To inhabit someone else’s body in prose is to be a kind of foreigner—an outsider with an insider’s access. And isn’t that why we read? ~Lidia Yuknavitch
To inhabit someone else’s body in prose is to be a kind of foreigner—an outsider with an insider’s access. And isn’t that why we read? ~Lidia Yuknavitch
From the Archive | Lit Salon Answers the Question, What is Embodied Writing, Anyway + Our Next Seasonal Intensive, "Strange Containers," on Flash, Hermits & Other Oddities Starts August 7, Join Us!
I really like the story of the pebble dissolving, very cool and says a lot.
The Foreign CIty thing: I've said this to folks for a long time - that you can inhabit your home city with a Traveler's Mind. Seek out new experiences, new people and neighborhoods, new food. Talk to strangers. There's no reason to be bored, pedestrain, habituated. Narrow. It's a kind of Zen mind - Beginner's mind deal. Like Thoreau said, " I have traveled extnsively in Concord."
It will be a lot of fun, esp after the intensity of the Visceral Self, but we still get to bring everything we learned there into this one! And I love your connection to beginner's mind. YES!
Thank you for last nights workshop and then this this morning! Between the visceral self intensive, last nights workshop and the upcoming strange container intensive(the contents of which are completely new to me) I feel like my writer within is being shot out of a cannon, with my eyes squinting, skin on my face flapping, my heart pounding. It’s a thrill to be leaning so much!
Hahahahahahaha I told my husband this morning ... there are some writers whose heads are exploding right now, hopefully in a good way (I could feel that in the Zoom). I am really glad you were there and that you are feeling this. We are so alive now!
Last night’s class gave me several aha moments especially the hot/cold writing method. Wow! Looking forward to Strange Containers and more writing with you and the beautiful WITD community.
I am reading a book about existentialist philosophy and this morning encountered this quote, which made me think of what I am learning from WITD, including the embodied attention to the outside world that we share: “the phenomenologists’ leading thinker, Edmund Husserl, provided a rallying cry, ‘to the things themselves!’ It meant: don’t waste time on the interpretations that accrue upon things, and especially don’t waste time wondering whether the things are real. Just look at this that’s presenting itself to you, whatever this may be, and describe it as precisely as possible.” ~Sarah Bakewell
Hahaha. I just told my well-educated husband that I have this thing, from basically missing the second half of high school and lacking a college degree, where I learn most of what I know from some combination of my eclectic scattershot literary reading, and from life. And I get these ideas, and I am like, "Wow! I just made this discovery--I want to share it, I want everyone to have access to this incredibly exciting way of thinking about things" --and then I will, down the line, discover that, well, you know, there's an entire body of literature on that "thing" I discovered, possibly even entire fields of philosophy or psychology or sociology, or whatever. While meanwhile I am over here like a child shouting, "Airplane!"
Your airplane is so much more accessible and real to me than phenomenology. My mom was self educated the same way and she was the most well read person I know, because she owned everything she claimed as her own — that is a much more visceral degree than any I can claim. I envy that hunger and discovery- it feels embodied in a way my education was not. I am grateful for mine but again, the chalice, not a portal. Whole lot of smelly clouds of incense to get through to the good stuff.
Xoxo- thank you. Thank you for giving many of the good parts back to me here in the writing and just the being. You love and live big like her and it reminds me. 💜
Which only proves the point of critiques of Western Science and “scientism” that the world/knowledge is open and expansive and there is no one right way to enter into it.
Plus, wouldn’t it be awesome if we were all adults living like children shouting “airplane!” Or: look at that magical bright red poppy that’s just bloomed (wish I could post a picture!)
Ah, first, thank you for this (it's only in the past 5ish years that I've stopped trying to sidestep/hide my lack of formal education) and 2, oh how I wish Substack would let us post photos in comments. Sigh.
Ooooo…. Thank you for this gem this morning, Jeannine! I consider myself a poet and the sensory experiences are everything. I do go through periods of disconnection and then I use somatic practices to reconnect to my body, mind, emotions, and senses. I love Lidia’s The CHRONOLOGY OF WATER 💦 and anything by Murakami. Their imagery is filled with embodied imagery and storytelling. See you on the interwebs!
Thanks for this today Jeannine!! ❤️ I had to unlock my senses to really understand embodied writing.. I never realized how shut down I was until the Visceral Self intensive. I have a whole new appreciation for writing through my sense of the literal world.
So wonderful to revisit this after the Visceral Self intensive. Experiencing it was one thing, but having a bit of distance from myself within it and looking back with foreign eyes at the journey itself just makes it more embodied. And more marvelous! I see these amazing images of pebbles and foreign bodies in foreign spaces with not just familiarity, but kinship.
Hermits, flash, containers- oh my!! I cannot wait!! I missed being with you all last night but was where I needed to be. Grateful to be able to be with you today. Camp starts tomorrow, right? Right??
It sounds different now, doesn't it?! And hahaha no you don't want Camp tomorrow, it's pouring rain here. Let's wait for dry weather lol! (I honestly am making rain day plans for Camp, because imagine, what if we have 5 days of rain?)
Five days of rain sounds like paradise— we write, we make macrame, we talk, we paint, we draw, we eat, we sing, we dance, we frolic and dance in rain and splash in puddles. Mud pies. Rain shmain!
Well, thank you. It was good, wasn't it?! I mean, MY head is exploding and I put the content together so theoretically already kind of "knew" it (there is no knowing). And this, this is going to be FUN. A lighter mode for August!
I have a habit of that. Ask my former elementary and middle-school students. I do have a hard time dialing it down. But we have so much time now to walk through it together. Also, there is a year-long class coming up, lol. Announcement July 8, here.
I love flash writing—it’s a great way to get the academic out of me—and have a random goal to get published in Brevity in my lifetime, so I am excited about the August intensive!
Hi Jeannine, I started the Visceral Self intensive but feel behind and stopped. I still feel called to do it, is that possible or should I just do the one you have beginning in August? Thanks!
These intensives are very much meant to be evergreen and available for people to work at their own pace! It's not quite as interactive as it would be when everyone is making their comments in real time, but that's okay. There's also something sweet, quiet, and internal about just soaking in the exercises and the voices of others, a kind of gentle hush around it--it's all still alive, and beckoning, just not quite as noisy. If that makes sense. Who knows, you might even end up combining the two. Everything we do here is interconnected in some way, because writing and life are just like that. It's all part of something larger for me, and nothing is ever just one thing. We have to treat things as if they are disparate sometimes, just to be able to manage our lives as humans. But in reality, it's all part of that something greater. Let me know if I can be more helpful. We are so glad you are here.
Sounds lovely! Just letting you know that in the headline for strange containers it says it starts on August 7, but in the description it says April 7…
Also great workshop yesterday! Honoured to be part of it.
Strange containers sounds fun!
I really like the story of the pebble dissolving, very cool and says a lot.
The Foreign CIty thing: I've said this to folks for a long time - that you can inhabit your home city with a Traveler's Mind. Seek out new experiences, new people and neighborhoods, new food. Talk to strangers. There's no reason to be bored, pedestrain, habituated. Narrow. It's a kind of Zen mind - Beginner's mind deal. Like Thoreau said, " I have traveled extnsively in Concord."
It will be a lot of fun, esp after the intensity of the Visceral Self, but we still get to bring everything we learned there into this one! And I love your connection to beginner's mind. YES!
Thank you for last nights workshop and then this this morning! Between the visceral self intensive, last nights workshop and the upcoming strange container intensive(the contents of which are completely new to me) I feel like my writer within is being shot out of a cannon, with my eyes squinting, skin on my face flapping, my heart pounding. It’s a thrill to be leaning so much!
Hahahahahahaha I told my husband this morning ... there are some writers whose heads are exploding right now, hopefully in a good way (I could feel that in the Zoom). I am really glad you were there and that you are feeling this. We are so alive now!
Last night’s class gave me several aha moments especially the hot/cold writing method. Wow! Looking forward to Strange Containers and more writing with you and the beautiful WITD community.
Yes— writing cold is a game changer. Thanks for being there!
A definite game changer!
Well, this “hot/cold writing” has me curious!
I am reading a book about existentialist philosophy and this morning encountered this quote, which made me think of what I am learning from WITD, including the embodied attention to the outside world that we share: “the phenomenologists’ leading thinker, Edmund Husserl, provided a rallying cry, ‘to the things themselves!’ It meant: don’t waste time on the interpretations that accrue upon things, and especially don’t waste time wondering whether the things are real. Just look at this that’s presenting itself to you, whatever this may be, and describe it as precisely as possible.” ~Sarah Bakewell
WOWWWWW Thank you so so much for this, Monica!! Wow, I am floored. Thank you. Wow.
It could just as easily be quoting you, it seems.
I wonder if Marie Howe read Jean Paul Sarte…lol.
Hahaha. I just told my well-educated husband that I have this thing, from basically missing the second half of high school and lacking a college degree, where I learn most of what I know from some combination of my eclectic scattershot literary reading, and from life. And I get these ideas, and I am like, "Wow! I just made this discovery--I want to share it, I want everyone to have access to this incredibly exciting way of thinking about things" --and then I will, down the line, discover that, well, you know, there's an entire body of literature on that "thing" I discovered, possibly even entire fields of philosophy or psychology or sociology, or whatever. While meanwhile I am over here like a child shouting, "Airplane!"
Your airplane is so much more accessible and real to me than phenomenology. My mom was self educated the same way and she was the most well read person I know, because she owned everything she claimed as her own — that is a much more visceral degree than any I can claim. I envy that hunger and discovery- it feels embodied in a way my education was not. I am grateful for mine but again, the chalice, not a portal. Whole lot of smelly clouds of incense to get through to the good stuff.
I love your writing about your mom, Emily, just so you know.
Xoxo- thank you. Thank you for giving many of the good parts back to me here in the writing and just the being. You love and live big like her and it reminds me. 💜
Yes to this: "Whole lot of smelly clouds of incense to get through to the good stuff."
Which only proves the point of critiques of Western Science and “scientism” that the world/knowledge is open and expansive and there is no one right way to enter into it.
Plus, wouldn’t it be awesome if we were all adults living like children shouting “airplane!” Or: look at that magical bright red poppy that’s just bloomed (wish I could post a picture!)
Ah, first, thank you for this (it's only in the past 5ish years that I've stopped trying to sidestep/hide my lack of formal education) and 2, oh how I wish Substack would let us post photos in comments. Sigh.
Ooooo…. Thank you for this gem this morning, Jeannine! I consider myself a poet and the sensory experiences are everything. I do go through periods of disconnection and then I use somatic practices to reconnect to my body, mind, emotions, and senses. I love Lidia’s The CHRONOLOGY OF WATER 💦 and anything by Murakami. Their imagery is filled with embodied imagery and storytelling. See you on the interwebs!
What a pleasure to see you here, Constallations--yes, yes yes to all of this. I shall very much hope to see you often on the interwebs!! xoxo
Morning, Jeannine! Thank you for the warm welcome. I’ll be here! Xoxo best to Billie.
Thanks for this today Jeannine!! ❤️ I had to unlock my senses to really understand embodied writing.. I never realized how shut down I was until the Visceral Self intensive. I have a whole new appreciation for writing through my sense of the literal world.
And now I can't wait for August!!
Yay! I am happy for all of this, and yes, yay for August!
So wonderful to revisit this after the Visceral Self intensive. Experiencing it was one thing, but having a bit of distance from myself within it and looking back with foreign eyes at the journey itself just makes it more embodied. And more marvelous! I see these amazing images of pebbles and foreign bodies in foreign spaces with not just familiarity, but kinship.
Hermits, flash, containers- oh my!! I cannot wait!! I missed being with you all last night but was where I needed to be. Grateful to be able to be with you today. Camp starts tomorrow, right? Right??
It sounds different now, doesn't it?! And hahaha no you don't want Camp tomorrow, it's pouring rain here. Let's wait for dry weather lol! (I honestly am making rain day plans for Camp, because imagine, what if we have 5 days of rain?)
Five days of rain sounds like paradise— we write, we make macrame, we talk, we paint, we draw, we eat, we sing, we dance, we frolic and dance in rain and splash in puddles. Mud pies. Rain shmain!
Well there is a lovely lodge-esque space, a beautiful lakeside cafeteria, and a sheltered art room. So ….
My natural habitat! 💜
That sounds lovely, even with the rain! Wish I could attend camp, but alas, no vacation days during the school year.
Darn it!! We will have hermits and strange containers together soon and all the in betweens.
Indeed :)
💜
My head is still exploding after last night and now this!!! How do you have time to do all the things that you do? You are amazing!
Well, thank you. It was good, wasn't it?! I mean, MY head is exploding and I put the content together so theoretically already kind of "knew" it (there is no knowing). And this, this is going to be FUN. A lighter mode for August!
You gave us so much information! I feel you could turn last night three hours into a year-long class! it was that rich.
I have a habit of that. Ask my former elementary and middle-school students. I do have a hard time dialing it down. But we have so much time now to walk through it together. Also, there is a year-long class coming up, lol. Announcement July 8, here.
I love flash writing—it’s a great way to get the academic out of me—and have a random goal to get published in Brevity in my lifetime, so I am excited about the August intensive!
100% on the playfulness of flash! Can’t wait.
Bring on the Strange Containers! And I'm still searching for my Rhubarb Custard Pie recipe :-)
Ah love love!
Hi Jeannine, I started the Visceral Self intensive but feel behind and stopped. I still feel called to do it, is that possible or should I just do the one you have beginning in August? Thanks!
These intensives are very much meant to be evergreen and available for people to work at their own pace! It's not quite as interactive as it would be when everyone is making their comments in real time, but that's okay. There's also something sweet, quiet, and internal about just soaking in the exercises and the voices of others, a kind of gentle hush around it--it's all still alive, and beckoning, just not quite as noisy. If that makes sense. Who knows, you might even end up combining the two. Everything we do here is interconnected in some way, because writing and life are just like that. It's all part of something larger for me, and nothing is ever just one thing. We have to treat things as if they are disparate sometimes, just to be able to manage our lives as humans. But in reality, it's all part of that something greater. Let me know if I can be more helpful. We are so glad you are here.
This sounds absolutely crazy wonderful and strange in the best, most playful sense. Can't wait for it to begin.
I cannot freaking wait for this!! My flash has no flash. I suspect this will be remedied, and then some. ❤️
Ooh yay! Flash fiction is my world. Excited. Maybe I will be brave enough to share this time.
This sounds fun!!
Sounds lovely! Just letting you know that in the headline for strange containers it says it starts on August 7, but in the description it says April 7…
Also great workshop yesterday! Honoured to be part of it.
Oh, and so glad you could make the workshop, Imola. I poured my heart into it.
Thank you! I will correct that! I am famous for my typos and inability to write dates correctly lol