Calluses

“Did I say I was gathering
myself back in? Did I lie
and say these ragged, bitten
stub-fingers make me strong?
Did I pretend muscle
is marble, claim
blood-raw sin is as
glossy as a photograph?”

— From “Calluses," a poem in Instructions For Preparing Your Skin by Ariana Nadia Nash, reviewed here by Diego Báez.

Do you typewrite?

Reminds me a little of re-shaping sequences for teaching, especially when I'm trying to incorporate new movement skills or ways of working.

(From The Paris Review Interviews with Eudora Welty)

The Many Poses of Marcel Marceau

"Marceau teaches his students to breathe silently when they move. When we watch fish in water, he tells them, it’s beautiful because they’re completely silent. Watching silence is like watching through glass. Silence has a musicality, he says.

On stage, the mime can appear subject to altered physical laws. He can defy gravity. Among the dancers who borrow from Marceau are Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn. The dancer and choreographer Roland Petit decrees that all ballet students must train in the art of mime. Zizi Jeanmaire performs mimes with Marceau, dressed in mirror-image white bell-bottoms, a striped top, a squashed hat, and ballet pumps. Michael Jackson is a disciple of Marceau. His moonwalk is a version of “walking against the wind.”"

 Mime acts move like a dream!
Read the rest of the article by Mave Fellowes in The Paris Review.

Contaminated

“What’s it like to fall in your thirties?” my friend Scott asked after seeing one of my clumsy skate pics. “Like, really fall.”

Terrible. Exhilarating.

Read Getting back on the skateboard by Nick Courage on your coffee/tea/gin break this morning.

Where are you?

Where are you? You are in your chest. Researchers “asked ten blindfolded adults to use a metal pointer to motion at ‘themselves.’ Most people indicated their upper torso area … ‘the torso is, so to speak, the great continent of the body, relative to which all other body parts are mere peninsulas. Where the torso goes, the body follows.’

... I wonder whether the ego doesn’t just go wherever you are focusing your attention. When I concentrate on my pinky finger, for instance, it seems to contain more ineffable selfhood than the kneecap I am ignoring. Also, do certain qualities of character lead us to affiliate more strongly with different body parts? Would a jock situate his soul in his bicep? Would a smart, geeky teenager identify as a brain? And, also, what exactly do we mean by “self”? I would certainly place my intellect inside my head; when I’m nervous, I can feel it in my stomach; as a white woman, I often benefit from the color of my skin. I am tempted to table this topic of inquiry as far too nebulous to ever invite the application of the scientific method—but, then again, what do “I” know? I’m just a pair of boobs."

--  Katy Waldman

 (Image from The Paris Review. Descartes thought the seat of the soul was in the pineal gland. He was so wrong.)

“You may as well be who you are.”

— Grace Paley

“If you repeat a single word over and over again, it becomes nonsensical. The same applies to body parts—repetition disassociates them from their real function. They may create an interesting shape, but they have no actual use.”

J. Mae Barizo on artist Alvin Booth’s newest exhibition, Come to Your Senses.

(From theparisreview )

Yona Zeldis McDonough

"I realized, if not now, when? Or more aptly, if not now, never.”

An elegant and beautifully told comparison of youth with maturity, and the pain and acceptance that is part of the journey. I hope she's dancing forever!
Yona Zeldis McDonough on her return to ballet at fifty.

Fear of Waves

Cymophobia
Fear of Waves

Happy baby. Bobbing. Strong arm. Slap. Hard
water. Bottle-green swells smack, splatter. Chuck
the chin. Bluster. Rip-roaring rumpus. Scutched.
Scuttled. Fathomless undertone.

Mumble. Mutter. Hugging the shore. An arm
to step over. A finger. Toddler. Hand
on the ankle. Grip, gripe. Carom. Cuff. Crest.
Sea legs knee-deep. Spanking. Spanking.

Sullen. Sullen. Muscled shallows hunch, hump
at the bunk bed. Shrimp. Squirt. Grunt. Grumble. Grim
bone-bruiser. Shunter. Lurcher. Breaker. No
kidding around. Knock down drag out. Keeps.

—Nathalie Anderson.

Photography credit James Cooper.
via theparisreview

Recommended Read

“In the Bible Belt, where I grew up, people looked to scripture for guidance. I tried, but Leviticus damns deformities: the book warns against allowing the deformed to blight the priesthood, listing among the deformed those who have ‘a crooked back.’ Modern translations made the prohibition even clearer by rendering that with the specificity of “he who has scoliosis,” so I turned to other texts.”

Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza on turning to literature after being diagnosed with scoliosis.
via theparisreview

Recipe

FISHY ONE POT WONDER
Serves 4-6
1 bunch spring onions
4 tbsp rapeseed oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 x 400g tin cherry tomatoes
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of saffron (optional)
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
4 heritage tomatoes (approx 450g)
Small clutch of basil
4 small red gurnards (or other firm-fleshed fish), filleted and
skin removed
10 prawns, peeled
1 x 400g tin butter beans, drained
1 x 400g tin kidney beans, drained
1 lemon, cut into wedges

Chop the spring onions into rounds. Heat 2 tbsp of the oil in a large lidded saucepan. Add the garlic and the green part of the onions and cook until softened but not coloured.

 Add the tinned tomatoes, some sea salt, a pinch of sugar, the saffron (if using), paprika and balsamic vinegar. Simmer for 5 minutes, then pour into a separate bowl and wipe the pan clean.

In the meantime, cut the heritage tomatoes into bite-sized pieces. Add the white part of the spring onions and the basil, torn into small bits. Season and set aside.

Heat the remaining oil in the pan until hot. Season the gurnard fillets and the prawns and sear for about 1 minute on each side until coloured and then return the tomato sauce to the pan along with all the beans. Bring to a simmer for about 2 minutes with the lid on. Stir in the heritage tomatoes and check the seasoning. Serve with a little extra basil on top and the lemon wedges.

Recipe from Rachel Khoo
Illustration by Heather Gatley
Cover from The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer found here

Sycamores

I came from a place with a hole in it,
my body once its body, behind a beard of hair.
And after I emerged, all dripping wet,
little drops came out of my eyes, touching its face.
I kissed its mouth; I bit it with my gums.
I lay on it like a snail on a cup,
my body, whatever its nature was,
revealed to me by its body. I did not know
I was powerless before a strange force.
I did not know life cheats us. All I knew,
nestling my head in its soft throat pouch,
was a hard, gemlike feeling burning through me,
like limbs of burning sycamores, touching
across some new barrier of touchability.

—Henri Cole, “Sycamores”
Art Credit Emilie Halpern via Booooooom

(Source: theparisreview)

Catflexing.

Humans!?>!>:!?! 
Catflexing: The Catlover’s Guide to Weight Training Aerobics and Stretching.
From AbeBooks’ Weird Book Room via The Paris Review

Riot Grrrl

“This flyer, a pre–Riot Grrrl ‘manifesto’ that was later repurposed for the minizine Riot Grrrl, is the first image in the book. Kathleen told me she made it in 1989, when she was volunteering at Safeplace, Olympia’s long-lived domestic-violence shelter and advocacy organization. Designed so that it could be folded up into a small rectangle with the word trust on top, this flyer was both a secret invitation and a public announcement, much like Riot Grrrl itself.”

Archivist Lisa Darms reflects on her favorites from the Riot Grrrl Collection.