Thursday July 02, 2009
cartography of flesh
In winter, I lose my body. I am all-brain, all-jangled neurotic loops. I pace around the house doing banal daily tasks, wrapped in wool and wool and wool - trying to keep warm. Trying to never be naked. Trying to walk a new path through this hard season. Failing.
I am a bottle of olive oil when you put it in the fridge - my usual sleek green goes solid, cloudy. I won’t pour. I am stuck in the vessel.
I envy the children their easy physicality. Their wholehearted wholeness. Their leaps and wriggles and arms thrown around. When they wash they delight in their lithe little limbs. Unselfconscious. Hyperconscious. All at once. When they dance every part of them in motion.
The body, land beneath my neck, cartography of scars, bruises, scabs. Down in the south there, it bleeds, it bleeds. Terrain of wool and cotton and lycra stretched over hillocks. Tectonic feet. Active seismic activity - steam rising and the grinding of bone against cartilage, against the very central meat of me.