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an embodied meditation and writing exercise that cultivates receptivity and deep listening between partners—where does the breath-word-attention flow freely and where does it stop up?
INSERT MEDITATION READING...CREATE..
To access the Somatic Lab Notes for this exercise, check out our anthology Writing at the Edge. Share your creative and critical responses here. Let's continue the conversation at/on/of/through/with the edge.
a movement and generative writing exercise that uses a series of twists to wring the words from body to page
Twists lengthen, squeeze, and wring the toxins from the cells and the words from the pen. They continually find an edge—in reach, in wait, in motion—and dance along the gradient: a little more, a little less. They renegotiate a boundary and rewrite the line.
Patty Somlo and Anna Joy Springer explore the edges between the corporeal and the ephemeral, the message and the messenger, the oracle and the auricle. While Somlo kneads and contracts—a gesture of expulsion—Springer spreads and expands—a gesture of reception.
Consider how twists—and tweets—can cull and call the core: how can the spine serve as
a divining stick and how best can we maintain it?
Somatic Lab #20 is a movement and generative practice that wrings the words from body to page. In this practice, you will need a comfortable place to sit, two large sheets of
paper, and a writing utensil (note: if outside, you need dirt/ sand and a stick; if the floor is uncomfortable, flank your chair between two surfaces (desks or tables or ledges)). You
can twist as yoga-pretzely or un-yoga-pretzely as you wish.
If you have back pain or injuries, twists are contraindicated, so please refrain from rotation at the core and extend rather with arcs from the limbs.
Begin seated with both sitbones firmly grounded. Gather an intention: what would you like to investigate in/through/of/from/with your body today? As you inhale, lengthen tall through the spine, collect an inquiry. As you exhale twist to the right and release your inquiry: write your
thoughts, feelings, emotions, responses onto the page following the arc of the limbs: the limit is the range of the core.
[This will look like angel wings in snow, or bird wings in shadow]. When you reach your edge (in body or word), inhale soften and exhale surrender. Inhale release the twist
and gather back to your center, exhale restore. Repeat to the left.
Continue to twist back and forth at your own pace. Watch as the words sweep, arc out and surround you. What does it feel like to sit in your investigation: to both drive it and be driven by it? Can you see the edges, the boundaries on your page? Does the writing ever touch?
When you feel sufficiently wrung out, gather these field notes and process. What will you throw out with the bathwater? What will you keep? How will you arrange it; what does your body say?
To access the Somatic Lab Notes for this exercise, check out our anthology Writing at the Edge. Share your creative and critical responses here. Let's continue the conversation at/on/of/through/with the edge.
a revisionary exercise that explores imprint–what lines do we leave behind?
Belewe moon—betrayer moon—once in a blue moon when: this month I experienced my first Super Blue Blood Moon (and perhaps, my last). On such occasions the tides (and my cerebrospinal fluid) are exaggerated under the pull of gravity. The docks bare their barnacles and boats their bellies until we littoral dwellers are aware of how ill-equipped we are to practice impermanence. In the moments of exposure there is a sense of peeling back, draining, seeing into that which is often hidden—the man behind the curtain [Oz] or the man inside the mirror [MJ]. In moments of erasure, the tides full and filling, the threat of losing ground, of floating away, of being displaced or pushed out looms [migraines
and maniacs and groaning wood].
Reichard’s Doppelganger holds the space for exploring these rings, traces, and marks: in bifurcation (a trauma of rupture, reach, split) how is time and presence renegotiated?
Both Reichard and Park1 scratch at the rings around shadow self and shadow site: what is the carrying capacity of the container and how can that be tested, disrupted, dismantled?
At sites of violence or upheaval—storm and storming—what residue remains: skin cells, blood, shadows, screams?
In Somatic Lab #18 we use the “ring around”—the trace—to revise a text. Locate a piece of writing that needs a shift: sitting on a plateau, unaware of edges or teetering
on the edge, unaware of ground. Gather some water-soluble (washable) markers. Do not steal from children; rather, liberate the markers from their fists. Write the text round and
round and round the tub, bowl, vase [a basin of sorts]. As you fill the container with water, watch as the words morph, dissolve, shift, move, slide, disappear.
The sloshing of water in belly in basin in moon—what does the gut say? What lingers, remains? What will the writing contain? What will it not? What should the container
look like? If there is a ring in the tub, what color is it? What is made visible? What escapes?
Write down the imprint: physical, emotional, cognitive—process and processing.
To access the Somatic Lab Notes for this exercise, check out our anthology Writing at the Edge. Share your creative and critical responses here. Let's continue the conversation at/on/of/through/with the edge
a generative free- writing exercise that uses Organic Form to explore the sonic and phonic landscape
The best time to go fishing is in the rain. The drops break up the surface, drive currents, and redistribute nutrients. You are baiting like with like: what hangs on the line?
Meissner and Miller question not just finding form or questioning form but “re-cogn[izing]” the vectors, tensions, stencils, boards that construct perceptions and projections of form. How can we inhabit formlessness in the very moment we witness form crowning and receding? What do we pull from water with water? Through water? In water?
This exercise creates a lab to sound and sense “organic form” as defined by Denise Levertov, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Duncan. We close the score and define the boundaries of the container by using water instead of air (instead of all) to create a horizon line/ horizon note. How does the skin, the drum, the edge, the barrier both respond to and reflect sound?
Allow the space for synesthesia and kinesthesia here—sound and touch—the felt sense of rain.
Free-write #1: Wait for rain. Create a barrier between you and the rain: window, roof, umbrella, tree, canopy, awning, hat brim, newspaper, etc. Close your eyes and tune into your ears. Observe the sound of the rain on the container—a mist, a drizzle, a drop, a shower, a downpour, a [ ]. Listen until you find the rhythm of the rain. Open your eyes and begin to free-write in/to/from/of this pattern of sound. Write for 10 minutes, noticing the shifts in weather, sound, and writing.
Free-Write #2: Remove the barrier between yourself and the rain. Close your eyes and tune into your skin. Observe the sensation of rain on you as container. Listen until you find the shape/flow of the rain. Open your eyes and begin to free-write in/to/from/of this pattern of sensation. Write for 10 minutes.
Free-Write #3: Write as rain—tuning into both the sound in/around/on and the sensation in/on/of the rain. What washes through you, over you, in you? What precipitates? What remains? What line do you hear driving rain? What “rift” in perception must be jumped or leapt? What is created in the space between drip drop, because of drip and drop?
Denise Levertov: Some Notes on Organic Form
To access the Somatic Lab Notes for this exercise, check out our anthology Writing at the Edge. Share your creative and critical responses here. Let's continue the conversation at/on/of/through/with the edge.
andover. austin. boulder. wickford. precipice.