Kara's Column > A BodyWrites! Experience
By Kara L.C. Jones
KotaPress Editor
Note
from Kara:
In our BodyWrites!
class,
we offer many writing and
expressive arts ideas to
prompt more mindful experiences
while creating your art.
I recently had the amazing
pleasure of doing an online
exchange of this class
with Ms. Pat Butler. On
the second day of class,
I sent a couple writing
exercise ideas. The following
is a copy of the exercise
idea itself -- and then
below that is Pat's wonderful
response!! I'm humbled
to be able to connect with
talented and insightful
writers like Pat through
our Kota classes. And I'm
so very grateful to you,
Pat, that you were willing
to share this with our
readers! Many thanks to
you. And for everyone reading
this, enjoy it -- and then
try your hand at writing
your own version!! Have
fun!! Explore!
Excerpted Exercise from KotaPress eCourse BodyWrites!
Make Sense of Age
(many thanks to Nancy Talley
for her inspiration on
the
creation of this exercise!)
Experience your age through
your senses? What do you
look like, sound like,
smell like, taste like,
feel like at birth; when
you are 2 years old; 5
years old; 10; 20; 30;
40; 50; 60; 70; 80; 90;
100? Try making this an
actually body exercise.
What was it like to gestate?
To be born out of a warm
womb into the world of
air and light and sensations?
To pull yourself up the
first time? To crawl? To
walk with those tentative
first steps? To walk confidently?
To skip? To run? To dance?
What does it feel like
to walk when you are 90?
How do things change in
your body and attitude
at your 50th birthday?
Explore the past, present,
and future with this.
Response to Exercise 3, written
by Pat Butler
I am conceived. What do
I look like, a colon: two
cells, swirling around
a
big page. I smell like amniotic
fluid, I taste salty, I feel
slippery. I
am an egg, as slippery as an
egg. I sound like the act of
creation
I am born. I am still
slippery, but not like
a 3 min. timed egg. A little
form and structure is giving
shape to my yolk. I am green
not yellow, I
like green eggs and ham, Sam
I AM! I smell like fluids of
my mother, like
those greeny black fluids. Green
eggs and overfried ham, Sam I
Am. I taste
salty, I make a scream but it
sounds like a squeek to you
I am 2.
I am a wobbly duckling
waddling along. Little
chubby feet hit that floor
and pick up particles of
dust that I will stop and
examine later. Little
toes that jamb into everything
and hurt mightily. Little toe
jambs into
door jambs. Little wispy hair
flying away from her head with
the smell of
Johnson's baby shampoo. Little
baby smell, smell of little,
diapery smell,
biscuit smell, the smell of biscuits
and milk in her mouth. Congestion
smell, little ones always
have colds, completely
vulnerable to all the
demonic microbes sent to infect
them and them us and us to drag
our slumpy
carcasses off to work, so tired,
so tired, felled by the tininess
of tiniest
tinyness. All this subterfuge
but I am two years old and exploring
and my
thumbs and fingers and toes go
where ever they want and find
things mostly
miniscule things that tickle
and pink and smell and choke
and taste--I taste
like talcum powder. My mother
has sprayed me. I feel like the
smooth skin
of an olive.
I sound like cartoon.
I look like a commercial
for diapers.
I am 5.
I am in a red dress and
smell like a flower, fresh
and dainty.
I feel like a petal.
I sound like silence
I taste like a bit of
salt on a good crust of
bread.
I'm losing touch with
myself
I am 10.
I look like a stick
I sound like a tree
I smell like cheap perfume
for little girls, but it
only lasts about 10
minutes before it dissipates.
I taste like a loaf of
bread, no salt.
I feel like a rubber hose
I dance like a doll
I am 15 years old.
I look like a clown in
a bright blue dress with
yellow polka dots, but
it is
a pretty hip dress in a pretty
funky cultural time. The end
of culture as
we knew it. The overthrow of
all sorts of value, the total
and utter
rejection of the feminine. Look
at Tippy Hedren in 'The Birds" and
then
tell me we haven't lost something.
I sound like a girl. Giggling
way too much or whispering
in closet phone
call conversations with Diane
Zully. This is how desperate
I was for
privacy.
I smell like an ad for
Yardley, lavender toilet
water. Delicate and
scented, but again, not for long.
But even when the bottle is empty
I keep
it a long time, because it is
beautiful. Lovely long slinky
green and
lavendar stripes, trimmed in
white. Lovely. I taste like a
bit of Yardley
too. I taste like a violet candy.
I feel like a rubbery
sort of gold ball that
you can hold in your hands
and
de-stress yourself with. I dance
like a Courreges girl, white
boots and
flailing hair, and tortoise shell
glasses that don't go with anything
although they are the style.
I am 16.
I look the same, only
older, more meatloafy,
more brown colors coming
into
my wardrobe as I am increasingly
distressed and depressed and
no one notices
but my mom who slams me with
condamnation and rejection, horrified
at my
choice of colors, but never asking
me why. Still pushing red down
my
throat, which I now wouldn't
be caught dead in for all the
tea in China. I
smell like Ambush, which Anne
Schmidt has introduced me too.
And Taboo. We
can't decide which one we like
better, but she definitely has
more class
than me, because I didn't even
know these things existed. Their
bottles are
a rubbery sort of plastic, funnel-y
shaped and a beautiful coral
color, at
least for Ambush. I forget what
Taboo came in. They are probably
collector's
bottles now. Most likely her
mother got them for her, at Lord
and Taylor's
in Manhasset, where it was fashionable
to go. Or Gertz. In Hicksville.
Maybe any department store.
I taste like what? A hot
buttercream, coconut
oil bathing beauty full of the
taste of sun and salt and sand
and Johnson's
baby oil mixed with iodine with
which we smeared ourselves and
fried in that
deadly beastly hot sun, whose
heat I can only take the barest
seconds of
now. I sound like nothing as
I am talking less and less, retreating
into my
browns and depression and coat
closet with only Diane Zully
to talk to.
I am 20, rigid with fear
and panic, although you
wouldn't hear those words
from me. I am in college.
I look like a lost bit
of panic a cloth torn
from its many Technicolor coat.
A cloth fluttering in the winds
of change.
A cloth coughing and retching
from many drunken nights on Boone's
farm apple
wine. A cloth drowning itself
in as sure a suicidal run as
ever. I never
suspected. I sought annihilation.
I was a lemming running off the
cliff
with my classmates, I could no
more resist them than I could
live without
them. If they rejected me there
was no life left anywhere left
to live on
the planet, so I must as well
run with them even if we run
off a cliff into
the sea. I sound like a weasel
or a mole or a terrified mouse
running
through a labyrinth, desperately
seeking escape from the jaws
of the
predator clampling down around
me. Agh! Running, screaming,
fleeing, save
me save me save me. Somebody
come and get me, I'm falling
catch me. I
smell like Boone's Farm apple
wine, I smell like death, I smell
like
sulphur. I smell like the fumes
of marijuana going up all around
me, though
I cannot smoke it myself. I somehow
know I will die if I start, and
I need
to wait till I can survive smoking
it before I start. I need to
know one
person in this world loves me
and that love will keep me tied
to the earth,
and then I can attempt suicide.
Slow death.
I am ready at 25.
I take my first puff,
holding on to the ledge
of your love. You are safe,
though you are leading
me in self-destruction.
But I think I can find
my
way back. I know I can. I know
some limits. Somehow I can. I
can find my
way back I do find my way back
although perhaps it is only a
grace I am
receiving. But I remember in
those breakneck runs in cars
around mountain
curves drunk as all skunk that
I knew I would live and no matter
how dogged
the enemy's pursuit of me was
you were not going to let me
die like that
before living. You were not going
to let me die. The smoke hurts
my lungs
tremendously and tastes like
nothing but feels like burning.
I gag and spit
but feel it standing in my nostrils
and know it is entering my brain
and all
will be well soon. I feel the
buzz. I am sleepy but flying
in an airplane.
I am sleeping in the Marinos
bedroom, surrounded by Hummel
figures and
plastic and wondering what I'm
doing here. I taste the bitter
tobacoo of
it. I see Donna happy that I've
joined her here in this place
of death,
cuz then it makes it safer for
her too. Here I am for you, Donna,
and I
know you feel satisfaction but
it is not good for either of
us and I know
that. I sound like a person who
is completely disconnected from
her heart.
I taste like Oreo cookies, inhaled
while high. I feel like a piece
of
cordorouy, the color I am wearing
tonight, the dark green with
the stain
right at my chest. Astonishing
wood button. A perfect fit a
centimeter too
small, esp. around the bust.
But way cool otherwise. I still
feel pretty
rigid.
I am 25 years old and
I smell like pot. I sound
like disenfranchised youth.
I am complaining and angry.
I am a muddle and lost.
I am able to divert
everything into what's wrong
at the job, unaware of what is
to come because
of what is wrong with me. But
somewhere I am dimly aware-what
is wrong? I
don't know these motions of the
soul. I experience them as deep
movements
in murky waters-things in the
sea I'm afraid of. I taste like
the oils of
cannabis. Like the bitter waters
of Marah. I am a bitter wormwood
glass of
absinthe. I feel taut and stricken,
a thin bark on an old tree.
I am 27-28. I am slipping
down the slippery slope
and I don't know it. I
know it. I slip. All it
takes is a moment, a touch,
and the match is lit.
I look like a freefall, with
long hair, a blue blazer with
no buttons and a
parrot pin in the lapel, khaki
pants, a cranberry Indian shirt
and a Siamese
cat. I sound like the strike
of the match. I smell like its
sulphur, and
taste like its acrid smoke, which
combines with the Indian incense
to make
me nauseous. I feel like a spark
ignited, like a life going up
in flames.
I am 30 and sobered up.
How did I get this old
already and have nothing
to
show for it? I look like I'm
waking up from a hangover. I
feel old, too
late, off the beat, like a failure.
I have failed this part of my
life.
Though I have come to Christ-how
is it that this is the first
time I'm
mentioning that? Should this
scare me? I remember that beautiful
house in
Woodstorck? I think we went once,
and it was a Jewish woman, lovely,
refined, elegant in her
elderliness. What would
she say to me? I am moving
away.I am leaving Long Island.
I am moving to Woodstock. I am
moving to
Hartford. I sound like I've understood
something, like a wind blowing,
bringing in a new thing.
I wake. I taste like outside.
I smell like fresh
air.
I am 40. I look like I've
made it-a certain success,
the same khaki pants.
Able to dress but unable to pull
my style together-still. I look
Irish. I
am wearing an Irish T-shirt to
work, the construction site.
I am not
growing up yet. I'm yearning
for a significant birthday experience
and I'm
getting frustrated, cuz it's
not happening. I feel frustrated-till
Saturday, when Donna pulls
off the best possible surprise
birthday party. I
sound like a grump. I smell like
Artistry products, and nothing
worse, cuz
I'm using Mennen deodorant, which
I begrudgingly concede is the
best, as Mom
always said. I hate to agree
with her on anything, but she's
right, so it
might as well be about deodorant.
I taste like Bath-therapy, which
I enjoy
ever since Donna gave it to me
umpteen birthdays ago. I think
I was Donna's
cannibal compulsion-she couldn't
get enough of me and she wanted
to eat me
alive. I couldn't set enough
boundaries.
I am 50. I am filled with
grief, but healing. The
year anniversary of Dad's
death.
I look terrible. "Boy
have you aged!" Celine
exclaimed tactfully, on
seeing
me shortly after my father's
death. Boy did I feel that. Knowing
how true
it was. I sound like a tomb,
like my father's absence, a heavy
silence,
except with my sister, with whom
thankfully I can share every
particle of
what I'm experiencing in this
loss. Thank God for her. I don't
think I can
ever socialize again. I smell
like the acrid air we lived in,
having
converted the house into a hospice
zone. I taste still the rarified
air of
the oxygen tanks, the cotton
balls, the antiseptics and lotions
and potions
and anger and salt of endless
tears. I feel like flinging all
those
spaghetti wires of medical machines
right off the balcony. I feel
again my
excess weight, perhaps more than
can be accounted for by the excess
weight.
I am 52. All is well.
I am living a life I love.
Almost perfect, in spite
of many things I would
fill it with: a husband,
family, a newer car, perhaps
another Siamese kitty or
a Jack Russell terrier
or a pug. But there are
flowers on my balcony with
the wash and it is a summer
day not to be beat.
I have spent time with my friends
today, I have sold a story, I
am writing
poems. I've found my vocation
and I sound like the sound of
yes. I look
happy; and I'm smiling, and there
is only the slightest trace of
anger lines
and pain lines, leftover from
the car accident. No more khakis
for me: but
a gray miniskirt and lots more
dresses, cuz I've come to terms
with my
wardrobe, my mother and my femininity.
The laptop is hot on my bare
knees.
I smell like the perfume Catherine
gave me two birthdays ago: the
one in the
orange bottle shaped like lips.
I taste like an After Eight Mint,
refreshing, like all the
water I drink. I feel like
an excited teenager,
trapped in the car where her
parents have put her, and the
car is moving
slower than she'd like. I am
resigned to never having my 20
year old body
back, but not so resigned that
I won't continue to work this
weight from
taking full possession of me.
I move a little slower, but more
methodically
more thoughtfully, not the frenzied
activism of even 5 years ago,
but the
thoughtful lumber of a poet collecting
poems from the air and butterflies
flitting about on the breeze.
I choose life, over and over
and over again.
Thank you, Lord of Life, and
please keep it coursing through
me.
I am 60.
I look like the sun has
been baking me to a golden
bun color. The smile
wrinkles crease the bun just
right. A few toasted sesame seeds
complete my
complexion. I sound like the
ocean waves crashing down the
beach, with
great fidelity and dignity. They
are comforting, and solid, those
ephemeral
things. I smell like their salty
briny ring, which has plumped
up my hair,
which I'm letting go gray again,
because I've earned it. And it's
too much
trying to keep it up anymore
with the pool. Chlorine is about
as bad as it
can be for old hair. I'll go
down to the ocean later. I taste
like its
salt too; it has infected every
pore and is oozing back out,
to the earth,
from whence it came, and I wonder
how many more years before I
too am poured
out, and I am ready. Not to die
and end, but to die and begin
the part of
my life where I'm completely
unhampered by death ever again.
I feel like a movie star;
Katherine Hepburn in khaki
pants! Yes, the khaki
pants are back. Call it nostalgia,
but I love the old comfortable
bums.
They fit me like a glove, both
figuratively and literally. I
love all these
pockets. I put a belt on and
don't care if my waist isn't
as thin as
Katherine's. In my mind it is.
I am 70.
I look like a faded page,
or a piece of cabbage,
except for my eyes which
light it up and tell stories
all by themselves. Sometimes
I'm not aware of
it, but that's what people tell
me. When Irish eyes are smiling
they tell
me. I sound like a butterfly
gargled, as Yoko Ono said somewhere
back in
the 60's, no? All happy little
laughters fluttering up and trickling
down.
I smell like the spicy vanilla
crème my niece gave me;
never did like
vanilla, but the spices make
it tolerable, and I always did
love my niece.
So I taste like this spicy vanilla
too, and smell my arms repeatedly.
Maybe I do like vanilla. I can't
remember anymore. I feel like
a woman who
has lost the whole world, but
gained her soul. I miss my friends
and my
brothers and my parents. I'm
so glad my sister is still with
me and we can
still make each other laugh till
no sound comes out. She is my
world now,
and her family. And she is my
light.
I am 80.
I look like a real cabbage
patch doll now, fragile
and sweet (if they only
knew) and wrinkly but just
right, and a faint tinge
of green if I don't get
outside enough, which I
never seem to anymore.
I sound like a stalled
car,
farting now and then, and am
glad no one's around to hear
it. I don't think
I have that old lady smell yet,
but I'll call my sister later
and have her
make sure. I taste like that
rain, falling into my beloved
ocean. We're
all coming to you, ocean! Just
wait and keep waving! I feel
like I'm
waiting with my suitcases and
ticket for the boat to come,
and it can't come
fast enough, cuz I can't wait
for vacation.
About the Author
Pat Butler
lives and works in northern
France, which has required
lots of loss (family and
friends, familiarity and
language) to gain the richness
of living in a foreign
culture. A native New Yorker,
Pat began writing as a
child. Although single,
Pat's extended family—French
and American—provide an
endless source for stories
and poems.
<<BACK
