kristin

The following is a Paradoxical Undressing “outtake” about an Art Therapy class. Like the rest of Paradoxical Undressing, it is an excerpt from my diary. It takes place in 1986 when I was trying to finish my college degree before Throwing Muses’ record came out and my baby was born.

I wanna go back to the ocean. The buzzing fluorescents are making me feel sick and the other students don’t look particularly promising.

The first thing the teacher asks us to do is lie on the floor and relax. I’m not me anymore, though, I’m pregnant, so I don’t relax, I just pass out and then wake up as the other students are shuffling around, grabbing art supplies and moving desks into groups. Oh, crap, I think. I slept through the assignment.

I follow a woman with blond pony tails and glasses over to the art supply cabinet and copy everything she does, taking a gigantic piece of paper, some colored pencils, charcoal and a drawing pen from the cabinet, then scoot my desk over to her group. Peeking over some shoulders to see what “art” we’re supposed to do, I see that the other students are all drawing animals. Okay…I can draw an animal.

The paper is enormous and difficult to manage. I try spreading it out on the desk, but it spills over the side, so I put it down on the carpeted floor. Then the pen I’m using tears a hole in it. Goddamn it. I grab a small book off a nearby shelf, place it underneath the paper and, stretching my arms out past my protruding stomach, draw a tiny blowfish in the middle of the paper. [Read more…] about Art Therapy