Free In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler Page A

pain inside me.
    A group therapist once said that if you want to understand your relationship to your mother, look at your relationship to groups, but I say, “Look at your relationship to the Earth.” The Earth was terrifying to me and separate, radically apart, foreign. I wanted it so much, I stopped wanting it.
    This tree outside my room brought back other trees, trees I had seen without seeing, had loved without loving: the weeping willow at the bottom of my driveway in Scarsdale, madly shedding in the fall, making a shimmering bed of soft white lime leaves; the majestic pine trees in Croatia by the sea, filled with vociferous cicadas in late summer; the single tree in the middle of the Mara in Kenya, the lonely solitary tree that I first sat under with a beaded Masai mother who had stopped the practice of female genital mutilation on her daughter and kept playfully punching my arm with joy; the tree in Kabul, or I should say the stump of an ancient tree that had been cut down and burned by rebels, and the way the old, very wrinkled caretaker of the park cried when he talked about the hundred-year-old tree becoming firewood for some wild men for a few stupid nights.
    I had days of silence with my tree and my dear friend and Paris neighbor, MC, who came to stay with me in the hospital. She is Belgian and the quietest person Iknow. Her silence was new like the tree. At first it was disconcerting, then, over time, delicious. Her presence did not require me to do anything: not to explain or entertain or make sense. She did not ask for anything, and she did not invade the boundaries of my illness. There was a week of silence, of presence, of tree. There was another CAT scan. There was a decision not to touch the tube but trust that the infection would leave. The approach was more nuanced at Beth Israel, mainly because they seemed to have time. There were visits from the oncologist. There was an outrageous birthday party in my room, which felt like a Hare Krishna scene. Deirdre did a healing ritual. Several of my women friends and Toast showered me with rose petals and oils. There was chanting. There was Lu trying to go along with it, rolling her eyes, hating every minute. There was red quinoa made by Bassia that tasted like the bloody beet-filled Earth. There was a wonderful cake. There were many presents, most of them soft and colorful pajamas and nightgowns. It was a mystical party in the wondrous room and there was the tree. My tree. Not that I owned it. I had no desire for that. But it had come to be my friend, my point of connection and meditation, my new reason to live. I was not writing or producing or on the phone or making anything happen. (Okay, I did make calls to the Congo every day.) I was not contributingmuch more than my appreciation of tree, my love of green, my commitment to trunk and bark, my celebration of branch, my insane delight over the gentle white May blossoms that were beginning to flower everywhere.

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A BUZZ CUT
    In India, head shaving is practiced by many Hindus and seems to have more ritual significance than any other kind of hair removal.
    At first I think we will do a head-shaving ritual. I will invite all my friends and I will take the bodhisattva vow. I imagine bowing down, humble, bald, stripped, away. But in the planning, the whole thing feels a little over the top and not so humble. Then my friend Sonja, who is super hot with a shaved head, tells me about her Italian barber on Tenth Avenue who charges only twelve dollars, and it seems so straightforward. So I go with Toast, Paula, Sonja, and Sonja’s lover, Claire, to an old-fashioned New York City barbershop. A whole group of Italian men debate my hair. Two of them wonder why I would want to get rid of it, and one super fit sexy man with a tattoo and shaved head keeps saying, “Go for it.” I don’t say I just had cancer, it’s not a choice, or that I don’t wantto wake up in the middle of the night with Silkwood clumps in my