WRITING THE BODY Electric
Courageous Writing That Takes On the Intimate, the Inner, the Invisible, the Inimitable
Going THere
I can think of no better....
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....example of writing the physical reality of our bodies than Lucy Grealey's celebrated and breathtaking 2016 memoir Autobiography of a Face.
When she was nine, Grealey was taken out of school to be treated for a deadly cancer. When she came back, she was greatly altered, with a third of her jaw removed. Hers is a story of unbearable suffering, both physical and mental. Of physical pain and mental excoriation.
Grealey takes her readers to the crucible location where bodies meet images of bodies. She considers the ways our bodies can betray us. The way the received ideas of beauty can brutalize and scar us.
“This singularity of meaning--I was my face," Grealey writes, "I was ugliness--though sometimes unbearable, also offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life. Everything led to it, everything receded from it--my face as personal vanishing point.”
Grealey's book gave me pause to examine my an evolving sense of my own beauty, sometimes there, sometimes not. That changeable ethereal thing that is our reflection; the ways we own that. I always reach for the books that explore the corporeal and the sensual, the experience of health, illness and image. There are shelves and shelves of memoirs that parse the idea of our containers, as billboards, as our buddies and our betrayers, but none as powerful -- in my estimation --as Grealeys.
Write your body and you write your truth, a professor once told me. At the time, I found it reductive. Today, I consider it gospel.
Collected here are some excerpts from memoirists that go there. Like Grealey, but each with their own priceless and winning style and story strategy. Read some of these and then try your own!
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ELIZABETH FORTESCUE: "FACEPLANT"
I cannot stand up quickly. My ailing heart refuses. The rapid change in posture prevents the organ from pumping enough blood to my brain. I blame gravity, the earth, the galaxy. Anything but me. But[EC3] —it’s me. I know that [EC4] the real problem is my deranged physiology. But I am rushed. I put on some fresh socks then shoot upright to go do the next thing, like anyone might. But in me[EC5] , this simple movement is followed by nothingness. I am gone, unconscious. I crumple, and in falling without the ability to brace myself, my face attacks my knee, the former decidedly losing out in the exchange. My partner finds me choking on all the blood pouring down my throat from a knocked out front tooth and split lip. He[EC6] calls medics. Soon, I am in intensive care, quickly put to sleep and[EC7] a tube is shoved down my throat to help me breathe as my face continues to gush blood[EC8] from the brawl. There I lay[EC9] [EC10] , fighting for my life, again.
[EC1]it
[EC2]such a
[EC3]deep down I know
[EC4]The problem has little to do with celestial forces and pretty much everything to do with my deranged physiology.
NEW PARAGRAPH:
It is annoying to move at molasses speed with I feel rushing
[EC5]You have a lot of “buts” I might suggest CUTTING. And just going straight to The simple movement is followed by an enormous nothingness.
[EC6]He is used to emergencies. Without a beat, he contacts medics
[EC7]with a tune shoved down
[EC8]We know it is blood. I would cut blood. But is it your face gushing or your mouth?
[EC9]Can you switch to the present tense here? I think it would be SO effective if right here the essay moved to the NOW.
[EC10]As in Here I lie, fighting for my life, once again.
Our bodies are our containers. Writing about them, their perceived loveliness and flaws, their power, their powerlessness, their inherent truths, their potential lies, illness, health, when we work to improve strength and when we break, takes courage.
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