I have vivid memories of thumbing through layered cellophane textbook pages of illustrated bones, muscles, and nerves. As a child, I was enchanted by the human anatomy section of the encyclopedia. I never really closed that book.

The body chart in this photo brightens that memory of tiny fingers thumbing through delicately transparent pages.

My interest only grew and it became clear to everyone around me that I was going to express and move and create my way through life. My Grandma Wheeler gave me her extensive collection of anatomical drawing textbooks. Dancing became my way of taming a completely deficit attention span, and later painting, running.

Then Pilates.

Understanding the form, color and subtleties of movement - movement as an expression of the internal and collective - drives me to keep going. Fascination with the miniscule and the massive systems that sustain us infuses my will to dance and explore, to write and teach and paint. We create the beautiful things we leave behind: our kin, our art, our ideas, our love, from these bodies of ours.

Cheers to anatomy guides and the artists who create them.

--

Thank you, Julia, for the photo.