No Part Of Yourself Is Unworthy.
Visceral Self | Writing Through the Body: Week Twelve | Again | A Map Of A Place That No Longer Exists
Upcoming WITD Events
(manage/upgrade here to join!). All Zoom links emailed day of.
🎤 THIS Fri June 21, 1 PM CT, Celebratory Live Solstice Salon w/open mic (founding)
📝 Thursday, June 27, 5:30-8:30 PM/ CT Live Class on Zoom: The Feeling of What Happens: Advanced Techniques for Writing That Stirs Emotion
Dear WITDers,
I cannot believe our Visceral Self intensive for embodied writing is drawing to a close. I feel … confused. How could we really be in Week 12?
But we are.
What a journey it has been, beginning with Mary Oliver’s clear-eyed observation of a simple life moment and my happy video of someone brushing the belly of a squirrel with a toothbrush.
Honestly, I don’t know that it gets much better than that—or maybe it’s just my nostalgia for beginnings, where everything is still possible and nothing has been lost or sacrificed along the way, including filaments of hope for who we will be, including a person who does everything, finishes everything, and is brilliant on command.
Maybe you never put those expectations on yourself, or maybe you do. Either way, I might invite you to consider what else we may have lost along the course of this intensive, this rich and deeply felt journey through the chakras of the body from the lens of the senses. Here is a short list:
False beliefs about who we once were
False limitations on who we might be
Stubborn locked doors that keep us from ourselves
Blindness to the world in front of us
Numbness to the sensation that can guide us
An inability to say “the thing itself” unadorned by adjective or metaphor
Limitations and even falsehoods in our writing due to all of the above
Maybe you’ve set down one or more of the above, or, at least, lightened part of the load in that compartment of your psyche?
Maybe you’ve gained a thing or two as well, in the writing and in the living. We can never hear enough if it, if so.
and I labor earnestly over these posts, and we soar when we hear about your breakthroughs. We also lament with you when you get stuck on an exercise or find yourself sorrowful during a meditation. We feel it all, too. That’s the life of the empath, who is also the teacher, who is also the writer.What a beloved honor it has been.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
Also, before we jump into Week Twelve, a quick note about Friday’s Visceral Self Live Solstice Salon Open Mic! Like most WITD Zoom events, this one is for founding members and you can upgrade anytime if you like here.
We’ll be on Zoom for an hour with time (between opening, closing & transitions) for about 10 -12 readers, with names drawn randomly from the chat in real time, based on who volunteers. Open mics are a great place to test your work and feel the energy of the listeners. Yes, that’s possible even over Zoom! I’ve been witnessing it since my first Zoom workshop in 2017. I would never have thought so, but it’s true.
Flash readings are fun specifically because they move so quickly! So you must have something you can read comfortably in three minutes or less! Please strictly time yourself in advance, and time yourself reading slowly, so that the reading is a pleasure to hear. We can use a timer, but it still works a LOT better when everyone prepares by timing themselves! And you don’t want to speed read in order to pack more into your three minutes. Make your small, incomplete offering count by reading it well.
Also, your reading should be from The Visceral Self intensive, and if you don’t have something from The Visceral Self you can share out loud, it should be clearly from a WITD prompt, because this particular Salon is a celebration of the work we’ve been doing together. We want to hear the work in the work.
Questions? Email us at writing@writinginthedark.org.
We can’t wait to celebrate with you!
Now, for our Week Twelve work.
I’ve thought a lot about Week Twelve, mostly from the perspective of integration. Meaning, how can I best invite you to integrate the significant work you have done for the past twelve weeks? Well, first of all, I want you to know it is good to allow yourself plenty of time to do so.
It’s very possible that only later, when you are a ways down the road, after everything has simmered and steeped, will a new thing begin to emerge.
Here is an example of real work emerging from these snippets:
A writer whose kept a recipe box of her bird shimmer/shards from previous work here, and is, a year later, growing an essay from them …
Today I was in a writing meet up led by Melissa Greenwood (all students of yours in attendance). I shared some of my shimmers and shards that I’m drawing from for a bigger piece. Last year, I was like… what the hell am I going to do with all these shimmers and shards?! It’s all about birds. I stuck em in a recipe box and now they are breathing real life into my writing. I love how the subconscious or muse is at work. I am so blown away about the shimmers and shards and the birds that are creating life within my work. It’s a little woo-woo!
I share these examples (of the hundreds I could) to assure you that things can take time, and often should take time. Let it brew. Let it settle. Shake it up and look again—it may look entirely different. And that’s just the writing!!
The actual skills and insights you have gained these past weeks will continue to develop within you, as long as you continue to pay attention to the world and to the way your observations of the world feel in your body. Not what you think about what you see, but how it feels in your chest or on your arm or in the pelvis.
Keep paying attention, keep collecting shimmers and shards, keep arranging and rearranging them in playful new ways, cut them up and put them in a recipe box if you like! Or a photo album. Or make a deck of cards you can shuffle and play around with like concentration. Be playful, loose, and open to joy even in the process of not knowing what, if anything, you might ever make from all this writing you’ve done since April.
Meanwhile, for this week, Week Twelve, our last week of the intensive, I do of course have a structured exercise for you (and Billie does of course have a meditation).
I got permission from the wonderful Sejal Shah, whose latest book—How to Make Your Mother Cry, just came out last month—to share one of her fragmented flash essays in full here so we can close read it and write something of our own inspired by her work.
So, yay. Let’s give it a go. I am excited and honored as always to read, talk, and write with each and every one of you.
Below the paywall is the Sejal Shah reading, the close read guiding questions, the structured writing exercise for integration, your final mantra and meditation, and Billie’s last recorded meditation, a gift for all paid members this week. It’s so beautiful.
We’ll see you in the comments and we won’t even try not to cry.
Week Twelve Writing Exercise | A Map Of A Place That No Longer Exists
