You don’t return a gorgeous and rare rose because it has one split petal. Or maybe you do. Are you going to snub your nose at this gift and curse the imperfection? Or are you going to feel blessed that it came, even in a less than ideal form, inviting you to expend a bit of elbow grease and effort to mold it into the almost impossible version you wanted? Maybe it’s a test – because life does send us tests – to see how badly you really wanted what said you wanted.

By the time you are in the second half of your life, that life that has blessed you with many gifts and unexpected delights, you really ought to be able to look back and see the larger picture. It should be  obvious that if all of your wild-eyed, crazy-ass, howling at the moon prayers had been answered the results would not have been as blissful as you imagined. You thought you wanted this and then that. You wanted what you wanted and you wanted it now. The clock was ticking – you got impatient. When Where and How were your dreams going to come true? You asked for a person or a thing or a time or a place or a cure or a circumstance or a winning ticket. And you didn’t get it. What happened instead? If you made wise decisions based upon what you knew you could realistically have, rather than what you perceived as all the ways the universe had slighted you, I would be willing to bet the results were spectacular and satisfying. The weavings of time may seem enigmatic, but in time you see the threads are carefully woven for the quality of the entire tapestry.