Hello, My name is Ammu

The re-creating, re-telling of the common myth.  That is what this class has taught me to look for in each book I read, story I hear, event I witness.

After being assigned the Magus, one of the main themes communicated was the characters' literal reenactment of these myths.  Not only were we given a novel to interpret on our own, to search for the stories within the story, but also a handful of scenes directly involving classical literature and Greek mythology.  Whether to aid in our search for the myth or merely to confuse us more, it was more than prevalent that the favorite activity of the majority of the characters was dressing up literally as Greek deities during an already-emphasized-as-important scene, often while referencing some important piece of literature.  It was exhausting to read.

And what does one (well, at least this sleepy girl with no weekend plans) do when they are exhausted from reading?  Read some more!  Having had so much assigned reading, it was the perfect surprise to receive a book from a friend in the mail last week.  A book called The God of Small Things. I decided to take the time to read solely for the purpose of enjoyment, and spent the weekend under the spell of this nostalgic tale.  I hope you all can read it at some point in your lives.  It is a beautifully written account of a terrifying time in a child's life- very hard to read at times, very strange, sad, but worth every sentence to reach the end.

One of the main characters is a young, troubled mother called Ammu.

Ammu is not a happy woman.  She is divorced, forced to move back into her mother's house, live with malicious relatives, and take care of her twins who both save her and kill her a little more with each loving look.  She realizes she is aging down a straight, foretold path in which she can see all the way to the end: her death.  During one scene, she inspects her almost thirty-year-old body in the bathroom mirror, touching her stretch marks from the birth of her children, feeling the width of her hips flare beneath her slender waist, tickling the small of her back with the ends of her hair.  She conducts the Toothbrush Test, inserting a toothbrush underneath a breast to see if it stays on its own, to see if gravity has already affected her body.  It falls to the floor.

The novel haunted me all weekend, as most stories do while we are in their midst.  However, last night my mind was in a thousand other places, happily buzzing with the days conversations and going-ons as I stood underneath the light stream of the shower. I let it quickly scald my body before stepping out, and without being conscious of my actions, scanned my body in the mirror.  I let Ammu's eyes, my eyes, look over each limb, each curve, and out of pure curiosity took the Toothbrush Test myself.  I laughed at Ammu in the mirror.

Whoa Katie, we don't need to hear about you sticking a toothbrush underneath your boob.  Sorry for getting personal, as that isn't the point of this blog.  The point is that as I stood there, I realized I was re-creating the myth, re-telling the story of the beautifully unhappy woman and her beautiful twins.  Just like Conchis's staged scene of Apollo and Artemis, his actors dressing up as the Gods, I stood there dressing up as Ammu.

 Dressing up with nothing on.