Tolstoy Rules

I can't upload a picture today.

As the date for me to leave my job approaches, I'm grateful I have books like Anna Karenina to read. There's so much life on just one page of that book that it could make the most cynical and despairing person want to get up and dance.

Last night's comedy writing class was less of a debacle than last week. I was still mute and idea-less, but I was more accepting of that state. We all had had to write 25 jokes each, and we read them out loud to the class. I knew it would help me feel more like part of things to share my jokes. I didn't enjoy reading them aloud, though. I don't like the sound of my voice and I always think other people feel the same way. But even though I spoke in the strangulated whine that has dogged me since childhood, people laughed at some of my jokes. I got a small taste of the joy comedians feel when a joke "hits" or whatever.

I've been reading Moshe Feldenkrais on cross-motivations. He invented a movement therapy based on the idea that we learn a certain way of responding to stress when we're very young, and our bodies store that information and continue to react in the same way. Eventually we become prisoners of compulsions and inhibitions all stemming from childhood. The way to undo them, he says, is to retrain the body which will then communicate to the mind. Rather than talk therapy which believes the mind can let go of patterns on its own.

I find Feldenkrais's ideas very interesting. He says many people are dogged by cross-motivations, and don't realize how this is ham-stringing them. I suppose the idea isn't that far from Freud's concept of the unconscious. But to Feldenkrais, it's a matter primarily of the nervous system. Retrain your body to let go of one habitual movement or tension and your whole being will let go of one compulsion or so.

Feldenkrais says if you are clear in your motivations, you can accomplish things easily. Voltaire wrote Candide in 11 days, he points out. That's inspiring. I wonder how long it took Tolstoy to write Anna Karenina. Different people, different jobs, as David Brent would say.