Pure Body

What's that? Did I hear you mumble "Lil, I need you to write a post on the philosophy of having a body and the hazy awareness we have of that fact" under your breath? Well, you're in luck today, my friend.

Most of the time I guess we are just shuffling around and gracefully banging our elbows on door frames and doing all that normal moving about and being alive stuff without suddenly thinking "huh, isn't it weird that I exist in this particular physical construction?!" (incidentally, I'm thinking of using that as my next YouTube video title). Sometimes, though, that happens. Sometimes you note that you are in a body and you're struck with the oddness of it and you wonder what it would be like to be a cat and you stare at a cat until the cat starts to feel uncomfortable and leaves and you're left to ponder the divide between the human and cat experience of living until you hear the cat scratching a piece of furniture and you have to say "NO MR CUDDLESWORTH WE DO NOT SCRATCH THAT!"

Anyway, I notice pretty frequently that I am like, a driver of this strange, bipedal spaceship that can't adequately open jars. Sometimes I realise it and it's the most beautiful thing, like discovering snowflakes for the first time. I feel like this is probably a part of why I'm interested in the idea of consolidating all my possessions into a collection I can carry all at once - because I like the idea of myself as this contained and neat object, Not that the body is really a neat object.

Imagine if you only owned your body. You were just nude in the woods. It's so weird to think of myself as a body, partially because I am always surrounded by additions to it. Things and clothes and environments. Environs. That's a fun word. I want to be some kind of pure representation of my physical self. Can I do that with a pink jumper and a Totoro toy? It's never going to be just me and my body alone, but I kinda have this feeling like I want to be true to my body. I don't even really know what that means though.