Do you have one of these things? 

I’m talking about a body. I’m not trying to assume anything about anyone reading this. What if some of my readers are dead and don’t have bodies anymore? Or what if some of them are, like, angels? I don’t know who’s real and who can read what where. 

But, a body, you were assigned one of these things, too. Can I ask…how are you doing with it? This is one of those times where I’m secretly hoping you’re going to answer “Not great!” so I can say “I know, right?!” 

If you are doing great having a body, listen. All good things to you.  

If you’re not doing great having a body, that is FANTASTIC.

For me, in terms of having company. And depending on just how not great not great is for you.

If you’re really in the thick of it and physically suffering, I don’t think this is fantastic at all and I want to take a moment to beam you healing vibes. 

Everybody take a moment and beam healing vibes every which way. 

No, the group I’m hoping to convene today for commiseration is those of us who chronically can’t figure out how to work these things. We’ve had all our lives to move around in bodies and try stuff and we’re still like…you what? What do you do again?

I find regular old walking awkward. That’s where I’m at. I have legs. They’re operational. Injury, age, weight, my aversion to activities that ask me to “be in the body!”, all of these things have finally come for my walking. That’s like the first thing after crawling and sitting up, both of which I am still great at, thank you, plus holding my own head up unsupported.

It’s going to get boring in here quickly if I talk about every time I’ve cried trying to do something physical. I have a list of stories I could tell you that feature me crying trying to do some real beginner moves, and I’m going to cross most of them out:

that nice yoga class where practically everyone in the room was my friend already, so not a tough crowd, but I burst out sobbing and had to go cry in the hall during something barely one step harder than child’s pose

the choreography in…every performance I ever did that had choreography

P.E. class, 1975-1981

A quick P.E. one, maybe. Third grade. Big kickball game coming up that day, third grade vs. fourth grade. Forgot about it, wore clogs to school. A kid in class mentioned the game a couple hours before P.E. and I burst into tears. I knew right away crying this hard about kickball was a no-go. I wasn’t trying to double my embarrassment.

(Triple it, though. Stumbled into that option.)

When someone asked what I was crying about, I said, “My mom has cancer*.”

*false

When I’ve told this story before, I’ve said my lie got me out of the game. That’s how I remembered it. But no: all my lie got me out of was saying, “I’m scared to play kickball in ADIDAS and these are CLOGS, MOTHAFUCKA.”

I still had to play in the game, now that I think about it. I can’t believe I blocked that out. I was there, in the game, up at base for a moment to strike out in my little dress and clogs. So this was a bad approach across the board. I told a spectacular lie, had to play kickball anyway, and then I flinched for days every time the phone rang at home because people were calling to check on my mom.

I faced no consequences. We never spoke of it, my mom and I. She looked confused on the phone more than once, answered a question in the negative, and hung up. I was not called in for questioning.

My upper body is fine. My head’s okay. It’s everything below the waist that’s not connected to…the main place. (I believe I mean my brain.) I don’t know how to tell the real estate below my waist to do things.

Back when I was an actor, I used to have the classic actor fantasy of winning an Academy Award. Everybody had that one. I could see the dress I’d wear to the Oscars. Red, always, even though the silhouette and fabric and sleeve length would change.

I could see myself on the red carpet and I could see myself in the audience but do you know what I could never see myself doing, even in my own dumb fantasy? Winning. You know why? Because there are stairs. And there are no rails on those stairs. There are always a few stairs the winner has to walk up to collect their award and I could not, even in my own fantasy, see myself successfully negotiating even a small number of them. So I’d never win in my own Academy Awards fantasy. I never made the speech. I’d go to the awards year after year in my mind and fizzle out the dream before they could announce the winner.

Getting nominated for an Oscar was easier for me to picture than walking up five stairs in a nice dress.

If I test the idea out, if I force the fantasy along, I see myself falling up the stairs and then—if I want to go farther and torture myself—I can see myself struggle to my feet and stumble to the podium where I can see the presenter making an “Are we really going to do this?” face to someone offstage. Then I can see the presenter not letting go of the award when I reach them. The Oscars, the institution of the Oscars, will change their mind on the spot after I fall on almost no stairs, even if I won, and they’ll give the Oscar I won with my touching performance to somebody who can stay vertical. I cannot see this playing out another way.

I get frustrated and freaked out and upset when I have to put my consciousness down too far into my body to make parts of it move, and I don’t like it when the lights are on, as it were, in my legs and such.

We’re just getting to know each other here in Clown Class and I feel careful about dipping into trauma as a topic. I want us to have fun. I want us to come to class. But we’re going to have to go there eventually because this newsletter is written by a struggler for strugglers, and something a ton of strugglers have in common has to be trauma.

I got up and had a furious dance break at this point in writing the post. You can stay in your head and write about the body for a while but the writing is going to end up empty if you don’t eventually drop down. Dancing is the one form of physical activity I can get with. Not dancing with choreography. Eff off, choreography. I mean shaking it to some music that makes you shake it.

Whatever’s going on below my waist lives in a state of lockdown. The anger goes there, for one. The lower half of my body is, among other things, the anger pantry. Today’s not the day to get into it here in Clown Class but I do know where the anger is coming from.

I’ll say this:

In addition to being mad about the original source of the big anger, I’m mad that my body is a minefield, period.

I get mad when I travel back to childhood in my memory and look at other kids doing cool physical things like walking along the top of a fence, balancing. I get mad when I see their grinning faces rise up from the grass, their breathing a little more forceful after a row of successful cartwheels. The kids are diving into lakes, jumping into pools, riding bicycles and shouting, having a blast. They’re kicking the ball the right direction in soccer, they’re dodging and dribbling, talking fast to their feet with their brains.

Meanwhile I’m standing there like an idiot watching, or doing a half-hearted solo run hither and thither on the grass, or walking along the shallow part of the pool, flap-floating my way to the edge, hanging on.

I get mad that I truly get mad once a year and that’s if I’m lucky. That’s in a big, surprise year. I’m not talking about conceptually mad, intellectually mad at a distance. I get to do that all the time. I’m talking about mad to the point where I can feel it in my body, mad to the point where a good, red, unfamiliar fire is running through all my limbs, making me ready to fight—exciting—and I’m thinking, “Do you people get to feel this whenever you want?”

We have to be in bodies. It’s the only way to get from birth to death. I get excited for the part after death where we don’t have to have them, which isn’t to say I’m trying to get out of here at all. I still want to hang out. I just want to enjoy the main conveyance for my personhood more.

How are you doing with this? Do you move okay? Do you feel the whole thing, your body? Do all the parts connect?

I don’t have advice for any of this. I give advice on Fridays. This is Wednesday.

Every other Friday, that is, including this upcoming Friday, 6/23. Which reminds me: If you’d like to trust me with a question about some aspect of being a struggler on this planet, I’d love to hear from you. You can reply to this or any email with your question and I’ll be delighted to give it my best thought. (For some more insight into what makes a good question for our purposes here in this newsletter, you can scroll to the bottom of the introductory post, “Clown Class Orientation.”)

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Thanks for reading!

Love, Tina