Ganesh street art, found in Valencia, Spain
A somewhat difficult Monday morning, but we’re in it and moving forward. Awake before four, trying to sleep more and also feeling the pull to just get up, just get up and go write: you wanted more writing time, and now you can’t sleep. Take the time.
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(Please help us pass the word!)
First Congregational Church of Oakland
2501 Harrison St.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged alex cafarelli, body empathy, body mindfulness, queer, sexual trauma, survivors, workshops
It’s a Friday, and my phone voicemail has been turned off — I called the AT&T people to get their help because I coudn’t remember my vm password, and instead they reset the vm and told me I could get my voicemails as soon as I re-set up vm on my iphone. Oh, right on– thanks for that help.
So, I’m so sorry: if you’ve called, I have now lost that message and your number and everything. Getting a new phone today, and we’ll start all over.
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For me, today, self-care looks like sleeping until 9 even though the alarm went off at 6.
It’s also about to look like drinking my chamomile-nettle-green tea and eating my oatmeal out in the backyard while reading a book, instead of at a computer.
Self-care today is also going to look like a trip to the beach and a short visit with the ocean between my first and second workshops today.
Comments Off on or some other gentleness
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged memoir, radical self care!, shelley vermilya
this is now where my phone lives
So yesterday I dropped my phone into the wharf out by the Giants ballpark. Bye-bye phone. I was out there having lunch, outside in the intense heat. Everything upset me yesterday: the heat, the fact that I had to be at my job at all, the fact that I couldn’t get caught up on my writing ourselves whole work, and I was cranky and crabby and premenstrual-y and weepy. I had a short conversation with F!, during which I was curt and irritated and then after, I stood up, had my phone in my hand, was near the edge of the water, and I dropped the phone and thought, or no, I had thought before it dropped, it would be just like today for me to drop my phone in the water — and then that’s exactly what happened. Actually, it’s like when I dropped my phone in the sewer grate — I saw the grate, I thought, it would be awful to drop my phone down there and then I did just that.
I watched the phone go, I said, No, no, no but quiet, like I could get it to bounce back to me, but I didn’t want to alert the other people sitting at benches around me, and then it fell into the water and was gone. There were bubbles as the air escaped from between the case and the phone.
Note: this morning’s write contains some explicit writing around sexual violence. Just a heads-up: please be easy with you. xox, Jen
I’m in that very-tired place that comes just before bleeding, at least for me. So my thoughts are slow this morning and I’d like another several hours of sleep.
This month’s Writing the Flood is coming up this Saturday, 10/16: want to come out and write?
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged body empathy, coming out, prompts, sexual trauma, trauma aftermath, writing the flood
Thanks to Keith Haring for so so much, including this logo...
Happy National Coming Out Day!
(Let me say that I’m sad that this now appears to be an HRC-sponsored production across the country — this post is not sponsored by the HRC.)
(click the image to see more of this photographer's flickr page!)
Short short today — I’ve got a review to finish and a piece to prepare for tomorrow’s “Risque Fantasies and True Confessions” LitCrawl reading (!) before I head out to the city (The City) this afternoon. I’m sleepy this morning, but singing somewhere inside my body, singing under my organs, grateful.
Last night’s first meeting of Declaring Our Erotic: Reclaiming Our Sexuality just felt gorgeous. I continue to reach for language to describe what happens when strangers gather and are willing to risk writing about desire, are willing to risk being witness to others’ writing about desire. Every time it feels like a miracle, and by miracle, I mean something human and present and deeply connected, I mean something wonder-ful, astonishing. Every time I am astonished. Every time I am grateful at this willingness, at this desire to be present with others in our own desire, every time I am torn open-and-smiling by the honesty, by the power of that honesty, by what it takes to say, yes, this is what I want (or this is what someone else wants, and, yes, I get to step into the experience of it as I write about it).
(Having some wordpress weirdness this morning — I’m sorry if that affects your reading experience!)
Exciting day today — it’s the first meeting of the second round of the MedEd Writers (where I get to write with UCSF Medical Education staff) and also the first meeting of this fall’s Declaring Our Erotic: Reclaiming Our Sexuality workshop! I’m so looking forward to them both –
Comments Off on she could feel, finally, the sun on her face
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Yoga graffiti in Valparaiso, Chile -- click on the link to see more of Karsenault's images
Good morning — happy Wednesday!
Last night was my second day at this yoga class that the mr. and I signed up for, and I’m still sleepy in the aftermath. Saturday we went to our first class, and I completely crashed afterwards — came home, ate a little lunch, started to read a book in the sun and bam, out like a kitty in a sunbeam. I even napped, which is something I so rarely do.