|
so i haven't been writing in my web journal, and i think i know why. it's because of the new layout of my page, the compartmentalization of things. so now when i have a random thought about ...my body...a tv show...my roommates...whatever, i just write it in a separate place and link it to that category. in some ways, maybe that's less organic... like, more regimented, more controlled, not really the way our minds work. but the reason i did it is this... because i find that when i write in my web journal, either it is about one of the topics that are covered in her/stories or media, or it's just about ... having a web journal. i started to feel like i was spending too much of my web journalling time writing about why i was writing on the web in the first place, which frankly, isn't as interesting to me. i mean, maybe if you read this and you also have a web journal, then you'd be interested. but otherwise... i don't know. so what does this mean in terms of my web journal? should it go away? obviously i'm going to leave the entries that are already here, but i'm afraid that because there are all these other places to put my thoughts, that from now on the ones here will be like this one, all about web journalling. but maybe not. sometimes it's nice not to have to know what i'm going to write about while i'm writing it, and i think that's one of the things a journal really offers me. it's literally a blank page, it assumes nothing. i've been writing in my real journal. during class mostly. about whatever comes to mind... sex, god, visits to the youth center in kane county. i've been thinking about writing smut/erotica lately, and even started in on a story, though i didn't get to the dirty parts yet. and i guess that where that thought flowed from is in thinking about writing about sex... even when it's just in my own journal, i still don't know what words to use. no one will ever see it but me, but i want it to sound right... and it doesn't. often when i know i'm writing only for myself, i just leave out the parts for which there are no good words, describing other things, knowing that the images are there in my own mind. but it's troublesome to feel silenced by this. at the erotica/smut writing workshop on friday, i read this quote from robert olen butler's book they whisper: ...I looked at her and she was on her side, the sheet lying across her hip, and only the upper curls of her pubic hair were visible. That was all right for now. Since most of the mystery of that had been preserved by my earlier distraction, I'd let it linger. Her arm was twisted up in sleep across her chest and hid her nipples and that was all right for now, too. The soft afternoon light from the window framed her navel and I would start there, happy to, for I love a woman's navel, made more special because it's so rarely seen, and Fiona's was a taut little tuck, curved slightly to make a crescent, and it stirred me now, Fiona's startling white Irish skin with her faint smile of a navel and a navel is an intimate thing, after all, the mouth of a woman's life in her own mother's womb, and all navels are different -- their size, their puckers, their turnings, their dark depths, the shading of the skin -- and so this was Fiona here, a sweet little wry smile of a navel and like all navels, it suggested, in sweet miniature, a pussy. I feel the same way about words about sex... I don't necessarily agree with his choice of words, but I understand and apprecciate the difficulty of choosing one. By the way, this is one of my favorite books, by my favorite author. It is highly recommended. Oh. I'm capitalizing now, having just copied that quote, whereas before i wasn't. i'll go back to no caps, since that's how i usually write in journals, web and otherwise. i feel like it says something troubling about our society that we have no words we feel comfortable using to describe sex, lovemaking, genitals... that these are still things that we should keep silent about, and that the only people who talk about them are dirty. they all have the sense of dirty words, either that or medical words. our genitals are either clinical - a place to be moderated and controlled scientifically - or they're vulgar, something to be ashamed of or cursed. you either have sexual intercourse or you fuck. you either have a vagina, a vulva, or a cunt or pussy. you either have a penis or a cock. these are different things, at least in my mind, and they mean different things, and all of the meanings are separate from what i actually think about when i think about having sex with someone, making love with someone. maybe it goes back to that quote about how good writers copy, great writers steal. there are very few people to steal from when you're trying to write about sex. we've been raised on thousands of ways to describe the ocean, the moon, or someone's face or their hair... but we're raised not to talk about what's under the underwear. so what should we do? make up our own words? some friends and i tried to institute wawa as a new term for female genitals at the beginning of this semester, but i don't know if it'll really take hold. i'm still confused about this... but i'm going to keep trying. |
|
send me stuff! sarahk@sccs.swarthmore.edu |
poems | fiction | journal | essays
|
© sarah kowalski |