Morning Revisioning
Day Two
quote
“Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.” -Desmond Tutu, from The Book of Forgiving.
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resource
Today’s resource is the very idea of resourcing. I invite you to take a moment and think about what resources you currently have. Start simple. Do you have a body? Lungs? Are you breathing? Move outwards from there. Are you sheltered? Let yourself start small and expand and account for all the resources you have.
It’s okay if you become self-critical in this process, for whatever reason. Let that be here, too.
When you’ve finished, think about what you need. What resources are at your disposal?
I’m thinking of my exercise mat. I’ve been neglecting it. It’s very soft and padded and perfect for stretching.
Last night I spent about twenty minutes listening to gongs and bells and stretching on my mat. I expanded my body with each inhale and, with each exhale, my body released a little bit of tension. I kept thinking: wow, why don’t I do this more often?
I haven’t been doing that enough. I’ve been very focused on work, and keeping up with work, but I must care for my body, too. We must.
It’s so easy to skip over these little things that can help us so immensely, especially when we feel our tasks and work and families and whatever else demanding our time and space. But who are we if we aren’t caring for ourselves? Who can we care for is not ourselves?
Here’s my favorite embodiment teacher’s YouTube. Her name is Suniti Dernovsek and she lives in Portland. If you live there, maybe you can meet her and take classes from her. The video below is a short “shaking” practice. I love it.
inspiration
This weekend I listened to the most recent Between the Covers podcast (a project by David Naimon at Tin House). This particular podcast is one of several engaging with Ursula K. Le Guin’s legacy, and it engages with her essay, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” In the podcast, David speaks with Lidia Yuknavitch, whose book Thrust was recently published to much critical acclaim. I’ve read it, and it’s an incredibly original text, and beautiful. A kind of revisioning, if I must say.
Yuknavitch and Naimon chat about Le Guin’s essay, and how she met a moment when she could no longer “write as a man” and began writing inside of women instead. They also delve into Le Guin’s essay and how it’s affected their work and reverberated throughout the writing world as a kind of counter to Joseph Campell’s The Hero’s Journey— the more “traditional” and/or privileged mode of storytelling which follows one main character in their (his) journey to heroism.
I hope you listen, and I hope it inspires you.
Jan, I listened to the Between the Covers podcast episode you mentioned on my walk today and WOW! What a profoundly interesting and inspiring discussion, it's made me think very differently about how I'm structuring my novel. I have been trying to apply the hero's journey to my main character and was a bit dismayed that it wasn't working. Now I have greater insight into why! Thank you for sharing xx
Thank you for sharing The Carrier Bag of Fiction essay--it was incredible.