It’s a quiet quiet morning here at this new place — the seabreeze has calmed, quieted, and even the trees are still.
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Here’s what’s coming up!
Tomorrow, March 10, I’m going to be facilitating a sexy-letter-writing mini workshop at Femina Potens during their Strap Ons and Smut event. Just $15, and you get to write and then learn some strap-on skills with kinky educator & bondage rigger Rain DeGrey! Get your tickets now!
Then, Writing the Flood is on March 19 — if you’ve got some words that have been pushing at you, if you can feel them rumbling around inside your hands, behind your fingers, then it might be time! Come join us and let your writing flow.
And next month: The Body Heat: Queer Femme Porn Tour hits the road again! This time we’re going to be blazing through the Southeast: Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham — I can’t wait to meet you. Please help us get our kitty going (which gets us to you and makes sure we’re fed)!
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Today I’ve got candles on either side of my computer, I’ve got tea that calms and wakes, I’ve got an hour before I have to be at my bus stop.
I am thinking about self-forgiveness, how it’s an ongoing process, how, in fact, maybe it’s an everyday thing, maybe it’s a practice.
What if you forgave yourself everything? Or even one small part? What would your hands feel like after? Your shoulders? Your knees?
Relatedly: I read this poem yesterday: Antilamentation, by Dorianne Laux — Write first, if you’d like, about the above questions. And then let this be your next prompt:
Antilamentation
Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it. Let’s stop here,
under the lit sign on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
Thank you thank you thank you.
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