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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Tagged declaring our erotic, erotic writing, Mary Oliver, prompts, you do not have to be good
This will make sense if you read on -- honest.
This Friday, Declaring Our Erotic readers are going to participate in a private fundraiser in Oakland for the Growing Connections mural project (www.growingconnectionsmural.com)! You can join us!
Day/time: Friday, July 30 , 6:30-9pm
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Note: this morning’s write contains info about my personal sex life, and stuff about incest. Just a heads-up. xox, Jen
I woke up this morning coming. It keeps repeating in my head, that phrase, those words, over and over. (Maybe I won’t post this, but I still need to write it. I want to learn to use the computer like I use my notebook, writing without editing, writing just as fast, writing like my heart and life depended on it, writing honest and alongside fear.)
I woke up this morning coming. I’d been awake not long before that, I think. It was 4:29, realized I could get up if I wanted to, could get up and have even more dark good time here at my writing desk. But I closed my eyes, also realizing I could sleep more. And what happened then was I woke up with a strange sensation in my body, like something letting lose, something clamping down, something weird. I didn’t know what it was at first.
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Tagged erotic writing, sexual abuse, sexuality, transformation, trauma aftermath
(check this out -- 'reverse' graffiti!)
5:43am — what would I be writing about this morning if I had the time, if I could be writing about anything I wanted? Last night the bus took an hour and a half to make a 45 minute trip because traffic on Lombard was so heavy — everyone wanted to get across the Golden Gate. I was tired of words and wanted to be home. I nearly fell asleep on the bus, dozed a little, got a sleepy mouth. Sometimes I get tired of words the way I get tired of the smell of my own body, with a kind of sickening overwhelm, because I can’t get away. There’s no break for me from words. Words are my only mechanism, only medium, only practice. They’re my work and my hobby. Last night I came home and drank wine and ate the red beans and rice F! had made, then ate cheese and crackers, then ate ice cream. I watched tv. If I’d turned off the tv, I’d have been left with words. I wanted to breathe without them for a little bit. I wanted to step outside of that structuring of my brain, which I didn’t, not really, but tv drugs you and makes you think you’re free. The clouds outside look like dark smoke in the early sky. The garbage truck looks like hungry.
The Monday night Write Whole workshop is going and gorgeous, even though the registration is quite small. The Tuesday night DOE workshop I’ve had to cancel again because only a few people had any interest, only two indicated they’d register and only one followed through. What happens? I had the idea that many people would want to take an erotic writing workshop, figured that, of course, when I opened the groups up to everyone, folks of all genders, that I might lose some of the women who’d wanted to take the women-only workshop, but I’d get a lot more people who didn’t fit or feel comfortable in those groups: that hasn’t been the case. Maybe it’s because I’m not known, I’m not advertising enough, I don’t have a book or a regular (like, consistent), sexy image: I’m not out there blogging and twittering and facebooking about sex, my own sex and others, I’m not really putting out that this is what I do. And frankly, right now, it isn’t what I do: I haven’t been doing a lit of sex writing, except when I’ve got a workshop on. Otherwise, what do I write about? trauma. flowers. workshops.
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Tagged creativity, erotic writing, liberatory uses of writing, ptsd, sexual trauma, survivors, writing ourselves whole
Sometimes at the end of the workshop, we have time for one more short-short write, a stream-of-consciousness free-association write, a pour-it-out-on-the-page-as-fast-as-you-can-cause-we’ve-only-got-2.5-minutes write — usually I just throw out a word or a short phrase, and then we *go* into it, whatever pops into our heads. This is what came for me in response to the word ‘pierce’ at the end of Tuesday’s Declaring Our Erotic workshop:
pierce: stick the needles just under the skin / there/ where no color or sharp is supposed to be and / run your tender weaponry there against the swell of flesh / staining me with ache and art / asking for my steadiness in the face of assault / and in return you offer me the glory of your creation / but before that art has healed / while it is still coming hard on my canvass / you’ll pause / lift the device / you’ll spray me with cool water and you’ll brush away the blood / you’ll wash me with adrenaline and tell me how good I’m being / and I’ll / then / I’ll want / I’ll want to open my legs and my / every bit of my / self / to you, a blessing for the stopping / the starting again / of such a wash of pain
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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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Please help to spread the word! xoxoxo
Writing Ourselves Whole presents
~Holiday Dirt: fecund new erotica~
a benefit reading and celebration!
With special guest Carol Queen!
Featuring Alex Cafarelli, Lou Vaile, Amy Butcher, Renee Garcia, Jenn Meissonnier, Blyth Barnow and Jess Katz!
Burlesque! Sweet treats! Chapbooks!
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Tagged benefits, center for sex and culture, community, creativity, declaring our erotic, erotic writing, readings, survivors, thanks, writing ourselves whole
A man at the Indy Arts Expo this weekend stopped at Fresh!’s table (we were there to promote Affirmative Acts Coaching!), and this man and I talked a little bit about the writing workshops. I said I did a little bit of blogging, about sexuality, about sexual trauma, about writing as a transformative practice — he was very interested in what sorts of sex blogging I did, said, “I’m trying to figure out what about sex you write about.”
Here is what I want to have said: I write about sex in the aftermath of sexual trauma, I write about the scarred desire that remains. I write about that crystalline brilliance and shame. I write about indelible erotic loss, the way it fills our hands sometimes at the same time we are touching someone… I write about the madness of that split, the surrender and joy of it, too. I may not be what you’d expect of a ‘sex’ blogger.
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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Tagged AWA, DOE, erotic writing, healing, sexual trauma, survivors, write whole, writing workshops