it's pomegranate season! hooray!
It’s a Tuesday morning and there’s quite a bit that I want to say today, but most of it needs to go into my notebook first, to compost there, to cook through that writing process first and then be ready (be ready?) to grow into something new that might come up here —
Did you have a three-day weekend? Did you take some quiet time for yourself?
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I
t’s a Tuesday; I did my morning write in my notebook this morning, which felt very good — me, the candle, the pen, the blank pages filling up (just three to start, and then I ran over to four). No music, but the sound of snoring from the next room, which was good and soothing. As I do more of my morning writes directly into the computer, sometimes I forget how good it feels just to be on the page with no direction. Being in that space–just writing, no other goal–is good self-care for me.
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Here’s a prompt from last night’s last Summer ’10 Write Whole workshop:
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the description of this image says its spilled coffee, but look at the tea bag tag hanging off the side -- let's say it could very well be tea.
a lovely way to wait for the tea water to boil: wandering around the kitchen, grabbing allspice berries, clove buds, breaking off bits of Mexican cinnamon stick, cracking open cardamom pods and coriander, all to put into the tea ball for spiced green tea. Now it’s simmering next to me and smells like goodness, smells like cool mornings, smells like something clean and differentiating and sharp.
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This is a write from last night’s Write Whole workshop — as a prompt, in light of it being Memorial Day, I asked us to consider what or who we’d like to have a whole day to remember or recognize:
I want the entire country to come to a stand still in recognition and honoring of all of us–the ones who wear the breath of baited battle, the ones who got shoved open for our mother’s enemy, the ones who learned too hard to slam shut.
I want banks to close, for tellers and secretaries to type up and print out little signs on plain white paper that get taped up to the insides of office doors, signs that read: “We will be closed in remembrance of all those who have been affected by sexual violence.” More than fifty percent of the staff will recognize it as their own personal holiday. Another quarter or third will wonder why they’re so sad, but won’t remember.
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This is a write from the Monday night Write Whole workshop. The prompt asked each of us to create two lists, one of the stories we tell often, another of the stories we don’t tell. Here’s my response:
There are stories I’m desperate to tell / the backhand side to my coming out-incest story / stories that are all interwoven in someone else’s pain / the truths other people aren’t willing to spill yet / I mean, people in my family, I mean / people I love.
There are parts that involve my sister, my / dad, and I don’t just want to write them in my notebook, I want to write them to share / but because I can’t share their stories / I don’t write them at all.
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(please feel welcome to forward this information! thank you!)
Writing Ourselves Whole
Spring 2010 Workshops
This April, re-engage with the deep-rooted and transformative power of writing!
Join us in one of our exercise-initiated and non-judgmental AWA writing workshops:
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This is one of my writes from last night’s workshop — the prompt was Sarah Vaughan’s rendition of “I feel pretty.”
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I infrequently feel pretty. When I first came out fem, I had fantasies about being the movie girl in front of the vanity, soft lights behind me and brash up front, makeup and brushes and atomizers of perfume splayed all around on dresser-top ready for spritzing, dusting, lining, pearling: being That Girl.
In real life, I can’t habituate that girl, can’t hold her down and climb into her skin, and, more to the point, i can’t wait around for her to get dressed and done enough to daintyfoot herself into my skin. I have other things to do.
And we begin again!
~ Welcome in 2010 with some deep writing, community connections, and solidarity with your resilient artist self ~
Our 8-week Write Whole: Survivors Write (for all women survivors of sexual trauma) begins January 11, and we’ve got a half-day queer women’s erotic writing workshop on Jan 30! More info on each is below; spaces are still available — please let me know if you have any questions or would like to register — I’d love to write with you!
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The more comfortable I get with my girlhood, after seriously striving to embody masculinity for almost a decade, the less able I am to describe it — girlhood — with any kind of precision: Well, a girl’s a female-bodied person, unless she’s male-bodied, and she likes dresses and pink unless she hates them and prefers skinned knees and tree climbing or none of the above or all. Well, it’s clear, isn’t it, that the girl’s the softer one, right? Except I’ve stroked some pretty soft boys — and met girls rocked hard like stone and the girls are the ones who cry right except when they don’t and the boys do and I’m done with layering on description and definition: femininity likes frills and adornment and paint and frivolity up to and until and unless and and it digs its unpainted nails into thick rocky soil or, yes, knows perfectly well how to turn a phrase between a girl’s or a boi’s legs and sings its songs with abandon until and unless it remains silent.
There’s no sure thing about femininity and masculinity for me anymore — not about either except in the know-it-when-i-see-it sorts of ways and even that is all up for interpretation and assumption, those kinds of grabs. The things that say boys are strong and girls get carried have never seen me (or you, or him, or hir) carry a box of books wearing four-inch heels and who cares if its girl or not except
I do. I thicken into the femininity my stepfather wrought for me, the tough bitch smart broad high femme ball buster prima donna that he was always just the right man for: it’s that last part, of course, that leaves me nauseous, that wrote me into boyhood, into all the masculinity I’d always already carried, all my life — they just called it tomboy but I took it out of my back pocket, fluffed it out, slicked it on and called that leather jacket and jeans and boots and shorn shorn head strong and safe
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Read on for more information about the upcoming Declaring Our Erotic and Write Whole workshops with Jen & Writing Ourselves Whole!
heart power!
Declaring Our Erotic-Reclaiming Our Sexuality
Eight Tuesday evenings, beginning 8/11/09
Open to queer women survivors of sexual trauma!
Have you been thinking about exploring some new edges in your writing? Are there longings you’d like to find language for?
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