Read Online In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Eve Ensler
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record. Then theywould have to say, “Yes, one person, one fluke playwright died within minutes of her first treatment. Her body was not disposed toward poison. And oddly, she knew it. She felt it, but she didn’t listen to her instincts. Shame.”
SCAN
ARTS AND CRAFTS
I don’t know what made me want watercolors and pastels as I waited to be strong enough for the chemo. Arts and crafts, like music, had always been a particular nightmare for me. I was completely devoid of talent. My sudden hunger for art came as a great surprise. My desire to paint, like my ravenous need for a hamburger, seemed to well up from some buried, forgotten place, shaken loose by the rearrangement of my cells. All I knew was that I needed to paint and I wanted anyone who came to the loft to paint with me. The last arts and crafts incident had occurred many years before. It was during the Reagan years when he declared that a nuclear war was winnable. I was with a group of women activists in the desert at the Nevada nuclear test site. We were part of a major national action to occupy and shut down the site. We were a small guerilla group called Anonymous Women for Peace. Wedid spontaneous actions, like putting warning stickers on war toys and plastic soldiers at Christmas, dressing up as the Statue of Liberty and standing for days on the steps of the New York City Public Library handing out fliers to prevent nuclear weapons from coming into the harbors of Staten Island. We got arrested a lot, poured blood on things, tied ourselves to fences, and made peace camps in city parks. We were all Manhattan/Brooklyn girls with barely an idea of how to assemble a tent. Our first night in the Nevada desert we tried but eventually gave up and collapsed in our sleeping bags on the ground, which was most definitely covered in radioactive dust, not to mention crawling things like snakes and scorpions. The next morning the plan was for hundreds of us to invade the test site, go in as far as possible, and sit down. This was highly illegal and dangerous. Someone had brought a whole batch of white paper plates, which inspired the idea of making masks, a project that became more complex when one woman suggested the masks be two-sided: lovingkindweareinchargefightingfortheEarth face as we were walking into the site, warriorangryyouwillnotstopusmotherfucker face when the police came toward us. We would flip the mask at the moment of confrontation. I believe there were crayons and markers and maybe even some paint involved. Clearly my sisters excelled in arts and crafts. I was embarrassed and paralyzed.In the end, a few of the more talented ones intervened and made my mask. I felt like I had cheated. We entered the site, all locking arms, our lovingwesavetheearth faces charging forward. There were suddenly hundreds of huge uniformed Nevada state police, with mirrored sunglasses, wooden batons, hundreds of white plastic cuffs dangling from their massive belts. We never had time to flip to warriormotherfuckers. Immediately we were thrown to the ground, painfully handcuffed, roughly dragged into huge outdoor cages. They kept us there the whole day in the hot sun, then put us in a bus and drove us for hours in the dark, still handcuffed, to the middle of nowhere and dumped us there.
So here I was, years later, at my dining-room table with paints and brushes.
People who came to visit were awkward. What was there to say? Right away I would ask them to draw or paint something with me. It worked like a charm. The idea of making art often traumatized them more than my cancer did. It turns out I wasn’t the only one humiliated in third grade by arts and crafts. They would start off grudgingly and terrified, but then they would get into it. I began to love this new way of communicating. My friends would sit by me and we would create together. It was quiet and communal. We were children. People began to paint images of my healing.Well, I asked them to. I hung these pictures on
SCAN
ARTS AND CRAFTS
I don’t know what made me want watercolors and pastels as I waited to be strong enough for the chemo. Arts and crafts, like music, had always been a particular nightmare for me. I was completely devoid of talent. My sudden hunger for art came as a great surprise. My desire to paint, like my ravenous need for a hamburger, seemed to well up from some buried, forgotten place, shaken loose by the rearrangement of my cells. All I knew was that I needed to paint and I wanted anyone who came to the loft to paint with me. The last arts and crafts incident had occurred many years before. It was during the Reagan years when he declared that a nuclear war was winnable. I was with a group of women activists in the desert at the Nevada nuclear test site. We were part of a major national action to occupy and shut down the site. We were a small guerilla group called Anonymous Women for Peace. Wedid spontaneous actions, like putting warning stickers on war toys and plastic soldiers at Christmas, dressing up as the Statue of Liberty and standing for days on the steps of the New York City Public Library handing out fliers to prevent nuclear weapons from coming into the harbors of Staten Island. We got arrested a lot, poured blood on things, tied ourselves to fences, and made peace camps in city parks. We were all Manhattan/Brooklyn girls with barely an idea of how to assemble a tent. Our first night in the Nevada desert we tried but eventually gave up and collapsed in our sleeping bags on the ground, which was most definitely covered in radioactive dust, not to mention crawling things like snakes and scorpions. The next morning the plan was for hundreds of us to invade the test site, go in as far as possible, and sit down. This was highly illegal and dangerous. Someone had brought a whole batch of white paper plates, which inspired the idea of making masks, a project that became more complex when one woman suggested the masks be two-sided: lovingkindweareinchargefightingfortheEarth face as we were walking into the site, warriorangryyouwillnotstopusmotherfucker face when the police came toward us. We would flip the mask at the moment of confrontation. I believe there were crayons and markers and maybe even some paint involved. Clearly my sisters excelled in arts and crafts. I was embarrassed and paralyzed.In the end, a few of the more talented ones intervened and made my mask. I felt like I had cheated. We entered the site, all locking arms, our lovingwesavetheearth faces charging forward. There were suddenly hundreds of huge uniformed Nevada state police, with mirrored sunglasses, wooden batons, hundreds of white plastic cuffs dangling from their massive belts. We never had time to flip to warriormotherfuckers. Immediately we were thrown to the ground, painfully handcuffed, roughly dragged into huge outdoor cages. They kept us there the whole day in the hot sun, then put us in a bus and drove us for hours in the dark, still handcuffed, to the middle of nowhere and dumped us there.
So here I was, years later, at my dining-room table with paints and brushes.
People who came to visit were awkward. What was there to say? Right away I would ask them to draw or paint something with me. It worked like a charm. The idea of making art often traumatized them more than my cancer did. It turns out I wasn’t the only one humiliated in third grade by arts and crafts. They would start off grudgingly and terrified, but then they would get into it. I began to love this new way of communicating. My friends would sit by me and we would create together. It was quiet and communal. We were children. People began to paint images of my healing.Well, I asked them to. I hung these pictures on
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