Tag Archives: metaphor

uprooting and untangling the binds of rape culture

Squash seedlings, damp, spreading out in morning sunlight

Squash seedlings almost ready for transplant!

Good morning, good morning. What’s the sun doing where you are right now? How is it feeding your heart?

Even though it’s possible, here in California, to garden year-round, I still live with the rhythms I learned growing up in zone 5 out in the midwest, where one had to take a break in gardening overwinter because, you know, snow. But every late February, something about the quality of light changes, and I get called back out into the garden. We moved last fall, so I have a new garden to build here. I’ve put in some carrot and radish seeds, have peas and chard and onions and herbs and nasturtium and sweet pea growing, and I can just barely see the tips of gai lan seedlings. It’s hard not to want to do it all right now, to have the garden bursting with color and fruit and flower that we left behind in Oakland. I’m re-learning the slow work of cultivation.

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metaphor as medicine

good morning good morning — I’m morning pagesing here again today, as I’m up a bit later than I’d planned. The snoozed alarm kept harping at me, and I’d think, Doesn’t it know I’ve already asked it to let me sleep more? I think this alarm doesn’t know how snooze is supposed to work. I am, maybe, a bit tired. I’ve got some lemon zinger tea added to this morning’s green, to do small battle with the sick that wants to lodge itself in me.

What all is waking itself in you today?

I am just realizing, this morning, that the dark has arrived again — here it is, quarter after six, and still outside my windows the light is dim, the early commuters rushing toward the highway still need their headlights, the birds are even quiet yet. And I am thinking about how we story, how we metaphor, what’s dark around us. Continue reading

let the body do its work

graffiti of a hand facing out toward the viewer, one finger touching a small skateboard; flowers drawn, tattoos?, at the wristGood morning — wow, is it a Monday. How’s yours going so far?

Here’s a story: Yesterday, I spent a bit of time helping my friend, Alex, get ready to move. I don’t like this part of the story, because I don’t want her to move. She’s giving away a bunch of stuff, and I snagged a small bookshelf, a mug, a bag of things from the fridge, a couple of pet carriers, a cast iron cauldron. Everything fit into the car–snug, but still–and we got it all home. I gave Alex a long hug and said See you later (not Goodbye).

When I was taking the bookshelf out of the backseat, I got a serious splinter deep in the third finger of my right hand. Upstairs, in the house, I fussed over the splinter for a long while — I squeezed at it, got out the tweezers and tried to dig out the wood; the Mr. went and got a needle and tried to pull it out, but that didn’t work either. I soaked it in warm water, then tried everything again, but it was just in too deep. So I went to bed, still with splinter, invader, in my hand. I thought about letting the body do its work.

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what if we lived

graffiti: silhouette of a child walking a dog - behind them are enormous bright flowers(some maybe-intense writing about incest this morning — not details of a story, but thinking about how we think about ourselves, the language we use to describe ourselves. In any event, please take care of you — xo, Jen)

Today’s tea is tulsi-anise-nettle-mint. I choose tulsi for the calming, anise for the thick, round taste and the belly comforting, nettle for the cleansing and the bitterness, mint for the sweetness, the quickening sharpness. And, for the first time since moving, the first time this year, likely, I have the window open while I write. 2 candles, the tea-smoke pushing into the light of the flames, and some cool breeze from outside that feels like a good morning.

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interweaving (&) metaphor

street art of a nude woman, folded into a tight crouch, looking up and holding an umbrella above herWhew — be safe out there today, Bay Area-ers. That wind is crazy, fickle like dice, snapping back in your face just when you thought you had the umbrella situated right and held tight, flipping the metal framing inside out, leaving your safety shield as a cup for the moon and wet.

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We had a lovely Erotic Reading Circle last night, the first one at the Center for Sex and Culture‘s new space at 1349 Mission St! (Will you join with me here in a moment of good wishes that the CSC has found a good and solid home for awhile? Hooray!)

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“a raid on the inarticulate”

(I googled "graffiti inarticulate" images labeled for reuse, and this image was the sole result returned -- love it!)

My tea is steeping and I want to step down from the panic, the sense that I should be doing something different, that I have to be doing something different. How can I keep breathing, how can I relax?

This is what I imagined — finding words, letting myself be in the place that feels bigger than my identities, than what I’ve decided for myself, letting myself live, for awhile, in that flat open space of humanness, the place where I’ve rarely felt that I belonged, the place of mistakes and love, the place of connectedness, connection.

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shifting wholeness

graphic of the movement of the continents from Pangea to the present daytoday’s tea is anise – nettle- dandelion – mint. Wake up and ease the belly and lungs.

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A gorgeous Erotic Reading Circle last night — stories read from cell phones and paper, blog posts and s/m and sex in long-term relationships and more! Carol and I both read our stories from her book, More 5 Minute Erotica. Next month’s Reading Circle meets on the fourth and last Wed, Feb 23!

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not back to the grind

graffiti of bright big orange orchid over a woman's faceBack at the day job today — but not back to the grind at all. Instead, I’m un-grinding, gently moving into a new rhythm.

Like most creative folks I know, I’ve got a day job that helps pay the bills; I had a week and a half off between the Xmas and NYE holidays. I had big plans for that time off: I wrote up a schedule that involved going to bed every night at 9 so I could wake up at 4 and do my morning pages, then a blog post, then spend a couple hours on one of the many writing projects that I have indefinitely on hold.Then, I’d take a break for lunch, and afterwards maybe I’d spend some time typing up the writing I did in the morning.  I’d blog! Organize my office! Get all my projects into very useful timelines!

Guess what happened? Of course! I got sick.

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Trauma longs for mystery but can only be its angry white self

This is from today’s Healing through Writing workshop, at the Art for Recovery center (a program of Mt. Zion’s Cancer Resource Center). The prompt was a metaphor making exercise: we created a list seven prompts, each of which contained the name of an illness, a common verb, and a noun, creating a sentence like: “trauma cries like a cow” or “breast cancer bleeds like a pen.” Here’s my write:

Trauma jumps like a star, falling over and across the page, across the sky, across through the brother and sister stars—trauma pushes open the places that weren’t supposed to be open, sheds light where before there was only an arc of black sky.

Trauma rends things, tears me, but what’s true is that after – after – I’m more open.

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