bodies without maps
1. nudity of abundance Sunday afternoon, AK and I went to a potluck for all the participants in Bodies Mapping Time , the photo project I’d posed for a few months back. J Michael Walker , the artist/photographer, had snagged a room at the Flintridge Foundation, a tree-flanked compound in Pasadena. The room was institutional, with desks arranged in a square donut and a projection screen. I plopped my couscous down among the lentils and zucchini and scones that other people had brought. J Michael had roasted tomatillos from his garden and made a hot, smoky, delicious salsa. As far as I could tell, he was a Latina woman trapped in a white man’s body. But moving through the world in a white man’s body shapes you. That’s the nature of the body, and the people who witness it. It wasn’t my nature to trust men who were too quick to idealize women as goddesses. But the shoot had been fun, cozy, intimate but simple. So I trusted J Michael’s sincerity. Flashback to the ba...