Toni Morrison – Diana Klein

CFS, Reading, Sickness & Health, Writing & Reading

Coming Home to My Body

November 4, 2016 Diana

curiously-smiling-attentively-coming-home-to-my-body-dianaklein-com My mother and I are walking together this morning. It’s already apparent that it’s a tough one for both of us, but we still do our daily check-ins. “My legs are hurting a lot,” she tells me. She knows that the pain in my legs have been a merciless for several days now, so she adds, “Maybe your legs said something to mine, and it spread.”

She’s making a joke. I know this. But this morning, I am not in the mood.

Despite the pre-dawn darkness she senses my chagrin. “Not you,” she assures me, “your legs!”

“My legs are me,” I explain.

This is a fairly new admission for me. I have spent many, many years dissociating from my body, talking about it in the third person, distaining its weakness.

There’s an interview with Toni Morrison from about a year and a half ago during which, because of chronic pain, she talks about her body in a similar way. “I did so much for you, body, why aren’t you helping me now, when I need you? I was so nice to you.” When asked if making peace with her body was hard, she confirms “I do feel like I’m under attack.”

It’s easy to feel this way: My body is failing me. My body hates me. I hate my body. I felt this way for a long time. Oh, I paid lip service in yoga classes to “listening to my body”, but my subconscious was really thinking: Listen to my body? Are you kidding me? That bitch doesn’t know shit!

Then, in my mid-twenties, a hypnotherapist told me to “Be in your body. You want your body to be there for you, so you need to be there for it.” I was a little confused. What does she mean, be in my body? I am in my body, aren’t I? But then I started thinking about The Robber Bride, a novel by Margaret Attwood I’d read some years earlier. In it, one of the female characters describes being repeatedly molested as a child, and that her response to this was to leave her body, so that she wouldn’t feel everything that was happening to her so intensely. This is one of the things I love about novels—they teach so much. They teach you things you don’t know you need to know. I had thought, at the time, that Attwood was speaking metaphorically or at the very least, metaphysically. People don’t really leave their bodies, and if they do, it happens very infrequently. It took a few years for me to realize that Attwood and the hypnotherapist had it right. We do leave our bodies. We hover around them because we have so much about which to think—or so much from which to escape.

My departure from my body was mostly because of the pain. I couldn’t understand why meditation teachers kept wanting me to scan my body. I knew what my body felt like. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t need to know anything more about it. I didn’t want to know anything more about it. I wanted to feel something different, something better. So I took off, without realizing it, without meaning to, I just left. It seemed better that way.

But it wasn’t. My retreat from pain was also a retreat from my life. I became less connected to myself and to everything else. How can you truly taste an orange if you’re not really there? How can you taste any of the fruits of life, if you are constantly running away? Though perhaps, I wasn’t experiencing as much pain, I also wasn’t there for myself. I had less agency in my life, less ability to accomplish things because I was taking refuge in fantasy and a future that might never come. Leaving can be okay for a while. Sometimes we all need a break from reality, but I came to realize that for me, giving up the pain meant giving up everything.

And even then, the pain chases me. Without my attention, my body becomes tenser, harder, unforgiving.

I have taken to doing body scans again—nothing formal, usually it’s when I lie down to take a nap, and I often fall asleep before I finish. But I try to feel the full weight of my body falling into the bed. I start at my feet, feeling them, expressing some appreciation for them. I work up my body in this way. Relaxing into the pain. Filling the entire volume contained by my skin with my presence, flooding the space between my cells with my being. Some months ago, without really thinking about it, I started telling myself: This is my body. It seems kind of silly to remind myself of that and as anyone who has spent much time going to a Catholic church knows, those words can’t help but remind me of the mass. It seems appropriate somehow, though—that here be an inherent holiness to those words. That fully inhabiting one’s body could be a sacred act.

When I do this, the pain does not go away, but I feel more relaxed. I feel like my body and I are in this thing together. We are not at odds. We are not separate. I believe, I know, that I am more than a body, but I am also this body. This body is home.

The artwork for this post was inspired by the work Austin Kleon and Cindy Shepard. If you like it, you might want to check out their stuff, too. Also, if you enjoyed this post as a whole, please consider sharing it. 🙂

Sickness & Health, Writing, Writing & Reading

The Wisdom of Narrowing

October 28, 2016October 28, 2016 Diana

A few years ago at a Sheep and Wool Festival amid stalls of colorful yarns of all kinds, my mom and I stood there and agreed: weaving was off the table. At least for this lifetime, this was one fiber art we were going to forgo. Though we both found looms and their products tantalizing, we knew that, for us, there simply wasn’t enough time for it.

I have made more decisions like these lately—especially as I have trying to pare down my belongings. I am not, by any means, a hoarder, but I have often had difficulty getting rid of a thing because of the fear that I might someday, in the vast unknowable future, need or want it. Reading Marie “KonMari” Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Cleaning Up (like just about everyone else) earlier this year, gave me the impetus I needed to try again. I liked the idea of not being weighted-down by objects and of surrounding myself only with things that, in her words, “spark joy”. Did I follow KonMari’s method to the letter? Uh, no. But I did, almost three years after I moved, finally open every last box I had stowed in the garage and edited many crafting supplies and several books.

As I contemplated each piece, I again felt the familiar tug of anxiety at my chest. Am I being stupid getting rid of this? What if I want it later? I don’t have a lot of money and it might be expensive to replace. In these moments, I did not hold the item quietly and ask myself if it sparked joy as KonMarie would have had me do. Quite frankly, I forgot all about that. Instead, I thought about what I was giving up by holding onto any given item.

I, like all of us, have a limited amount of time on this planet. If I choose to do X, say make rag rugs from old fabric, that will take energy and time away from doing Y, say writing. Is making rag rugs important enough to me to take time and energy away from writing. Would it help me in any way? Well, the answer for me is no. Like weaving, rug making could only be considered a backup plan to the other things I am more passionate about in this life. And, the problem with holding onto the fabric that would be perfect for rug making only keeps the possibility of doing it, however faintly, alive in my mind. One could say, (and I have) okay, you don’t want to do it now, but maybe in the future . . . So the idea gets still more life, a tiny trickle of energy gets siphoned off to maintain something that, in all likelihood, I am never going to do and, for which, I feel only a minor excitement for anyway. I don’t know if there is any physical truth to my energy drain theory, but there is sociological research that indicates that people who commit fully to a goal are more motivated to fulfill that goal than those who have “backup plans.” It makes sense, I mean, how committed to something can you be, if, somewhere in your mind, you are still entertaining other options? Plus, I think most of us probably have enough anecdotal evidence that single-minded people tend to be the ones who get the most done.

focus-narrowing-my-focus-dianaklein-com

Narrowing one’s focus is effective in writing, too. When I was 15, at Oprah’s urging, I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved for the first time. It was my initial foray into reading contemporary literature and, holy smokes, what an introduction. Considered by many to be the best novel of the 20^th century, its narrative about slavery and love is as brutal as it is beautiful. I felt breathless as I discovered how amazing and powerful prose could be. How a mere 95,000 words, strung together like a magical incantation, could change me so profoundly. Shortly after reading Beloved, I saw an interview with Toni Morrison in which she explained that her purpose, in writing the novel, was to examine slavery in a way that she had not seen it done before. So many books had tried to capture the immensity of the American slave trade, but she felt their scopes were too wide. She decided to go narrow and go deep. By telling the stories of a few individuals with whom a reader could feel a sense of intimacy, she was able to convey the horror of slavery so much more poignantly than by rattling off numbers that, no matter how big and atrocious, had difficulty making it past the mind and into the heart.

Go narrow and go deep. I think of this when I am confronted by the huge swathes of possibilities presented to me each day. When I open my email account and see a plethora of urgings to go in any number of different directions. I can’t do it all, and trying to will likely mean that I end up doing nothing. So often when we think of investing in our futures, it’s about obtaining something—classes, books, materials—which, in many ventures, is important. But, for me, right now, narrowing my focus is the best form of self-investment. As I say no to many things that are not quite right for me, I am making my yes to those things that are most significant to me that much stronger.

This is becoming my practice: I look at each item in my life—physical and psychological—and I ask myself, Is this what you want to spend your life on? It’s tough when it’s something that looks cool, when my anxiety flares up that maybe I’m missing something (which is ridiculous since we are always missing many things!). But it’s wonderful when, for example, I am hugging my niece—her buoyant spirit flowing out to meet mine—and the answer is like a chorus of bells all tolling, “Yes!”

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Writing & Reading

The Books That Changed My Life (or at least some of them)

May 15, 2015October 4, 2016 Diana

This week I was searching in my local library’s web catalog for a book by Alice Hoffman. They didn’t have what I was looking for, but instead I found The Book That Changed My Life. Don’t you love that about libraries? Whether you’re online or in the stacks, you can look for one thing and discover gems you didn’t even know existed. Of course, that usually means that by the time I get to the circulation desk, my arms are overflowing with items that I will never get a chance to consume in the time they are allotted to me. No matter.

The Book That Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen, is a collection of essays from celebrated authors (mostly of fiction) about the book, you guessed it, that changed their lives. This got me thinking two things: a) How, on God’s green earth, can anyone choose only one book? And b) To which book would I assign that distinction? As I dipped into the essays, I found that several of the authors couldn’t limit it to one choice either, so there’s that mystery solved. But I was surprised to find that not all of them designated novels as their book of choice. There have been a number of nonfiction texts that have made a huge difference in my life—many of them spiritual or philosophical—but they would never be at the top of the list that jumped to mind when I asked myself the question. I have learned so much from novels—about the world, the past, myself, that I suppose I think of them as the best textbooks for the school of life.

My sister (eleven years older than I) started reading The Complete Works of O. Henry to me when I was seven. This book pretty much ruined me for just about all other short stories. I loved that there was always a kicker at the end, ironic or not. We never finished a tale with me thinking “Okay, so what’s your point?” which often happens when I read short fiction now. My favorite story was Springtime a la Carte mostly because it begins:

It was a day in March.

Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse It is unimaginative, flat, dry, and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable.

It changed my life because it was funny and irreverent and it felt like a personal invitation—as though this man from almost a century earlier was holding out his hand and saying, “C’mon, Diana. It’ll be fun.” I think that’s when I knew I wanted to be a writer—not that I thought I could or would ever be good at it, but that, even if I wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone (least of all myself) this was where some part of my passion lay.

I still wasn’t ready to commit to my creativity when I read My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok in my early twenties. It’s the story of an observant Jew who can’t stop himself from becoming an artist, and further, cannot turn away from the path his art is determined to take—which, in part, is to paint a portrait of his mother entitled The Brooklyn Crucifixion—despite the injury it will cause to his relationship with his community. I love this book because the protagonist is earnest and really wants to do the right thing, but he knows he has follow his path, despite the difficult consequences—to do otherwise is to be false in the deepest kind of way, and, in a fashion, to turn away from God. I love the description of Judaism, the rituals such as praying over a simple glass of orange juice. I love how the book starts. It’s as though you are walking into a room and hear a snatch from the middle of a fascinating conversation, and you can’t help but want to go back to the beginning and get the whole story. This book changed my life because it taught me about how close artistry can be to spirituality (or even the same thing?). It whispered to me about things I might like to do with my life—true things, literary things, small, but powerful things—and it wouldn’t stop whispering.

Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy first came into my life as an abridged book on tape. I think I was about ten, and this science fiction masterpiece blew the roof straight off my mind. It was as though Adams had given me a crystal, and instructed me on how to hold it and take it in. Instead of just admiring one side, I was meant to turn it—just a little—and then consider it from this new angle. And I was meant to do this again and again, over and over, becoming aware of how unfixed an idea or a reality might be. The book was also really funny.

I read and re-read Beloved by Toni Morrison when I was 16. Its story about an escaped female slave several years after the Civil War taught me about beauty and horror. There was a lot I didn’t “get”, but that didn’t bother me. When I read an earthy and lovely passage about the main character kneading bread, I found a porthole into the life of a woman whose experience had been so different from mine and I wanted to hold her. I didn’t know books could do that. I was glad to learn.

What book(s) changed your life? How? Why?

🙂

Reading, Writing, Writing & Reading

Writing Wrongs

September 2, 2009October 4, 2016 Diana

I had no idea I was born to be a rabble-rouser. I didn’t rebel during my adolescence; I had no desire to make war where a tasteless facsimile of peace had reigned for so long. I wanted to be quiet and good. I idolized people who loved the world unconditionally, who willingly swallowed sorrow, pain, and anger, and whose knowing and enigmatic smile was their only condemnation of the senseless acts of those around them.

But as I began reading Burn This Book, a collection of essays written in support of PEN—the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization—by the likes of Updike, Morrison, and Rushdie, I felt my spirit pick up its head like a bird who, after sleeping for a great age, senses something in the air that makes it want to fly.

Like most people who have enjoyed any lifelong privilege, I hadn’t given too much consideration to the idea that reading and writing are human rights—ones that are still too frequently curtailed. But as I contemplate it now, I can’t imagine not being allowed to read. I can never remember a time when I was banned from reading anything. My childhood home was crammed with books and, to the best of my knowledge, I had access to them all. I never had any notion that books could be dangerous or in any way evil. They might be poorly written, possess errant storylines, foul language, discouraging errata, explicit sex—but they were just words on paper; they couldn’t hurt you. I don’t know at what age I found out about the banning of books, or when I first saw movie footage of poor, little, innocent books being burned. But I do remember that the former occurrence baffled me and the latter made me physically ill.

It’s not just the great enjoyments I’ve gotten from books or the large, mind-altering things I’ve learned from them that inspires me so much. It’s the little ones too—the fact that even the tiniest morsel of the written word can have a lasting impact. It thrills me to realize that subtle aspects of books I read as a child still remain poignant to me—and not just the classics, all of them. I remember the lovely variances of the many cultures on display in Around the World Fairy Tales retold by Vratislav Sťovíček. The opening sentences of “Springtime à la Carte” from The Complete Works of O. Henry, still make me smile and encourage my fearlessness and irreverence. I have no idea why, but, even now, I think of the four girls in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women acting out Pilgrim’s Progress, making up bundles, beginning their trek in the cellar, and journeying to the attic. The primer in cellular biology I received from Madeleine L’Engle in A Wind in the Door has never left my side. The President’s Daughter by Ellen Emerson White provided me with a lasting education of what it means to run for office and opened my imagination to the notion of a female president (still waiting . . .). The Sweet Valley High books created by Francine Pascal informed me about the Sing it Yourself Messiah and eyebrow-plucking. The Iceberg Hermit by Arthur Roth taught me that alcohol makes you warm. The Night of the Whale by Jerry Spinelli showed me the terrible sorrow of beached whales. Barthe DeClements’ and Christopher Greimes’ book Double Trouble gave me my first look at astral bodies and auras. The King of the Dollhouse by Patricia Clapp taught me how to dust properly. Biographies of Lafayette and Robert Perry informed of me of what mottoes were in general and what these men’s were in particular (“Why not?” and “I shall find a way or make one”, respectively). And all this before I had entered middle school.

Now, when I hear about the high rate of illiteracy among women in Afghanistan and other places—when I think of all that I have been given access to and all that they have been denied, I get choked up. And a few months ago, when Iranians were again told to shut up and accept their newly “elected” president, when their safeties were threatened for writing anything to oppose him or the legitimacy of his election—either on posters or the internet. . . I felt a sorrow and helplessness I can’t adequately describe.

I can’t imagine not being able to write. Actually, I take that back—I too have been the victim of censorship—my own. There used to be things I thought I couldn’t write about. And there were things that I would write about, but refused to share with others. No good, I thought, could come from my voicing certain beliefs, relating certain tales. They could only hurt. I was wholly interested in being responsible—not seeing that responsibility may take a different form in the hands of an artist. According to Salman Rushdie “A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, to start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.” But it could be argued (and it often has been by me) that writers use this type of rationale to write whatever they want, for whatever selfish reason they want, and get away with it. I have been loathe to fall into this category and, as a result, have bent over backward to be fair, to question my motives, to consider the feelings of others—even though my mother frequently tells me “that’s not your job”.

“A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.” When a statement like this comes out of Toni Morrison’s mouth, it sounds completely reasonable and wholly accurate. I don’t care whether you loved or hated Beloved; we needed her to write that book. But when I take Ms. Morrison’s quote to heart and apply it to myself, I run into a little trouble. Are these words I write truly necessary? How about these? Again, such quotes may lead us into self-indulgence and over permissiveness: “The world needs to hear my opinion about everything from emotional abuse to M&Ms to flatulence, so I will write it all down and consequences be damned!” And yet, when I think of people not being allowed to write and not being allowed to read, I start to feel that even the most inane jabbering on Facebook becomes a glorious thing. Is it right to announce someone’s wrongdoings to the world? I don’t know. But sometimes, it is definitely necessary.

So as it turns out, I am not a “sit quietly and take the world as it is” kind of gal. (Really, my red hair should have been a clue right off the bat.) I am nice and loving and kind. But I am also opinionated and intelligent, and I refuse to yield to any fear that tells me not to use my brain, my voice, or my pen, because doing so would be to disgrace those who have given their very selves for my right to read and write; it would be to unforgivably dishonor those people who, even now, are fighting with their mighty pens to be heard.

For more information about PEN go here: http://pen.org/

For a closer look at Burn This Book go here: http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061774003