#Body Work by Melissa Febos

[leehallfae]

“there are geometric shapes that recur in nature, the shapes on which it is most possible to build, known by carpenters and tides and insects alike. we, too—in our rituals of healing, creation, and repentance—are performing a pattern that has recurred at the center of human life as far back as it is recorded. why should our idea of intrinsic nature be confined to the biological, and who says that the spiritual, the creative, and the psychological do not manifest biologically? we know that they do.

[…] the spiral does not belong to the nautilus shell, unless it also belongs to the whirlpool, the hurricane, the galaxy, the double helix of DNA, the tendrils of a common vine. if there are golden ratios that govern the structures of our bodies and our world, then of course there must be such shapes among the less measurable aspects of existence.”

— melissa febos, “the return,” body work

[reverie-quotes]

I became a writer because I loved writing and I still do. I became a writer because the process helped me survive and it still does.

— Melissa Febos, Body Work

[poetsandwriters]

Melissa Febos, author of Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative (Catapult, 2022), in “The Heart-Work: Writing About Trauma as a Subversive Act.”

[doctornerdington]

Just finished. It was the exact book I needed to read at this exact moment of writing my current project. Love when that happens. (It’s beautifully written, too.)

[essektheylyss]

So often I consider writing a post on various different ways of using point of view and tense and why you would use any of them and how it might affect what you're trying to say, but honestly there is no way to write that post that would not be only a minute sample of uses and rationales and circumstances, and in the end the meaning would simply boil down to, "Literally everything a writer puts down on a page is a choice that has meaning and effects so you might as well make the choices intentionally before you inadvertently step on your own story."

[leviosally]

T H I S

When it comes to sex scenes, the rules say things like: Don’t write them at all, and if you do, don’t use these words. Don’t write them silly, porny, dramatic, tragic, pathological, grim, or ridiculous.

My whole practical thesis around the craft of writing a sex scene is this: it is exactly the same as any other scene. Our isolation of sex from other kinds of scenes is not indicative of sex’s difference, but the difference in our relationship to sex. It is our reluctance to name things, the shame we’ve been taught, our fraught compulsion to an act a theatre of types. It is indicative of the lack of imagination that centuries of patriarchy and white supremacy has wrought on us. 

To teach sex scenes is to talk about plot, dialogue, pacing, description and characterisation: all those elements that make a captivating scene. A sex scene should advance the story and occur in a chain of causality that springs from your characters’ choices. It should employ sensory detail that concretises and also speaks symbolically to the deeper content of the story. Or if not, it should service your work of art in whatever ways you want from your scenes.

“Mind Fuck: Writing Better Sex” in Body Work by Melissa Febos

[aeslinnreads]

"We think love will redeem us, and it will, but not that of any human lover and not that of any material substance."

Body Work (Melissa Febos)

[pearlydewydrops]

Body Work by Melissa Febos

“You make the past known in order to know yourself as changed”

“However, as the confessor cannot re-cognize her past without the knowledge of a loving god, nor the survivor construct and mourn the story of her trauma without a trusted witness, the writer cannot complete her story without a conception of a loving audience. Despite all our worries about reception, perhaps no book is completed without a belief in a perfect reader, the person who most needs our story.”

“I know so intimately how it feels to be loved and have not confessed. Remember Winnicott: “It is joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.” This part is of the disaster. A secret is anathema to believing love is true, a kernel of promise that if the past is exposed, love will abandon her.”

“As a writer, I trade almost exclusively in topics that I once believed unspeakable, that were unspoken. The urge to write them was as fervent as my urge to confess as a child, as the exquisite yearning I feel in response to certain kinds of music. I believe their impetus is the same: to speak and be seen, to confirm that I am lovable.”

“Writing is hard. It is not the most apparently useful kind of work to do in the world. Most of us are not out here saving any lives but our own, though its power to do that (at least in my case) is uncontestable. The older I get, the less convinced I am about most things, but this is one of the great facts of my life.”

“I cannot imagine nurturing a devotion to any practice more consistently than one which yields the reward of transformation, the assurance of lovability, and the eradication of regret. No professional ambition could possibly matter more than the freedom to return, again and again.”

[makingqueerhistory]

Top 10 Queer Reads of 2023

Since y'all love the book recommendations, here are my favourite reads of 2023! These are otherwise unranked though, so keep that in mind.

The Salt Grows Heavy

Cassandra Khaw

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir

Akwaeke Emezi

Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative

Melissa Febos

How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

Mia Birdsong

The Subtweet

Vivek Shraya

Queering the Tarot

Cassandra Snow

Any Man

Amber Tamblyn

Silver Under Nightfall

Rin Chupeco

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Akwaeke Emezi

Tell Me I'm Worthless

Alison Rumfitt

[gatheringbones]

[“The problem is that we have exiled sex in our minds. We have isolated it from the larger inclusive narrative and we have limited its definition to that which serves the most privileged class of protagonists.

I think that this is a symptom of that other habit of treating whole classes of human beings as though their stories do not have the stakes, narrative depth, and complexity typically assigned to dominant protagonists. It is a craft quandary indeed to write yet another sex scene in which a white male protagonist exercises his archetypal masculinity on a secondary, two-dimensional character functioning as a prop in his hero’s journey without any narrative awareness of this exhausted trope.

But to write a sex scene in which that marginalized character is treated with some reverence and depth? To write it from their perspective? Or to write a scene in which a white male character experiences, even in an inchoate way, the deep discomfort that occurs when we act out our erotic story on another body without recognizing its humanity? I’ll repeat the unrule: you can use any words you want.

Here is Eileen Myles, from Inferno, in case you thought comparing a pussy to soup, or using the word crotch, was out of bounds or unsexy:

But after kissing her mouth a little chapped which seemed familiar then feeling her breasts not so large, but nice round and beautiful, familiar breasts, ones I already knew in some way I tugged down her pants. She said Oh. Like a soft amount of light, a small gust of wind. And luckily she had some sweatpants on or something, a stretchy waist. Easy getting them down and there were her lemony legs. Not big not strong, but smooth soft hair like peaches everything that way. Pink rose warm. I just dived down. It couldn’t have been too fast. Time was being so slow and warm. And there it was. A pussy, the singular place on a girl, it’s where I’m going. Wiggly thing, like soup, like a bowl. Another mouth. Like lips between her legs and the taste of it. Piss and fruit. I pressed my face against its bone and it moved. She was letting me. All this was happening. I smelled the future right there, a present and a past. All that went through her, known through the soft sweet flesh of her lips and clit. It was like my face felt loved temporarily […] I felt plunged into a tropical movie in which light was bathing my head and her pussy, her cunt, her crotch was a warm smile and for a moment I lived in her sun.

The revelation here is not that these words can be used in a sex scene, but that a pussy, a cunt, a crotch can be transformed by a sex scene. “Language is never innocent,” Roland Barthes once wrote, and I agree. Here, in the sense that the words pussy, cunt, and crotch all carry the connotative luggage of all their previous contexts—the violence, disgust, and pornographic theater of all the scenes and mouths I’ve heard them in and from. Experience, however, is innocent. This narrator’s sexual reality is so powerful a phenomenon that it washes these words of their previous connotations. Now they mean not a wimp or a bitch or the place on a woman that belongs to a man, but something magnificent and weird, pure and exotic, deeply familiar and erotic—a warm smile, a cosmic body. Just as sweatpants become perfect attire for such a scene, smooth soft hair like peaches, and the actual smell of sex a good one. When they enter this revelatory scene, these degraded words are suddenly imbued with the same reverence as their speaker. To use them is an incontrovertible act of (re)creation.”]

melissa febos, from body work: the radical power of personal narrative, 2022

[the-forest-library]

September 2024 Reads

Never Date a Roommate - Paula Ottoni

Love and Other Conspiracies - Mallory Marlowe

My Salty Mary - Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, & Jodi Meadows

In the Orbit of You - Ashley Schumacher

The Beast's Heart - Leife Shallcross

At First Spite - Olivia Dade

The Wall - Marlen Haushofer

The Book Swap - Tessa Bickers

Someone You Can Build a Nest In - John Wiswell

A Daughter of Fair Verona - Christina Dodd

Given Our History - Kristyn J. Miller

Fall for Him - Andie Burke

I'll Have What He's Having - Adib Khorram

Lips Like Sugar - Jess K. Hardy

The Grandest Game - Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Such Charming Liars - Karen M. McManus

The Champions - Kara Thomas

Jupiter Rising - Gary D. Schmidt

Splinter & Ash - Marieke Nijkamp

Knight Owl - Christopher Denise

Young Hag and the Witches' Quest - Isabel Greenberg

Mismatched - Anne Camlin

The Truths We Hold - Kamala Harris

The Third Gilmore Girl - Kelly Bishop

The Striker and the Clock - Georgia Cloepfil

But Everyone Feels This Way - Paige Layle

Ambition Monster - Jennifer Romolini

Body Work - Melissa Febos

Rage - Lester Fabian Brathwaite

The Joy of Connections - Ruth Westheimer

Everyday Dharma - Sunned Gupta

Over Work - Brigid Schulte

Nothing to Fear - Julie McFadden

100 Ways to Change Your Life - Liz Moody

More, Please - Emma Specter

How to Piss Off Men - Kyle Prue

Shitty Craft Club - Sam Reece

Simply Julia - Julia Turshen

Bold = Highly Recommend

Italics = Worth It

Crossed Out = Nope

Thoughts:  I'll be thinking about The Wall by Marlen Haushofer for quite some time. It's a feminist, dystopian, survivalist tale with some truly harrowing moments.

Goodreads Goal: 334/400

2017 Reads | 2018 Reads | 2019 Reads | 2020 Reads | 2021 Reads | 2022 Reads | 2023 Reads | 2024 Reads

[leehallfae]

“a public manifestation of the writer’s story, like any monument, it can carry tremendous political power. it can carry spiritual power. it is the proof not only that we have survived, that it is possible to survive such experiences, but that we can integrate them into our lives in ways that empower us, that make us more resilient and wise and connected—to ourselves, to others like us, and to all kinds of higher powers.”

— melissa febos, “the return,” body work

[reverie-quotes]

The articulation of painful memories, including the literature and art that arises out of political upheaval, is integral to the formation, preservation, and integration of collective memory.

— Melissa Febos, Body Work

[cowgurrrl]

Please Leave a Light on When You Go

Pairing: Joel Miller x fem!reader (except this is all backstory)

Author’s note: Just a quick something

Summary: “I was a girl gulping a woman’s grief.” - Melissa Febos, from “Call My Name” [1.3k]

The moment you step through Mrs. Carmichael's door with bruised scratches on your face, Jane runs into your arms and collides with your sore body. She smells like pine soap and Mrs. Carmichael's apartment. You feel like you could collapse into her but don't let your knees buckle. Without hesitation, she looks behind you and gives you a confused look. "Where's Adam?" She asks.

"Let's get you home," you say as you scoop her backpack off the kitchen table. Mrs. Carmichael watches you sadly, but you try not to look at them for too long; otherwise, you'll break. You dig the apartment key out of your pocket and hand it to Jane. "Why don't you go put your stuff away, and I'll be right there, okay? Can you say 'thank you' to Mrs. Carmichael for watching you?"

"Thank you," Jane says as she moves past you and down the hallway. You watch her slide the key into the lock and push the door open until she's safe in the apartment. You tear your gaze away from the door that suddenly feels too scary to walk through. All his stuff is still there, exactly like he left it. You're pretty sure his unwashed coffee mug is still on the bedside table. You swallow around the lump of bile in your throat as you look at Mrs. Carmichael.

"Thank you for watching her for so long. I can, uh… I can repay you for whatever food she ate and whatever else. I know it's not fun getting stuck with someone else's kid for that long." You say, but she shakes her head.

"She can come over whenever she needs to for as long as she needs, and I told her that." She says.

"You really don't have to do that."

"I want to," she stands her ground in that gentle yet firm tone. You try to smile at her as you walk away, but she catches your elbow. "Are you okay, baby? You look like you've been through the wringer." She says, and you chuckle.

"Yeah, something like that. I'm alright. Just sore." You shrug her motherly hand off your arm, but she lingers nearby. She saw you and Adam leave together yesterday. Now, she only sees you. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened.

"He was a good man. Always brought me extra rations when I needed them. Never hurt a fly," she sighs as she stares at you. "I'm so sorry, honey."

"Thank you." Accepting condolences feels strange, and you're not sure what the right thing to say is, but she reaches out and squeezes you again. You figure you said more than enough. You turn and leave her and her condolences and watery eyes.

When you enter the apartment, it feels frozen in time. His book is on the dining table set with three chairs that will never be completely full ever again. His jacket is hung over the edge of the couch where Jane is sitting, and you know his clothes will still be piled in the corner when you enter your bedroom. Carefully, like you're walking hallowed ground, you walk over to Jane and sit next to her. You take her hand in both of yours and squeeze as you try to find the courage to tell her the only father figure she's ever known isn't coming home.

"Mommy?" She asks, and you hum in response. "Where's Adam?"

"You know how sometimes Adam helps me with work?" You ask, and she nods. "And you know how sometimes I get really hurt doing my job?"

"Like right now?" She asks, pointing to the scratches on your face.

"Yeah, like now," you say. "I was working with Adam, and we… got into some trouble, and we both got hurt. But Adam made sure I was safe and helped me because," your voice breaks and you wipe away a stray tear. "He was my partner, and you do that for people you love. But I couldn't help Adam. He got really, really sick, and he died."

"Did he get Infected?"

"Not completely. He was still him when he died," you say, and she nods as the weight of the information settles over her shoulders. "And I know things like this can be really sad and scary, so if you have any questions, you can ask me, and I'll do my best to answer them."

"Does your body hurt from being in trouble?" She asks, tracing a scabbed-over cut on your hand and avoiding your eyes.

"Yeah, it does, but it's okay. I'll be okay."

"Did dying hurt Adam?"

"Oh, sweetheart," you breathe. You wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her into your chest. Partially to have her so close and partially to hide your tears from her. You kiss the top of her head and sniffle. "No, Adam didn't hurt. He just fell asleep. It didn't hurt him."

"You swear?" She asks, and you take a deep breath.

"On my life." You say. Those three words are enough to make her immediately start crying into you. You grieve together. You'll never have a grave or a memorial site for him, but you have this. You have crying together on the couch until your bodies start feeling like they could never produce another tear ever again. You have her, and she has you. That's not nothing.

You don't know how long you stay there, wrapped up in each other in mourning. It could've been minutes. It could've been hours. You just know that when exhaustion tugs on your eyelids, you can't find it in yourself to enter your bedroom. The bed will still be unmade and just a little too big without him in it. You can't face that. Not yet. So, you shift Jane in your arms like you did when she was an infant and let her lay on your chest. She snuggles into you and takes a shaky breath whenever you start playing with her hair, which always gets her to fall asleep.

"I really loved Adam." She whispers against your skin, and you have to fight the thick emotion in your throat before you can respond.

"I know, baby. Me too," you say. "But just because he's not alive anymore doesn't mean we can't still love him."

"But how will he know?"

"Because he always knew we loved him when he was alive. Why would it be different now?"

"I didn't tell him I loved him very much." She says, guilt lacing her voice. You kiss her temple and rub her back.

"Me neither," you sigh. "But when we had dance parties in the kitchen or ate breakfast together, there was a lot of love there, right?" You ask, and she nods. "Even though we didn't say it very often, he still knew. He'll always know." She falls silent, and you think she finally fell asleep, somewhat satisfied with your answer. You close your eyes and fight off memories of yellow eyes, bloody teeth marks, and single gunshots. The images feel heavy enough to weigh you down, drowning you until you have no air or strength left. You've lost people before but never like this. Never so suddenly, so traumatically.

"Mommy," Jane's little voice breaks you out of your spiral, and you look down at her. "I love you. I just wanted to tell you in case..." she trails off. You sit up and hold her face in your hands so she has no doubts about what you're about to tell her.

"I love you, too, and there's no way I'll ever forget you love me, okay? And I'm not going anywhere. Ever," you say it with so much determination that it shocks even you. "You are my little girl, and I am your mom. It's always gonna be us."

"Forever?" She asks.

"Forever," you confirm. "It's you and me, kid. Against the world."

[convulsionofhonesty]

top 5 books of 2023

i read many less books (for fun at least) than i read last year but it was really nice to do this kind of post for 2022 so i'm repeating for 2023

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1. the idiot - elif batuman - making a reappearance from last year ... i know many people don't like to count rereads in their top books of the year since they weren't new favorites but for the impact this book had on me this year i simply couldn't omit it. i read this no less than 3 times in 2023 ... it became so much more relatable and painful than it was upon first read in 2022 and instantly became my current favorite book of all time. not a day passes that i do not think about this. stunning, meandering character study about a floundering 18/19 year old who is, unfortunately, in all the best and worst ways, the fictional character that most represents myself. i have already done 10x my share of pr work for this book on this account so i will leave the review here. but please read this.

2. contradictions in the design - matthew olzmann - almost dethroned siken's crush as my favorite poetry collection ... the tumblr girls will understand how serious this is. absolutely gorgeous. i teared up at a solid 50% of the poems. contains countless life altering lines and a really profound mixture of the abstract and the concrete, the general/philosophical and the specific/mundane. love.

3. when the emperor was divine - julie otsuka - quick read with deceptively simple prose that's absolutely drenched with symbolism. demands to be read with a highlighter in hand and a murder wall behind you to decipher each iteration of each motif. under 200 pages but you could easily spend weeks trying to pull everything out of it. just on a craft level this is absolutely sublime, fiction at its finest.

4. fun home - allison bechdel - this is of course one of the graphic novels that everyone has heard of but certainly not enough people have read. because if you haven't read this i implore you to change that. from the very first page i knew that this was crafted with such unbelievable intentionality. so many little details in the backgrounds of panels carry immense weight; this is a graphic novel masterclass. everything is perfectly balanced and thought-out. again on a craft level, and an emotional level, this blew me away.

5 - autobiography of red - anne carson - most inventive book i read probably? a disjointed yet fluid verse novel that follows a fascinating main character and winds effortlessly through mythology and reality, paying no attention to the usual borders of geography, time, or the body. i don't know how to describe this other than as a deeply confusing book that you will probably not understand at all but your body will somehow still feel everything. you will understand it on a subconscious level more than on a conscious one.

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honorable mentions (bc last year i did a top 10 but my opinions past this point are not as strong and also i don't want to write all that)

- body work by melissa febos

- sirens and muses by antonia angress

- comfort woman by nora okja keller

[suzteel]

2024 Media Summary

New Movies Watched in 2024

Chevalier

Christmas Under the Lights

Conclave

Dune: Part 2

Jungle Cruise

Monkey Man

Notes of Autumn

Twisters

New TV Shows Watched in 2024

23.5 Degrees*

The Acolyte

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)

Cherry Magic

Cross

Echo

Found (season 1)

Kiseki: Dear to Me

Nirvana in Fire

One Piece

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

X-Men '97

Continuing TV Shows Watched in 2024

Doctor Who*

Lower Decks (season 5)

What We Do In The Shadows (season 6)

New Books Read in 2024

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun, Vol 2-7 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Bao

Atomic Habits: A Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Remnants of Filth, Vol 1-4 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Bao

Barda by Ngozi Ukazu

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos

The Scum Villains’s Self-Saving System, Vol 1-4 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett