Living in a body

In my last I described how a stranger’s eyes met mine in the street. I imagined that his glance said “My soul soars, but I’m stuck in this body.” I don’t claim the power to discern a person’s thought from his silent face. More likely, the thought had lain dormant in me for a while, unexpressed. A thought about the human condition, in which we all find ourselves: a consciousness within a body; two different things somehow linked together. And so we may find that our face is our fortune, and become an all-conquering hero,   favoured by Nature and nurture, and so tempted to forget the constraints of flesh and blood which bind us all. We glory in the aura of success. At the other extreme, we may feel so diminished by the body we’ve been given, and the low self-esteem we’ve acquired, that we rage against its implacable limitation.

In that one stranger, I seemed to see vague and blurry aspirations unquenched and rankling; someone wanting to look imposing and “walk tall”. What struck me was that he seemed to have fight in him, an unquenched yearning that hadn’t been hijacked by stereotyped remedies, the materialist & spiritual placebos peddled to us. For it is hard to see with our own eyes, accept what our body tells us, reach into our place of truth that tells us who we really are. Confronted with the hard, we choose the easy; and let the world, through its mouthpiece the media, sharpen the blur for us, and spell out what it claims will satisfy our obscure hankerings.

The hard alternative is creativity. It can take any form, so long as it’s original; and that means being oneself. The results of our creativity become objects of desire, to others if possible, but first of all to ourselves. And when we see flaws and obstacles in what we have created, we endlessly strive to raise our game.

As for the media, which purport to tell us about the world, the reality they offer is predigested: not exactly nourishing. To know what the world is, I must rely upon immediate contact with reality. Immediate means “now” but also unmediated, which aptly implies “untainted by media”.

I have only to walk down the Desborough Road, where I met that stranger the other day, to see the world in its embodied human diversity. Here you may encounter dudes and dudettes, for whom this road is a catwalk, to display their creations—themselves. Here in support of their endeavours, are hairdressers, wig shops, tattooists, nail bars, liquor shops, fast food take-aways for every ethnic taste, and places where they just hang out and almost clog the sidewalk. Or you can go to the Coral betting shop and see if Dame Fortune will put money in your pockets.

Here you might also see “the poor, the halt, the maimed and the blind”. And I wonder to what extent physical and mental handicaps stand in the way of being a dude. They often present themselves just as proudly, and why not? I think of the Paralympics—ongoing as I write. For all that they seem to vie against one another, I imagine their greatest triumph as defying the limitations that birth or accident has left them with. They teach us all to raise our game.

From my own perspective (indifferent to sporting competitions), what’s most important is to taste the moment & savour its perfection. I see that it requires connection to our inner strength. Perhaps the two men I encountered, as described in my last, saw me glance at them with pity, and wanted to share how it is for them; that is to say, no different from anyone else. Or perhaps they were able to see their situation more clearly than most. What counts is not the possession of physical handicaps or advantages, but the inner strength to see blessings in what we are given. I don’t pretend to know where this inner strength comes from. For most of us who stand somewhere in the middle between handicapped & privileged, there’s always a hunger for something better. And so we fall victim to the various types of solace which the world offers, in return for our allegiance or our pennies. In my experience all these things, these placebos to allay the primal lack, take us away from body-consciousness in this present moment. We remain addicted to the future, and to hope. Instead, we might be able to reach for the real thing, where dire life-circumstances cease to be an obstacle. My prime example is Etty Hillesum (see links below).

And when it comes to physical handicap, I’m reminded of an encounter in 2004, at “My Father’s House” in Mahoe Drive, off the Spanish Town Road in Kingston, Jamaica. Here’s an excerpt from the piece I wrote years later: One girl lies helpless on pillows and seemingly unable to move. Of all the varied humanity here, her limbs are the most twisted. Her wrists are bent double, her arms and legs an indistinguishable tangle. [During the daily Mass] the “Hail Mary” lady bends over and whispers some secret to the girl. I hear the loud response: musical laughter, ending in naughty giggles. I shall call the girl “Laughing Water”. . . . I spent a while with the severely brain-damaged girls. They never grow to normal size. None of the girls in this room can even sit up. At night they  lie in cots, in the day they are placed together on day-beds. Though their limbs usually can move a bit, it may be involuntary and they cannot turn themselves over, so even this has to be done for them, to prevent bedsores. . . . The young lady [“Laughing Water”] is 21 and has a regal presence, despite being the size of a skeletal three-year-old, with daunting deformities. . . . She lay on her day-bed returning my gaze defiantly, putting me in my place with her stare. I have wondered about her many times since: what soul is there, what intelligence, what passion, what laughter. She was elegant with braided hair, lipstick and other makeup. Her portion in life was not victimhood, but grace and dignity.

The photos were taken during a recent walk through Stoke Mandeville Hospital where K used to work, and Sir Ludwig Guttmann worked as a spinal injury specialist when he started the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1948, which developed into the Paralympics.

Further reading: