Kept in Bars of Bone
When I was younger, I felt of my body as a cage, and resented it frightfully.
My most prized attribute had always been my brain. I liked it's freedom, it's ability to cope. The brain, for the most part, never let me down. If I wanted to understand, I would. If I needed to create something new, something intense and absorbing, I could conjure it from the nether-realms of the corners, the four cardinal inner directions: Instinct, Intuition, Memory and Knowledge.
I could also laugh, and laugh, and laugh at any number of ridiculous assertions which were completely untranslatable to the outside world.
My body was never so pliable.
Nor so accommodating. Thin, effeminate and not given to physical outbursts (I walked -- a lot -- but not much else), my body was resistant to any demands that I put on it (and it was down to that: me and it). I did not like the things that you were supposed to do with it: sports; physical feats of acumen; even sex seemed like an awful lot of work after the first couple of tries (there was an awful lot to keep track of, and I wasn't very flexible). I resented it, my body. I kind of hated it. I started smoking as a teenager, partly to evidence the fact that I really, on some level, wanted to put a stop to it.
Years later, they have a different relationship, the two components. The body and the mind are much more in conjunction, not quite so distant. They talk. They have coffee. They go to the gym. They adventure about the city on bicycle. They argue about the wisdom of alcohol (the body's generally for it until the decrepit slowness sets in after sleeping, but the mind's constantly telling it: "just wait it out, it'll pass," though judiciously not informing it about the internal effects of the poison on, say, the liver.) I have also come to realize that there are distinct forms of thought, and especially understanding, that are rooted in the connection, the synergy that come from the two being at peace together: not actually two units, but one. I feel more whole. It's marvelous.
What sucks is when I get sick. Then I remember the bad ol' days. When I wanted a get of jail free card, to hover about the cosmos as pure consciousness and laugh infinities at the corporeal waste-cases.
Like I want to do right now.
That charming little head cold I had last week stepped it up a notch on Thursday. Congestion solidified in my right ear. I was waiting for the bloody thing to pop so I could hear again, but instead what I got was intense, throbbing PAIN at 3am Friday morning... which got progressively worse past dawn... at which point I took my pressurized, throbbing eardrum to the doctor, halfway across the city.
The doctor, when he put that little lighted doo-a-ma-hicky into my ear, recoiled.
Which is a great way to inspire ease in your patient, by the way.
"Yep. That's a hot ear," he said, and prescribed me $50 worth of antibiotics.
It's a good thing he did, because when I got home, my ear started seeping blood and puss. Marvelous. Just the way I wanted to spend the latter part of my birthday week.
What's incredible to me, though, is that such a little part of my head (albeit, close to my brain) can so thoroughly castrate my ability to get anything done. After taking Friday off, I have continued to work, as I can not afford not to, and really there's not enough people on staff to accommodate the absence unless it's absolutely necessary...
but fuck, I can hardly hear; and I like hearing. Plus, it's hard to concentrate through the vertigo, which seems better when I'm standing up, but at the computer screen, a little more dodgy.
The pain, at least, is gone. I've made it through that far.
"Remember when I said that I had a head cold, and didn't really feel like going out for my birthday, and you said 'but you have to go out for your birthday!', and I caved and got totally drunk?" I asked Cobra. "Don't let me do that again."
Of course, the birthday was fun. Low-key, which was nice. Looking back, high-key might have delivered me into a coma. I made Cobra and AI (the lesbian and the straight guy) take me to Woody's, the big gay pub in the middle of the ghetto; moslty for my own amusement, but partially in hopes of running into an old friend whom I know practically lives there. He didn't materialize, but we had entertained ourselves by critiquing the cheesy videos on playing on the televisions. Cobra gave me two books: the lonely planet guide to New Zealand, and Camile Paglia's Break, Blow, Burn, which rocked my world. Then we went back to her place, and I forced the two of them to listen to the Arcade Fire very loud until we passed out in the wee hours of the morning. Good times. Pre-ear infection.
Much better than those experienced last night, post-ear infection, when I attended the Lovefool's going away party at the Bar-Which-Presently-Most-Resembles-Gravity.... Hmm. Wait. I won't call it times, but rather the short time I spent having dinner and a bit of a chat through the static, which, when you can't differentiate beween foreground and background noise, is harder than it sounds.
Yes, the body hungers. Yes, the body breaks down; but god help me if the mind ever starts to go, because I don't think I'll be able to handle it.
I felt I was in a very dark fishbowl, everything separated by something that was not my natural element. The Lovefool is someone that I have, over the past year, been intermittently fond of, slept with, interested in, not interested in, frustrated by, and (on a couple of occasions) hurt by; not necessarily exclusively, and not necessarily in that order; but I am, always, charmed by him. At this point, I expect nothing from him, but I came out to bid farewell before his departure for Australia. Out of range of any real communication, volume and awareness off, I ended up just feeling put out, sad, and disconnected by the whole situation, although I did manage to squeeze in some time with my beloved Comrade, whom has helped make life so much more brilliant this past while. I wrote my goodbye in the Lovefool's Black Book:
"You're a Sketchy Mess,
but I will miss what little I see of you,
very, very much."
And I will.
My body is contributing to this sense of loneliness. Besides the isolation of illness, the absence of physicality is also a trial, hence the impending 'ho' phase -- "ho" contained by both "whole" and "hole". I got over that thing about doing with my body (frankly, it's not that much to keep track of, and my flexibility has improved), but it needs to work with me, the disassociated mind, so I can feel conjoined, and whole. I've gotten addicted to the solidity. I am at times happy to be hopelessly mired in the mundane.
In the meantime, I'm back to the basics of my youth: reading, and writing... and thinking holes straight through the ceiling, boring them into heaven.
My most prized attribute had always been my brain. I liked it's freedom, it's ability to cope. The brain, for the most part, never let me down. If I wanted to understand, I would. If I needed to create something new, something intense and absorbing, I could conjure it from the nether-realms of the corners, the four cardinal inner directions: Instinct, Intuition, Memory and Knowledge.
I could also laugh, and laugh, and laugh at any number of ridiculous assertions which were completely untranslatable to the outside world.
My body was never so pliable.
Nor so accommodating. Thin, effeminate and not given to physical outbursts (I walked -- a lot -- but not much else), my body was resistant to any demands that I put on it (and it was down to that: me and it). I did not like the things that you were supposed to do with it: sports; physical feats of acumen; even sex seemed like an awful lot of work after the first couple of tries (there was an awful lot to keep track of, and I wasn't very flexible). I resented it, my body. I kind of hated it. I started smoking as a teenager, partly to evidence the fact that I really, on some level, wanted to put a stop to it.
Years later, they have a different relationship, the two components. The body and the mind are much more in conjunction, not quite so distant. They talk. They have coffee. They go to the gym. They adventure about the city on bicycle. They argue about the wisdom of alcohol (the body's generally for it until the decrepit slowness sets in after sleeping, but the mind's constantly telling it: "just wait it out, it'll pass," though judiciously not informing it about the internal effects of the poison on, say, the liver.) I have also come to realize that there are distinct forms of thought, and especially understanding, that are rooted in the connection, the synergy that come from the two being at peace together: not actually two units, but one. I feel more whole. It's marvelous.
What sucks is when I get sick. Then I remember the bad ol' days. When I wanted a get of jail free card, to hover about the cosmos as pure consciousness and laugh infinities at the corporeal waste-cases.
Like I want to do right now.
That charming little head cold I had last week stepped it up a notch on Thursday. Congestion solidified in my right ear. I was waiting for the bloody thing to pop so I could hear again, but instead what I got was intense, throbbing PAIN at 3am Friday morning... which got progressively worse past dawn... at which point I took my pressurized, throbbing eardrum to the doctor, halfway across the city.
The doctor, when he put that little lighted doo-a-ma-hicky into my ear, recoiled.
Which is a great way to inspire ease in your patient, by the way.
"Yep. That's a hot ear," he said, and prescribed me $50 worth of antibiotics.
It's a good thing he did, because when I got home, my ear started seeping blood and puss. Marvelous. Just the way I wanted to spend the latter part of my birthday week.
What's incredible to me, though, is that such a little part of my head (albeit, close to my brain) can so thoroughly castrate my ability to get anything done. After taking Friday off, I have continued to work, as I can not afford not to, and really there's not enough people on staff to accommodate the absence unless it's absolutely necessary...
but fuck, I can hardly hear; and I like hearing. Plus, it's hard to concentrate through the vertigo, which seems better when I'm standing up, but at the computer screen, a little more dodgy.
The pain, at least, is gone. I've made it through that far.
"Remember when I said that I had a head cold, and didn't really feel like going out for my birthday, and you said 'but you have to go out for your birthday!', and I caved and got totally drunk?" I asked Cobra. "Don't let me do that again."
Of course, the birthday was fun. Low-key, which was nice. Looking back, high-key might have delivered me into a coma. I made Cobra and AI (the lesbian and the straight guy) take me to Woody's, the big gay pub in the middle of the ghetto; moslty for my own amusement, but partially in hopes of running into an old friend whom I know practically lives there. He didn't materialize, but we had entertained ourselves by critiquing the cheesy videos on playing on the televisions. Cobra gave me two books: the lonely planet guide to New Zealand, and Camile Paglia's Break, Blow, Burn, which rocked my world. Then we went back to her place, and I forced the two of them to listen to the Arcade Fire very loud until we passed out in the wee hours of the morning. Good times. Pre-ear infection.
Much better than those experienced last night, post-ear infection, when I attended the Lovefool's going away party at the Bar-Which-Presently-Most-Resembles-Gravity.... Hmm. Wait. I won't call it times, but rather the short time I spent having dinner and a bit of a chat through the static, which, when you can't differentiate beween foreground and background noise, is harder than it sounds.
Yes, the body hungers. Yes, the body breaks down; but god help me if the mind ever starts to go, because I don't think I'll be able to handle it.
I felt I was in a very dark fishbowl, everything separated by something that was not my natural element. The Lovefool is someone that I have, over the past year, been intermittently fond of, slept with, interested in, not interested in, frustrated by, and (on a couple of occasions) hurt by; not necessarily exclusively, and not necessarily in that order; but I am, always, charmed by him. At this point, I expect nothing from him, but I came out to bid farewell before his departure for Australia. Out of range of any real communication, volume and awareness off, I ended up just feeling put out, sad, and disconnected by the whole situation, although I did manage to squeeze in some time with my beloved Comrade, whom has helped make life so much more brilliant this past while. I wrote my goodbye in the Lovefool's Black Book:
"You're a Sketchy Mess,
but I will miss what little I see of you,
very, very much."
And I will.
My body is contributing to this sense of loneliness. Besides the isolation of illness, the absence of physicality is also a trial, hence the impending 'ho' phase -- "ho" contained by both "whole" and "hole". I got over that thing about doing with my body (frankly, it's not that much to keep track of, and my flexibility has improved), but it needs to work with me, the disassociated mind, so I can feel conjoined, and whole. I've gotten addicted to the solidity. I am at times happy to be hopelessly mired in the mundane.
In the meantime, I'm back to the basics of my youth: reading, and writing... and thinking holes straight through the ceiling, boring them into heaven.
Comments
Brains are demanding organs: they make up only 2 percent of the body's mass, but devour 20 percent of its energy... The body is in constant danger of being depleted by a greedy brain, but cannot afford to let the brain go hungry as that would rapidly lead to death.
If only my greedy brain had learned to share a little, I might not have gotten my ass kicked quite so badly when I was eleven.