Corporeal Musings

People are funny about their bodies, no doubt about it.  I don't mean funny about them in terms of liking or disliking bits of them - I get that.  I mean funny in terms of moving them about and doing things with them.

A number of years ago I went to visit my best friend in Toronto, and one night we got into a strange discussion in an Indian restaurant.  I can't remember anything else about this conversation except that I said to her at one point, "I love my body," and she said, "HA!  You're always telling me stuff about your body that you wish you could make smaller, or bigger, or could change."  I said to her at the time, and I still say, that, yes, that's true (a smaller butt would be a sublime gift, for example).  But I love my body as a moving object, as a container and a machine.  Your body can hear all sorts of things that your mind can't, and can understand and embody all sorts of things that your words can't.  As you will know if you've read previous posts, I have a very intense relationship to music, and to dancing.  And that is, in part, because my body responds to music on a much deeper level than my mind does - so at moments when I'm dancing to pop music it's as if my body is in the driver's seat.  But even when I do ballet, for example, I'm aware of a kind of mind/body dualism, not in the philosophical sense but in the sense that my mind can feel my body doing things as if the body were separate from the mind. In a way, if it makes sense, my mind observes my body objectively.  

To get back to the point, what it observes the body doing is immensely pleasurable:  moving itself, controlling itself, but also abandoning itself in certain ways (not so much in ballet, but in other forms of dance, and in some casual everyday movements, certainly).  The sense of a rhythm coming through the body is immensely enjoyable, for example:  not the sense of the body identifying the rhythm and moving to it, but the sense of the rhythm affecting the body. 

Because I find this experience of abandonment, of total bodilyness, so intensely pleasurable, I always find people who do not like to dance, or who cannot take pleasure in their bodies, immensely odd.  Of course, as one alas must admit, these people are mostly men.  And to move out of realm of high intellect, I never get that.  Your body is like the best gadget ever.  The stuff you can do with it dwarves any mobile phone.  Revel in it.  Jesus, it's fabulous.

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And That's Okay

For a long time now, I guess maybe a little over a year, one of my most-used expressions has been, "And that's okay."  I never noticed that until I said it to myself this morning, and then I realised that I've used it a lot.  What it really means is, "That's how it is, and I don't have any choice but to pick up and move on from this."  I got let go by Mr. Fallen, and that was the most awful thing that ever happened to me emotionally, EVER , but it happens to people all the time; it just happened to me that time. And that's okay.  See how it works?

There's an okay group from the early 80s called ABC:  they had several outstanding songs and many only okay ones.  One of their only okay songs, though, ends with their lead singer, Martin Fry, singing, 

If you gave me a pound for the moments I've missed

And I got dancing lessons for all the lips I should have kissed,

I'd be a millionaire;

I'd be a Fred Astaire.

Man, I love those lines.  I knew what they meant when I was 13, and I've known what they mean ever since, too.  He doesn't sound angry when he sings them, or regretful - just resigned.  I think those lines are Martin Fry's "And that's okay."

And that's okay.

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Mist

I love mist.  It's probably my favourite weather, or weather condition, or whatever it is. Anyway, I love it, and the thicker the better.  The day after I got home, so my first morning waking up after my return from America, there was mist over the landscape outside my window.  It wasn't the thickest of mists, and the photo I took is not the best photo of mist ever, but I'm putting it up, because it is my own photo of my favourite weather.

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Privacy

At some point in the last few years, I became someone who really values her privacy.  I don't know when this happened, but I suspect it was when I first got my job.  If you're an untenured member of an academic department, there is a way in which you have to be careful around everyone:  all these people will be voting on you eventually, so if you dislike someone, or disapprove of some departmental behaviour, it's in your best interest not to say anything. I think, too, that when I get the job I had exaggerated notions of how someone in that position ought to behave and appear to behave. I frequently have strict and exaggerated notions about behaviour, because that's the best way to cause myself anxiety and to view myself critically, two of my subconsciously favourite things to do. In this case, I think I decided that an Assistant Professor would be above reproach, and since in many ways I (like anyone) was not above reproach, I'd better keep those ways to myself.  

I find that this has continued now, but perhaps in a slightly different way. I can't bear to have people learn things about my emotional life; I can't bear the idea that they're making guesses or assumptions about my feelings or interactions with others. I think this is partially because I can't stand the idea that I'm being judged, which for me always means judged negatively, but it's also because if people make speculations about my private life and those speculations turn out to be wrong, or turn out to go wrong, it's doubly humiliating: I have to learn that people were thinking about me, and I have to make revelations about what was actually true. And that really bothers me. 

The irony here is that if I like someone - even just simply like them - I'm hopeless at hiding that. When I like people I like to make much of them, and I'm always incredibly happy to see them. I love liking people, and I'm totally transparent about it (as I always fear I am about disliking people). This is not a good attribute for someone who also prizes discretion.

What makes this all even odder is that in person I would appear to have absolutely no problem revealing everything to people. Everybody thinks I'm enormously frank and honest.  But of course I'm only frank about the stuff I'm frank about. Honesty is a bit like cooking a wonderful dinner (another Buddhist koan!): if you cook a dinner that is wonderful to someone, they never taste the parts that you think didn't work, or stop to think that perhaps you made three other dinners that didn't work out before you got this one right; if you tell people lots of stuff, it never occurs to them that you might be hiding all sorts of stuff, too. I think there's a moral there, but I'm not sure what it is.

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Let It Be Known Throughout the Land

For the first time in 13 months...I am happy.  Yes, right now, since 5:20 this afternoon, I can't find anything to be unhappy about.  The reasons for this are clear to me:

• I had a supervision about a student's writing, and I love supervisions about writing.  Plus, it was my first supervision, and it went well.

• I am back from the States.  There was nothing awful about my trip there, but I'm just incredibly glad not to be there anymore.

• I have been long-listed for a job here, as in, here at Cambridge!  Long-listed really just means they want to see a writing sample, but, still, it's the first time I've made it past the initial application stage for an English job, so it's a huge step.  Plus, I figure that long-listed at Cambridge might mean short-listed at other places...

• I'm wearing a cute dress, in which I look good, and I have received a number of compliments on it.  AND I look slim.

• My lip gloss looks good.
  

I have not achieved perfect happiness - I think I'd need one or two more ingredients for that - but perfect happiness is also rather much to ask for.  After 13 months, I'll take just plain old happy.  Yes, I will!  

I'm actually happy enough that I'd like to kiss someone.  Maybe even everybody. 

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Wow

Why is America so big? Does it have to be? I mean, do you really need all that space?

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One More Thing

Is there an unwritten rule of blogging that you're not supposed to post twice on the same day?  I feel like there is, but just this once I'm going to break it.

It's been a long time since I've had a female friend to be foolish with.  I've had friends to worry over stuff with, or friends to discuss my job and life decisions with, or friends to go out to the cinema with or pub with, or friends to make jokes with, but for, oh, a long time I haven't had a friend to be a girl with:  to pore over events hopefully with, to giggle with, to cross my fingers and imagine everything will be fine with (as opposed to a friend to think with about how I'll cope if things aren't fine), to tell secrets to and be happy about those secrets. But now I do.  And it's a little bit scary, because I'm so used to worrying with people, or joining them in reminding myself to be realistic, but it's also very, very nice.  Silly, and lovely, and warm.

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