(nablopomo #5) the many ways you find to sustain your fierce and tender spirit

Good morning, owl — thanks for joining me in the quiet. downstairs the neighbors are up, too, getting into their closets — sounds like it’s happening in our own apartment.

What are the sounds that are greeting you this morning?

It’s the weekend, and so I slept in late, didn’t get started with the morning writing until after 5:30. The alarm went off and then I spent a little time being quiet in my bed, having that stretch of just-awakeness where I think about the dreams I’m still not quite out of, noticing that it’s much colder outside the covers than beneath them, tustling slowly toward considering the work of the day. I have this conversation in my head almost every morning:

You love your writing time, Jen.

I know, but it’s so nice here, and I do need more sleep.

That’s true — but you love your dark morning writing time; you’re so sad when you don’t get it.

I know, you’re right.

I’m getting up.

Ok.

Seriously. Every morning there’s a little pullback, a little “do I really have to?” even when I’m headed out from under the covers to do something that I love and need. Maybe someday I’ll bounce out of bed, fully exhilarated the moment I open my eyes, tremendously excited to get to be at the computer at 4:30 am. Maybe. Someday.

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I’ll get November’s newsletter out today — in it, I’m going to remind you about these upcoming shindigs:

• this month’s Writing the Flood meets on Nov 19 in San Francisco; this will be the last Flood for 2011, since I take a break in Dec, so we’ll have some special treats!
• Also, there are two day-long workshops in Sacramento coming up on the 12th and 13th, Reclaiming Our Erotic Story (open to all) and Write Whole: Survivors Write (open to all survivors of sexual trauma, regardless of gender).
• And I’m going to be giving a talk at UC Davis on Nov 15th about the liberatory uses of erotic writing (so nervous and so excited about this one)
• Lastly, there are a bunch of new workshop offerings coming in the new year — Bayview Writers (general topic writing workshops in Marin) and Dive Deep (an advanced, project/manuscript-focused workshop) and a recalibration of Declaring Our Erotic, from weekly workshop to monthly weekend-day writing excursions.

I hope to see you out at one or more event in November! If you’re not already on the writing ourselves whole mailing list, you can sign up using the box there on the right side of the website (between the ‘upcoming events’ section and ‘most recent posts’ section).

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They don’t give us nablopomo prompts on the weekends, over at BlogHer; the weekends are for freewriting, they say.

Yesterday, during a coffee date, a new friend asked what the weekends looked like for me — what do you do when you’re not writing? she wondered. I gave a few answers, some possibilities, maybe beach time with the dog, maybe some hiking. The conversation moved on. She’s someone I got to meet during the Tomales Bay workshop, and I’m feeling so grateful for her, for all the women in my workshop, for these new writing-/transformation-centered connections in my life — our conversation got to be thick around writing practice, around what it means to be a writer, how we allow ourselves to make true space for our writing selves, how we learn to ask/expect others to hold that space as well.

When she asked about weekends, about non-writing possibility, I remembered a time, years ago, when my father had asked me this question. What do you do for fun, Jen? At the time, I couldn’t give him any answer besides writing. I was working for a Domestic Violence-centered nonprofit, volunteering with a queer youth organization, trying to get writing published, and writing regularly to figure out who and why I was. I had no serious hobbies, no sports that I played, nothing going on in my life that he could recognize as fun (or that I recognized as fun, to tell you the truth). I understood that it was a problem to just have writing as my only outlet, to stay so much with words alone, to be just so fully in my head.

I forgot about one thing, though: how much I love to cook. This weekend, I could have told my new friend, I’m going to spend some good time in the kitchen, away from the computer and notebook, in spite of all the emails that need answering, all the promotion that needs accomplishing, all the facebooking that wishes to occupy my every waking second — I’m going to do some real cooking. There’ll be some oatmeal-buckwheat-corn pancakes, oatmeal soda bread, chicken soup (starting with a new stock), maybe a new batch of puppy cookies, we’re good for now on homemade yogurt, so I don’t have to do that, but maybe a batch of beans for the week (the Mr. has been taking care of those, and they’re so yummy).

Cooking allows me to access a different side of my creativity, the part that delights in making something (and something substantial at that) out of what looks like nothing. I credit my mother for this, who knew how to stretch ingredients, who taught me about substitutions because we didn’t always have the funds to go shopping for the exact ingredient — she made do what what she had, and she made it good. From her I learned to appreciate experimentation and frugality, reading a recipe and changing it immediately to accommodate what I’ve got in the house. Experimentation, substitution, these make it feel like play, not like work.

Stretching other aspects of my creative self, that’s part of radical self care, no? Plus, time away from the computer, that can only be good for my body. We need many different ways of engaging with the world. This reminds me of that Rumi poem (these are excerpts):

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

---

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

---

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground

So today, the pup and I will go walking in the hills, then I’ll come back and turn on my Saturday morning NPR (car talk, wait wait — these are my liberal-adult equivalents of Saturday morning cartoons), clean up the kitchen, start the work of transformation, a few dry ingredients, a few wet, get myself differently messy, create something of sustenance.

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A couple of prompt ideas for you, for this Saturday:

– what creative play sustains you (or your character) besides or instead of writing; hear that question that my father asked: what do you like to do? What’s the physiucality of that activity like for you? Start there, maybe —

– read those selections from Rumi again. read them aloud. grab a line or a thought from there, or notice what arises for you, what voice or image or story, and start your writing there.

Always, you know it, follow your writing wherever it seems to want you to go.