Tag Archives: declaring our erotic

maybe I’ll do something with it when I get up

Albequerque graffiti of a tree with a pink and white, bent nearly to the ground Good morning! Whew, it’s been a minute since I’ve been here during my morning writing time — for the past several years, when the dark comes in Nov-Dec, I get very quiet and hibernate-y; all I want to do is be warm and comfortable and quiet. Slowly, the Mr. and I are creating warm spaces in a house that hasn’t been kept warm for a long time, it seems. Lots of baking sweet potatoes helps warm a house. Quiet, thrummy music. Candles help, too. And space heaters, thermal curtains. Rugs, too, once they come our way.

The other thing that happens during this time is that I’m less pulled to put words out — there are moments when I get tired of words. Does this happen to you? Words are among my favorite and least favorite things, and there are times when I am overwhelmed by their limitations, how very much language can’t do. Sometimes I need to put it down, rest both of us, me and words, forgive us for what we can’t communicate exactly right, or at all.

If I had more time this morning, I’d share more with you about this, which is kind of paradoxical, I guess. The Fall Writing Ourselves Whole workshops have finished — Write Whole ended before I went away to New Mexico, and Declaring Our Erotic ended just last week; both groups made up of strong writers who were ready and willing to go deep. I continue to be grateful. At some point, I’ll be able to write about how bits of each writer’s work (I mean, each of the several hundred folks I’ve written with over the last many years) will linger with me, become part of the literature of this life: what an extraordinary gift.

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if a girl doesn’t have her standards, what does she have

graffiti -- white daisy on a brick wallWhat about today? Still cold. The space heaters don’t really make a dent. I need fingerless gloves and am wearing a hat. Today I’m feeling kind of constricted — cold does that. So does imminent vacation. Last night I gave myself comfort foods & comfort time, after my chores were done.

What comes next? Being with the notebook pages first means I’m more conscious when I get to the computer page, means I’m more awake, means I’m thinking more about what I’m writing — my being more awake means my internal editors are more awake. This is why I like to write before the sun is up — my editors are not morning people.

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flush with liquid joy

Multi-hued graffiti: Yes yes yes yes yes

(click the image to see more of this photographer's flickr page!)

Short short today — I’ve got a review to finish and a piece to prepare for tomorrow’s “Risque Fantasies and True Confessions” LitCrawl reading (!) before I head out to the city (The City) this afternoon. I’m sleepy this morning, but singing somewhere inside my body, singing under my organs, grateful.

Last night’s first meeting of Declaring Our Erotic: Reclaiming Our Sexuality just felt gorgeous. I continue to reach for language to describe what happens when strangers gather and are willing to risk writing about desire, are willing to risk being witness to others’ writing about desire. Every time it feels like a miracle, and by miracle, I mean something human and present and deeply connected, I mean something wonder-ful, astonishing. Every time I am astonished. Every time I am grateful at this willingness, at this desire to be present with others in our own desire, every time I am torn open-and-smiling by the honesty, by the power of that honesty, by what it takes to say, yes, this is what I want (or this is what someone else wants, and, yes, I get to step into the experience of it as I write about it).

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understand what poems and lusts live under their tongues

crabapples dripping after a night's rainGood morning! Today’s Wednesday, which is technically a Declaring our Erotic day, I think.

Why do erotic writing workshops matter? Why does it matter whether or not you’re in your body? Why does it matter whether or not you’re in your honest self, your heat and desire?

Today, honestly, I want to write something sexy — I’m in that still-heart-beating aftermath of the conference,where what got sparked was a desire to know everyone, to get into their bones, to understand what poems and lusts live under their tongues. (That can happen at the Power of Words, like at other conferences, maybe: I’m just warning you now.)

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there was glitter, poetry, rage and song

white spray-painted heart on red background, painted on Mass Ave sidewalk in BostonGood morning!  I’m back from my travels, and, as you can see, I didn’t manage to get any blogging done while I was out in New England — there was just too much happening! Now I want to tell you about everything that happened, which would require less of a blog and more of a book.

(Wow: it’s nice to be back here with you, though! I missed this space/time with you –)

What’s true is that I got to spend five days doing transformative language arts (TLA): thinking/talking/wondering about it, being with other folks who think/talk/wonder about it, visioning its possible futures, considering the next year of the Transformative Language Arts Network (of which I am the new membership coordinator — expect to hear a lot more about TLAN around these parts), all the while also practicing TLA.

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DOE: the right to be honest

painting, "From Strength to Liberty" -- figures entwined, reaching, pushing, stretching, dancing

"From Strength to Liberty," by Javier Azurdia -- click on the image above to see more of his gorgeous work.

I started to type in my motto as the title of this post, but only got as far as “lobertis…” and I had to stop and delete it all and drink more tea. Still fighting off, battling (dang it — the military metaphors are all over us!), wrangling with this cold, but I think I’m on the backside now. Got some great healing advice over on facebook — thank you! I’ve had lots of tea and veggies and rice and miso broth. I’ve got these soups I make when I’m sick that always just look awful when the sick is gone — but they do the job!

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DOE: what if we took back our dangerousness

neighborhood passion flower in the late morning San Rafael sun

neighborhood passion flower in the late morning San Rafael sun

It’s a Wednesday, which is a Declaring Our Erotic day!

Today I’m thinking about the idea of safety, of the psychic/emotional kind — not of the “please don’t tie me up with nylon panty hose because those dig deep into my skin when I pull at them” sort.

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DOE: What would you write if you did not have to be good?

impossibly tall, wooden high heels from the virtual shoe museum

This has exactly nothing to do with today's post, except that today's is a Declaring Our Erotic post, so it's an excuse for me to indulge in my shoe fetish...

Quick note: there’s some explicit sex in this post today — down in the prompt part.  Just so you know.  xo, Jen

So sleepy this morning — how did I used to stay up so late and still get up and write at 5? No more, I guess. Up by 5 means bed by 9-ish: working on that.

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DOE: We want our bodies also to encompass joy

graffiti on broken concrete: make awkward sexual advances, not war

I love this...

Hello Thursday! Turns out I swapped my blog-topic days: Thursday was supposed to be for VozSutra posts, and Wednesday was to be for DOE posts.  (I forgot about the Monday-freewrite agreement I made with myself.)

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embodiment: the power and use of writing about sex

heart graffiti with hand and love emerging from the top valves...

image via travelingbeard.com

Good morning!  A morning write, and then it’s off and out into the world — I’ve got spiced decaf this morning instead of tea and why am I telling you this?

This is about getting the words started.  This is about saying whatever will move the fingers across the keyboard so I can get to whatever comes next.  Sometimes you have to write the stuff that will move you to and into what you needed to write — that doesn’t mean that the stuff that you wrote first was bad or  wrong.  In fact, that stuff was necessary: it got you to the other part, the part you most wanted to say.

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