Bone Memory

On Sunday I took time out of this very busy period to attend a workshop called “Write from the Hip,” an experimental partnership between Sasha Lasdon of Integrated Eros and Miriam Hall of Herspiral Contemplative Arts. I’d been curious about the Herspiral writing classes and wanting to attend one for years, and this one, which integrated movement with contemplative writing and met at a yoga studio in my neighborhood, seemed too good to pass up.

The experience was gentle yet deep. We introduced ourselves. Sasha led a movement/ body awareness exercise, and Miriam followed it with a choice of two writing prompts. The instruction was to write continuously from the time she said the prompt until the bell chimed, even if we had nothing to say or felt resistance; we were supposed to just write whatever was coming to mind. Then we had the opportunity to share our writing in pairs, with NO preface, apology, or explanation for the writing, and NO response other than “thank you.” Lather, rinse, repeat – we did this sequence 3 times, and shared in the large group as well, where there was a “popcorn recall” exercise after each person read: We all repeated back words or phrases from the person’s writing that had struck us, making a word poem/improvisation that was incredibly beautiful and a wonderful feedback/reflection on each piece of writing.

Here is the third piece I wrote, after a movement exercise about the pelvic bones (sacrum, pubic bone, etc)., in response to the choice of prompts “sacred sacrum” or “bone memory.”

Bone Memory

You dropped me. Hard. On my tailbone. The pain – the physical pain – was, at the time, excruciating. But what lasted longer was the emotional pain – the pain of rejection, after having been loved, having been chosen by you. You, my five-year-old fantasy husband-to-be, the older boy, Michael Zehendra. You were eight, and we announced to our parents after playing together the first time we met while they conversed (I assume) over dinner: “We’ve decided we are going to marry each other!” They laughed, but did not try to dissuade us. You were, after all, Jewish, and our parents wanted so much for us to make up for the six million. And so, at Hebrew School (why were we all running madly around the big empty room in the basement that day? Was it raining outside? Was some key teacher absent??) I must have pursued you, assuming you’d meant your marriage proposal, or at least that we were friends, and we were, and you lifted me up (you were eight, I was five) and then (were you distracted?) suddenly dropped me, hard, on my tailbone. It hurt like things I had no name for then – hell, the devil, the dickens? The tears came but I suppressed them, hid my physical pain, because the humiliation was greater. I didn’t want the teachers or other kids to know you had dropped me, that I had loved you, that you had dropped me, that I had believed you, had believed in us, had been wrong. Was it wrong to trust? Was it wrong to hide my pain? Chiropractors and other new-age types have told me this intense jolt to my sacrum could have created all kinds of problems, some of which I do indeed have. But I don’t blame you. Not now (though I didn’t then either). You were an eight-year-old boy. And can I, then, forgive myself as well? Forgive my five-year-old innocence? Will my tailbone stop hurting if I do?

As I think about this story a couple of days later, I realize it touches on several things on my list of fears in my post “On writing, fear, and heavy lifting”: Fear of getting hurt, fear of being wrong, fear of getting hurt because I did something wrong (fear of my death or illness being my own fault); fear of ridicule; and, indirectly, fear of Nazis. I think this “contemplative writing” practice and community will be an awesome support for my memoir-writing, and/or continued blogging, if I can find time to prioritize it, and if I can get in (Miraim’s classes have waiting lists!!)