Ear­li­er this week, Min­na Zall­man Proc­tor, tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from Vir­ginia Woolf’s short sto­ries, wrote about the blog post as lit­er­ary form and imag­ined the inte­ri­or lives of two strangers in a cof­fee shop. Today, in her last post, she rumi­nates on bod­ies, and the strug­gle to align our out­er selves with our inner selves. She has been blog­ging here all week as part of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series. 

For beyond the dif­fi­cul­ty of com­mu­ni­cat­ing one­self, there is the supreme dif­fi­cul­ty of being one­self. This soul or life with­in us, by no means agrees with the life out­side of us.
—Vir­ginia Woolf, ​“Mon­taigne”

I love when we watch TV shows I’ve already seen because I can fall asleep with impuni­ty, awk­ward­ly arranged on our crum­my couch. It’s bet­ter than shift­ing mis­er­ably for nine­ty min­utes try­ing to find an ade­quate arrange­ment of throw pil­lows to relieve the hot throb­bing at the base of my skull. So much eas­i­er to just pass out. It’s after eleven anyway.

I was bril­liant and ener­getic last night. Between Foyle’s War and bed, I thought to take three ibupro­fen and also to ice my neck. I slept bet­ter than I have in weeks and didn’t need to move cau­tious­ly in the morn­ing, lest my head roll off my body.

I dreamed that I was doing cart­wheels across a sun-drenched lawn, every part of my body arch­ing mus­cu­lar­ly against the vor­tex. Every time I invert­ed, div­ing down like a super­hero toward the grass, my left arm gave way, over and over again.

My friend Diane and I took the kids to a park in cen­tral New Jer­sey for a hike last week. It was a promis­ing morn­ing, the sun­light dap­pled and clean, the blue air fresh­ly washed from three days of rain. It was a bit of a dri­ve to get out of the city and we all gasped dra­mat­i­cal­ly as we turned off the high­way onto a coun­try lane dot­ted with pret­ty stone farm­hous­es and geese ponds. We hadn’t had a GPS sig­nal for miles by that point, and made our way by feel to the park entrance. 

Just as we turned in, the skies opened up. ​“It’s just a sum­mer storm,” we said mer­ri­ly to the chil­dren. ​“It’ll clear up.” ​“They said it wasn’t going to rain until four,” Diane reas­sured me. ​“Who knew it was going to rain at all?” I protest­ed, and then laughed because the drops kept com­ing down faster and hard­er. We pulled the car into a good spot, under a tree, near the trail maps, and then watched through the sheets of rain as drenched fam­i­lies emerged from the park, shirts wet to trans­paren­cy, hair plas­tered to fore­head, soft sneak­ers extrud­ing lit­tle pud­dles around each foot­fall. ​“I can­not believe our tim­ing,” I repeat­ed absurd­ly. ​“It’ll pass,” offered my daugh­ter fantastically. 

The chil­dren ate their sand­wich­es and then decid­ed that the best way to wait out the storm would be to change into their bathing suits (an elab­o­rate process that involved argu­ing about who goes first, shout­ing loud­ly, div­ing over the seat into the way back, kick­ing the car roof on the way, exact­ing solemn oaths of not look­ing, and then shout­ing some more because it was all tak­ing too long), and play in the rain. Nature’s sprin­kler! It was a grand idea. 

I sat in the driver’s seat, gnaw­ing with­out plea­sure on a gluten-free meal bar. It had been a long August. I had slept too much and too lit­tle, hadn’t worked as much as I need­ed to, and only had spo­rad­i­cal­ly sat­is­fy­ing solu­tions for qual­i­ty fam­i­ly time. I was fre­quent­ly irri­ta­ble, icing my neck, or dis­tant, engaged in end­less con­ver­sa­tion with my imag­i­nary friend, Mandy Patinkin. 

The night before I’d bare­ly slept, nor had I slept much the night before that. I was exhaust­ed but cheered by how beau­ti­ful it was even in the down­pour. Diane ate short­bread cook­ies and pressed cool water bot­tles to her fore­head, try­ing to ward off a migraine. We watched the chil­dren frol­ic in the park­ing lot. We were proud of their resilience and antics. I tried to cal­cu­late how much extra ener­gy I would need to just get out of the car and join them. 

“Why aren’t you going out?” I asked my son, who of the three chil­dren had res­olute­ly decid­ed to stay in the car and just watch. ​“They’re hav­ing so much fun,” said Diane. ​“I have my dig­ni­ty,” he answered unsurely.

I’ve been work­ing for the last five years with my god­moth­er on a book about her life in twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry music. Last spring, soon after we’d sent the com­plet­ed man­u­script off to the pub­lish­ers, she took a spill in her gar­den. She’s in her nineties now, out­lived all her sib­lings and all but one of the great musi­cians we gos­sip about in her mem­oir. Pierre Boulez and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies both man­aged to die with­in months of each oth­er and just as we wrote the final chap­ters. There were many instances over the course of our project when she would lash out at me for my leisure­ly pace. ​“Min­na,” she would email me, ​“I’m going to die before we fin­ish this and that will be on you.” 

“Min­na,” she emailed me, ​“I fell in the gar­den. It was scary.”

Lat­er she described to me how she’d been pick­ing bee­tles off the ros­es and just tripped. She described the event as if it hap­pened silent­ly and in slow motion, as it must have been on the soft car­pet of her lawn that sun­ny morn­ing. She is so small and round, I imag­ine that from inclin­ing over a rose petal to the ground must not have been a great dis­tance. She told me that she stayed there where she fell, flat on her back among her flow­ers, star­ing up at the blue sky. First, try­ing to fig­ure out if she’d died, then just to see the sky and feel her body against the ground. Hours passed. And then she got up again. Noth­ing bro­ken, just some bruises.

I love to dance — if that’s what you can call what I do. It feels more like thrash­ing into entropy, swing­ing my limbs fast and high, releas­ing myself from the hori­zon line. Bark­ing at the vol­ume and heavy beats. Leap­ing into shapes, stomp­ing, land­ing hard with my bare feet. I’m here, my feet insist to the ground. Feel me as I feel you. It’s not dig­ni­fied in the least. I danced this sum­mer at a uni­ver­si­ty event, out in the for­mal gar­den. There was a split sec­ond, a reck­less move­ment, and I tossed my head too fast, too sud­den­ly. I caught sight of the full moon out of the cor­ner of my eye, in an instant felt my neck crack, the sound split­ting up between my ears and the gleam­ing moon explod­ed into so many dizzy­ing flash­es of pain. Keep danc­ing, I told myself. If I didn’t stop, it would mean that noth­ing had happened.

I regret, though the moment is now long gone, not get­ting out of the car in the rain­storm. Regret not grab­bing my son by the hand and mak­ing him run with me in the rain. No one would have seen. What’s the cost of sheer sen­sa­tion? It was only a few min­utes, after all, before the wet clouds blew away and the gold­en light of a late sum­mer after­noon flood­ed our eyes.

Min­na Zall­man Proc­tor is a writer, crit­ic, and trans­la­tor who cur­rent­ly teach­es cre­ative writ­ing at Fair­leigh Dick­in­son Uni­ver­si­ty, where she is also edi­tor in chief of The Lit­er­ary Review. Her most recent book is Land­slide: True Sto­ries. She is also the author of Do You Hear What I Hear? An Unre­li­gious Writer Inves­ti­gates Reli­gious Call­ing and has trans­lat­ed eight books from Ital­ian, includ­ing Fleur Jaeggy’s These Pos­si­ble Lives. She lives in Brooklyn.