Ah, Hilary, such a joy to read

Mr. Descartes, we are not separated beings; our bodies are not just meat suitcases for carrying our souls around. A human being is an infused soul, you are your body, your body is you.


snip


I relate a funny little story with regard to that thing of dressing up and automatically assuming a role. When I was five, my mother and I travelled the old fashioned way to England, on a boat. We embarked in Seattle and the boat took us down the coast, through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic on the other side. It was quite memorable, though I was still only five. 

During that trip, we met a new friend, a dancer and mime who was headed over to Europe to do a tour of a one-man show. He took quite a shine to me and my mother and we had lot of fun. When the ship's children's entertainment department announced that there would be a fancy dress party for the chidren under ten, he insisted on dressing me up. Out of the odds and ends and make-up he had with him, he cobbled together quite a passable geisha costume for me, complete with wig, flowered kimono and white-face make up. I absolutely loved it, and my mother was delighted when I took first prize. 

What she always told me, though, was how surprised she and Adam were at how naturally and spontaneously I assumed the role of a polite, demure little miniature geisha. My mother had been interested in Japanese culture all my life and there were always books around with pictures of Japanese ladies in their traditional clothes and records of koto music. Japanese customs and culture were a frequent topic of our conversations. I think by that time, I had already been taken to see Bunraku because I remember being obsessed with the costumes and puppets. She had also studied Japanese and I think by that time was already teaching me a little to paint the characters. Later we went to see Japanese films (which I thought were painfully dull) at the university cinema and I remember being introduced to her instructors. I had always been fascinated and deeply attracted by the extreme, artful formality of it all. 

I wouldn't have thought, though, that this would have been enough to create this automatic role-producing effect, but Adam, who was by then already a well-seasoned artist and popular in Japan, said I was spot on. He particularly noticed how I took tiny little steps (3:00) in that peculiar way that Japanese ladies do when wearing the full gear.