the multiplicities of comfort

this body finds comfort out amid the trees — in the old oak groves, walking through the scent of bay or eucalyptus…

Hello and good morning! It’s late-ish for the blog post; I did my morning pages offline today, longhand in the notebook, then breakfasted and readied for a working day of writing. I notice, when I’m working at home, it’s easier for me to take myself seriously if I make like I’m actually going to work when I head into the little writing office–change out of pajamas, for instance; shower; eat breakfast away from the computer. These steps help me transition out of home mind into work mode; this is a new practice for me. I’ll let you know how it progresses.

I have a more today from FemmeCon 2012, a write from the Body Empathy workshop that Alex Cafarelli and I co-facilitated on the first morning of the conference. Our introductory writing prompt (after some movement and improv exercises to get to know one another and playfully ease into our bodies!) had to do with where we are, or aren’t, comfortable in our bodies.

The prompt was : A place where we find comfort in our bodies. This could mean a physical place in the world (or an imaginary location) where we are comfortable — what do we do in this space? What don’t we do there? Folks could also have written about where, in their own bodies, they had comfort — and where they didn’t. An intro write, we took 7 minutes to drop down onto the page and followed whatever words were calling us. Here was my response:

Where is she comfortable, this body, this wellness, this endeavor, this calamity, this wisdom, this welcoming, this site of strife and momentary lack of madness, this center of conversion and wholeness, this risk and cramp and release of relinquishing? She is learning to hold comfort in all places, in the shame that healing holds, in the trace of long going into the work and coming back out the other end, awake, sticky, still alive, tremoring, hungry, adaptive, lit. She is tight and stretched around the scars, but she is holy there, too, and she’s still growing.

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True — sometimes all we have are more questions.

Another comfort-related prompt, then: take ten minutes today (or seven, or fifteen) and notice where and how your body (or your character’s body) is comfortable; whereisn’t your body comfortable? What would it mean if you got to be comfortable? What would be gained? What would be lost?

Follow your writing, as always, wherever it seems to want you to go.

Thank you for your breath on this day, for your open-mouthed wonder, for your words your good good words.

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