![]() “That’s the other thing with spiders-the Tarantella,” she said. “Extension cords!” She sat on a table, cross-legged, with a book about ritual dances. She jiggled the handle of a spooky-looking drawer: “What will happen if I open this?” She pulled, then gasped. “It’s like being in love.” She began developing a television series about at-home funerals, which she’s now trying to get made: “It’s supposed to be funny!” “The birthing and the deathing, the connection between people is just so deep,” she said. Just like with a baby!” The woman was a death doula, and Tomei became fascinated with the practice. She didn’t know when it was gonna come, so she couldn’t come to class on time. I had someone on the runway.’ Afterward, I asked, ‘What does that mean?’ She said, ‘Well, I help people to pass away.’ That’s how she referred to it. She explained that, about seven years ago, at a dance class in Los Angeles, “a woman came in and goes, ‘Sorry I’m late. You’re in that liminal space.” Child-bearing friends, however, are a limited resource, and, when Tomei ran out, she missed the intensity of the experience. “I really liked it! You’re so one hundred thousand per cent focussed. “I’d helped a few people birth their babies at home,” she said. ![]() (She’d heard good things about Morbid Anatomy’s death meditations.) She’d already taken a couple of Ebenstein’s matriarchal-studies courses, whose topics included Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and time. Tomei had met the library’s creator, Joanna Ebenstein, a few weeks earlier, at a dinner party. “Guess I should have expected that!” She browsed a shelf of glass containers and paused: “What are these feet, and why are they there?” “ ‘Femina Libido Sexualis.’ ” She flipped through, landing on a full-page diagram of the feminina organa genitalia. Wooden cabinets held jars of pickled slugs, octopuses, and rodents. Suddenly craving bulgogi.Ī staffer named Thomas Burgess led her into the museum. Fifty-seven years old, very much not decayed. She had her hair in braided pigtails and wore a quilted-cotton jumpsuit and sequinned boots. ![]() The movie star Marisa Tomei was about to pay a visit. The source: the Morbid Anatomy Library, a collection devoted to oblivion and the occult-books, art, creatures suspended in various states of decay. Downstairs: food stalls, the smell of Korean cooking. Marisa Tomei Illustration by João FazendaĪ chilly afternoon in Industry City, on the Brooklyn waterfront. ![]()
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