(i) “Some are transformed just once And live their whole lives after in that shape. Others have a facility For changing themselves as they please.” They talk about mothers turning into stones, hunters turning into stags but rarely speak of individuals changing within themselves; just souls inhabiting different bodies. So tell me, what is a myth? (ii) When I was a toddler, tucked into bed and refusing to give in to slumber, my mother would instruct me to pick two objects with which she’d create a story from scratch. The curtain and the clock. The pillow and the dresser. Lacking creativity, I would recycle my choices based on what was currently in view; there is only so much one can see from a supine position in a bedroom. Still, my mother would lie beside me and bring these objects to life, giving voice to the curtains who wished the clock would halt his noisy ticking, the dresser who existed in eternal envy of the pillow that had frequent interaction with me. The tales awakened rather than sedated me. Is that a myth — making the inanimate animate? (iii) A body can turn into another body without external transformation — I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it when I went from feeding myself one year to needing help the next — on the outside everything looked the same. I’ve seen it when I went from one day sitting unsupported to the next day needing a chest strap to keep me from falling forward, constantly — still my body looked the same. And I’ve seen it when my best friend went from helping me one minute to being awarded for it the next — this is the moment I was perhaps most transformed, when the difference between others and me, that veil they speak of, revealed itself for the first time — my body was exactly, exactly the same. I remain in that shape, even now. (iv) And when at elementary school we began to create drama, snickering at boys and whispering about crushes, it was not long before I could name for each of my friends at least one if not two boys who were in love with them. Joey brought Hannah a stingray stuffed animal on Valentine’s day (stingrays were Hannah’s favorite). Steven professed his undying love for Hayley right in front of my eyes. Then one day, while brushing my hair, my mother told me someone had a crush on me. My best friend Lauren had said so to her mom. But why hadn’t Lauren told me herself? At age seven I was more saddened by the idea that my mother felt the need to mythologize a figure who fancied me than by the thought of lacking a secret admirer altogether. Is that a myth — a claim that may never be verified? (v) Actaeon stumbles upon the naked Diana then finds himself not man but stag. Where can we place the blame? On the hunter who took aimless steps through the woods? On the goddess, defending herself in a world full of rape and terror? Is this what defines a myth — when a character is transformed as a punishment for something beyond their own control? If these things are so, perhaps my body is a transformation myth. The way it carries my soul, making the inanimate animate. The way it is at once changed and ever-changing, determined by the neurons that survive within it (a kind of punishment, it feels, on some days). The way I will never truly know why, oh why, it was made this way, or whether it even exists: such a thing as a disabled body. Opening quote from Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid
