Myth, the Universe, and Everything

As part of the autobiography project, I got to correspond with playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie, who introduced me (both through his essay and through my learning about his current work) to the idea of combining writing and movement. I've mentioned before the disconnect I used to feel, or imagine, between my thinking brain and my body's impact on thought. As I'm becoming more comfortable in the realm of movement, as taught by Ann Cowlin in her Dancing Thru Pregnancy classes and teacher training, I've given a lot more thought about how body and mind interact together. Linking movement with writing is a natural step in that direction, and I'd love to have the chance to study under van Itallie as he teaches it!

The good news is that van Itallie teaches just such a course, "Writing on Your Feet," at Shantigar, a foundation and retreat that teaches how to combine aspects of meditation, theater, and healing practices, nestled in the Berkshires (north of my old college stomping grounds). The bad news is that his next course is coming up this June (the 24th through the 26th), and alas, it's not in the stars for me to attend this year. But those of you who are interested in theater and writing, who also live on the east coast, should really check out not only the "Writing on Your Feet" class but opportunities in music and acting that are taking place there over the summer.

That way I'll be able to attend vicariously through you!

Speaking of characters I've fallen in love with lately, there's a great new web series I picked up from a friend* via facebook called The World of Holly Woodlands. Calle, the loveable star, is an out of work actress who doesn't fit the body image Hollywood promotes. But in this world, skinny isn't in: instead, actresses who are "cusha" (or about size 18) are the ideal, which leads to a very different spin on ideas about beauty and body image. There's a two-minute trailer on the site that introduces you to Calle and her blog project; the first ten episodes are also live, which means it's still a good time to catch up without all the back episodes eating your life while you watch. A very cool thing for the series and the actors is that they're finalists in the New Media Film Festival. If you check out the series and like what you see, you can vote for them over at Mingle Media.

I've never been very good at targeting in on the issues behind body image/ideal beauty and the problems these cause to self-esteem. I've tried to write characters with body image issues before and haven't mastered introducing those themes without making them feel like themes. As a reader—and a watcher, I suppose—I usually avoid stories that seem to be about the message rather than about the story. I went to a short play a few years ago that had a very powerful effect on the audience, but it didn't work for me: I felt like I'd been hit over the head with the theme enough that I couldn't care about it. I felt that I'd gotten the point—but had no story to recall as my reward. (Another play by the same playwright, presented at the same performance, didn't have this issue at all—it stemmed from the relationship between two characters, one living and one dead, and the sense of loss and, at the same time, freedom, that came from the one character letting go of the other. So clearly, it wasn't that I just didn't like the writer's style, it was very much about the content of the piece.) So, since I don't like to read "message" stories, I really want to avoid writing them, while at the same time I want to tackle issues that real people struggle with.

I suspect that part of my lack of personal understanding about the body image issue is that, before the past year or so, I felt more or less divorced from my body. My body was a tool, or the thing I lived in, but I didn't much think it related to my understanding of the world, with the exception of self-identifying as short. (Tall people do experience the world differently from us short folk, because size comes with a host of problems for each of us. I can't use our food-processor without a stool, for example, because our counters are too high. A tall friend of mine has to sleep in his bed diagonally, or his feet stick out the bottom end. This is a fundamentally different way of experiencing the world!) In the past two years, however, going through pregnancy and post-partum, I've gained a new appreciation for how much my body impacts my world-view. Maybe this comes from not being in control of what my body was doing—being pregnant was, for me, much like being displaced from my own body, as I had no idea what I could expect from myself on any given day—but I think more of it comes from the fact that I've had to pay more attention to what it has been like to live inside this body. (This is particularly true as I've gotten more involved with women's fitness issues through my training with Dancing thru Pregnancy, since I've been paying close attention to the differences between men's bodies and women's bodies, and how we experience exercise.) My thoughts aren't just out there, floating around my head, they're impacted by a host of factors that I've probably always had to deal with, but never really taken into account. Hunger, tiredness, exercise, diet, hormonal cycle—all of those things have a more noticeable impact on my mood than I'd previously recognized. I was one of those people who'd just forget to eat if she wasn't reminded (not often, but occasionally), because I was too busy thinking about a project I was working on. Now? Forget about it. I don't want to inflict myself on my family when I have the hunger crankies.

Maybe now that I've gained a better idea of living inside my body as an experience, rather than something to be dismissed, I'll be able to look at some of those issues about body image that I've wanted to tackle. In the mean time, I'm comfortable leaving that kind of writing to people like "Calle," who can say a lot by just spinning our current perceptions on their heads.

* My friend is married to the director and creator of the series.