Reality Check

NOTE: Unsuccessful at posting this at the time it was written. Finally posted on 5/17/11.

Water for Elephants is now a movie staring Reese Witherspoon, and I caught the star talking about it on TV the other day. The film is set in a circus and Witherspoon is the beautiful woman who works with the elephant and the horses. She talked about how hard she trained with the animals and how, despite her fears, she actually did much of the handling and riding that was filmed. She spoke about Roman riding, where the circus performer has one foot on one beautiful galloping white horse and the other on another beautiful galloping white horse--very tricky when you think about it. And she did it, she actually did it. Very impressive.

And then, she added, the scene got left on the cutting room floor.

"I guess it wasn't very attractive," she explained.

I thought about that and conceded, yeah, of course, how beautiful can you look when you're trying to keep your balance on 2,000 pounds of fast rocking horseflesh running in tight circles? I could see it in my mind and it really wasn't very attractive.

The thought took me back to my youth.

I've always had a vivid imagination. I was a kid who used to think in the third person. Walking to the drug store as a 10 year old, my thoughts went something like: "She put one foot in front of another, avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, avoiding the opportunity to bring bad luck on her mother even though she was mad at her." This kind of thinking made me realize I would be a writer someday. I found it very reassuring.

My imagination was only enhanced by the hormones that arrived with my teen years. I was boy crazy to the max and much of my imagining dealt with romance. I imagined being married, waking each morning in a beautiful silk nightgown, my hair flowing over the pillow, my arms gracefully akimbo on top of crisply folded sheets and fluffy blankets. I never tossed and turned, my hair never flattened, my nightgown never crept up, my face was flawlessly made up, my breath sweet as freshly fallen rain. I was a vision.

Well, I got the married part, but unfortunately poor Katz wakes up day after day beside a blurry eyed, snarly haired, blotchy looking wife with breath that smells like unwashed socks.

No vision for him.

Hearing someone as adorable as Reese Witherspoon talk about being visually compromised was reassuring. And it gave me hope to know that somewhere a writer, perhaps not too unlike me, imagined something he felt would be captivatingly beautiful, only to see if fall flat. Yes, it's nice to know reality touches those very successful people in the world, that they too find it can be rude and unkind.

Even for the beautiful people, reality's edges are sharp; there are no shadows to hide in. But, truth be told, reality is the hand we are dealt and fighting it is an exercise in futility. Learning to embrace life warts and all isn't easy but if you can learn to do it, it will prove very freeing.

Still, there's part of me that wishes that my body hadn't shape-shifted over the years, or that I could finish my book in the not too distant future, or that Katz could leave his difficult job and retire today. Part of me will always wish that every day was a perfect hair day or that a beautiful circus performer could stand on the back of galloping horses and look like a goddess on air.