In the Body of the World

I love Eve Ensler. I love the Vagina Monologues because they make me feel empowered as a woman. In that same vein, I also love a book that she wrote more recently, In the Body of the World, which is about her work in the Congo, her experience with ovarian cancer and the connection between them. It is a moving account of experiences that serve as important reminders about what matters most in life. Here were some of my favorite quotes:

"Doctors never believe how simple it is to give patients dignity It takes a sentence. It takes a short walk around a table" (25). I think this is true for more than doctors alone!

"Maybe loves comes to some of us differently. Maybe we love our women friends as deeply or humanity as deeply" (167). A good reminder that society can't dictate how we feel love in our lives.

"... if the superpowers were able to send militia proxies to do their bidding and steal the Congo's minerals, if the international community was able to turn a blind eye for thirteen years and eight million people were dead and hundreds of thousands of women raped and tortured and babies were cooked in pots, then all of us, every single one of us, was complicit and were bankrupt and hopeless" (193) A good reminder that silence is support for the oppressors.

"The only salvation is kindness. The only way out is care." (214)

And the very end of the book states: "Build the circles. Listen to the voice inside. And when they come and say, 'This is the one way only some can profit, we need the oil, we need the drilling, the reactors, the tar sands, the fracking, the contain, the coal,' stay tight in your circle. Dance in the circles. Sing in the circles. Join arms in the circles. Surrender your comfort. We must be willing to go to the distance. We must be willing to leave the kingdom and surrender the treasures. We are the people of the second wind. We who have been undermined, reduced, and minimized, we know who we are. Let us be taken. Let us turn our pain to power, our victimhood to fire, our self-hatred to action, our self-obsession to service, to fire, to wind. Wind. Wind. Be transparent as wind, be as possible and relentless and dangerous, be what moves things forward without needing to leave a mark, be part of this collection of molecules that begins somewhere unknown and can't help be keep rising. Rising. Rising. Rising." (216)