Ganesha: Lord of Beginnings, Remover of Obstacles, Patron of Letters...
Good morning & Happy New Year’s Eve!
What a tremendous, educational year 2010 has been! Lots of lessons offered and learned (or, learning). What did 2010 offer you? What will you bring forward with you into 2011 from this year just passing?
Comments Off on Thank you, 2010 — Welcome, 2011!
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Tagged gratitude, how you can help!, prompts, pronoia, writing practice
Hello and Glad Yule, Writers and Friends!Comments Off on How you can support life-changing writing workshops!
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Tagged gratitude, how you can help!, intersection for the arts, looking back, looking forward, what helps
Good morning — it’s the day after the day after; it’s also the second day of Kwanzaa, Kujichagulia (Self-Determination). This time, for me, tends to be one of reflection: what’s happened in this year just passing? What are the possibilities, my dreams and visions, for the year to come?
(Aha – a prompt!)
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Comments Off on my body still tries to become her body
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Good morning! Some places, today, it’s Xmas eve. Other places, for other people, it isn’t. However you are with whatever day it is, I hope you’re being easy with yourself this morning.
For me, for the people I come from, it’s Xmas Eve today. I’m not with them, but I’m remembering. I’m remembering how excited I used to get about what presents I’d be receiving the next morning (after having gone through the huge Sears catalog and cut out the pictures of the toys I wanted; my sister and I would create enormous lists for Santa on pages and pages of printer paper that my dad brought home from work (remember when the paper was all connected in perforated section? Yeah, that paper.), about preparing the plate for Santa (with carrots for the reindeer and cutout sugar cookies that we’d frosted and decorated for Santa himself — Santa always left us a note thanking us for our generosity, telling us how tasty the cookies were and how much the reindeer appreciated the treat; I learned the truth, I think, when I began to recognize my dad’s handwriting), about getting to go see whichever cousins we’d see that year, on my mom’s side or my dad’s side. There was something in this time of year (for awhile, at least) that made room for being excited about being excited, getting to live in anticipation (however painful!). I miss that big anticipation sometimes.
Now, though, I get excited about being in my home, about baking for others, about getting to share something new with someone who will appreciate it, about getting to reflect on the accomplishments and struggles of the last year, about connecting with cousins again (even just through xmas cards, it’s still a big deal).
Comments Off on Yes: Hello, light!
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Tagged body mindfulness, family, radical self care!, somatics, trauma aftermath
Good morning! Here I am with you again — it’s been several days! I’ve been notebook writing quite a bit this week, and also sleeping a bit more than usual, so I haven’t had time for both the notebook pages and blog both.
Monday was the Solstice — the light is returning! Was there a way that you took note of the holiday?
(Have you seen this video of the lunar eclipse that coincided with the solstice? Look at that red — pretty amazing!)
Reclaiming our Erotic Story:
the Liberatory Potential of Writing Desire
Sutterwriters Sacramento
January 29, 2011
Can erotic writing liberate more than our libidos? Does greater comfort with sexual expression lead to greater agency in our communities? Many of us assume that the erotic is solely the province of the individual, and not the realm of social change or communal liberation – but what happens when we all have wider access to and more comfort with erotic language and sexual expression? The full breadth of our erotic power can challenge what our society teaches us about our sexuality, which is both damning and provocative when it comes to personal expression and human relationships.
Comments Off on Upcoming Workshops and Groups!
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Tagged erotic reading circle, erotic writing, liberatory uses of writing, Sutterwriters, writing the flood
Love this picture of Sarah Deragon's -- brings me right home. (Click on the image to see more of her amazing work!)
It feels like this was a very long weekend — partly because I actually weekended for most of it. I was off of my computer all day yesterday, didn’t sit down in front of it one time, barely even went into the office. There was baking and party-prep on Friday, Writing the Flood and then a wonderful gathering with good friends on Saturday, and yesterday was a full day off: movies and cookies (with a couple of errands thrown in, just to get out of the house).
During the errand running, we had to make a stop at OSH. When we came out of the store and back to the car, there was a young boy hanging out at the new Prius next to ours, opening and closing the doors. I came around to the passenger side of our car, next to him, said hello, looked for his people. He was there alone, and it became clear that he was developmentally delayed. The Mr went back into the store to look for his people, while I stayed at the car, wanting to interact with the boy, wanting to see if he’d come inside, wanting to make sure he didn’t back up into any parking-lot traffic. He would open the door, close it, then kind of cheer, delighted. He had a lovely face that kind of opened up into itself, is that right, or it was as though something was opening inside him that didn’t make it all the way onto his face when he was delighted, or worried, or pleased. An adult came our way carrying a box, and the boy said it was his father — I told the man we were worried about the boy because he was just hanging out in the parking lot, alone, and the man said that the boy had told him he wouldn’t get out of his seat. And so, not knowing this relationship at all and not being a parent, it’s pretty easy for me to judge the situation, think, “and so you listened to him and left your child alone in your car in a holiday parking lot?” He thanked us for our concern, and we, still worried, watched them go.
Comments Off on Mostly weekended: baking, writing, nostalgia
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Tagged family, nostalgia, prompts, workshop write, writing the flood
(to create is to resist!)
Today is going to be a good day.
Last night, a few people sat with me in the writing ourselves whole workshop space, and talked with me about how they can help me do the stuff involved in running this organization. I don’t know how much more I can say about that except how amazing and somewhat overwhelming it feels to have help — from many different sides.
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Tagged gratitude, miss tic, nostalgia, prompts, writing the flood
It’s freezing outside the windows this morning, and not much more than that in here at my computer. I’ve got my hat on, though, and we’re moving forward.
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Morning pages in the notebook today. Let’s be honest that so many of my struggles are my own stubbornness and ego. The process is everything to me.
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Tagged how we do what we do, prompts, sweat, workshop write
'poetry is an extreme sport' (I am loving this artist's work!)
About a week ago, last Tuesday night, somebody stuck an icepick or other sharp object into the tires on the left side of our car. They also scratched or stabbed at a tire on the right side, and scratched up the body of the car. When I woke up Wednesday morning, it was to a car that was tilted over — I found myself standing outside my car, in the rain, unable to comprehend what I was seeing: why were both of the tires on the left side of my car flat?
Last night I was up for quite awhile around 1am, having heard a couple of loud popping noises outside our window: what was that? are they at the car again? I got up, looked out the window where it seemed (to the self that had just been asleep) the sounds had come from — and then I lay awake for a long time, listening, afraid — this is what hypervigilance looks like.