Sum of our parts (not).

Dead, quite dead, under the earth, boxed, buried, decomposed, yet they are wholly alive.

They have taken on new life, they accompany me, without fail.

We speak all the time.  They come with me to work, on holiday, and are present at special occasions.

Far from mortality being a finality, our relationship had been transformed.

We are bonded by story and soul.

I do a quick search of their presence here.

I (re)connect with family:

Suspend Disbelief.

Life Beyond the Meme.

Book-Keeping

Band of Hope

I (re)connect with teachers:

Settling old sores.

I (re)connect with friends:

Absent Hands

Joke Candles

Navigating By Stars

Our lives our intertextual.

"People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around..."

Terry Pratchett.

He was at least ninety years old.

He had been suffering this way since he was nine.

"My father always said that I was less handsome than my brother."

He was eaten up from the inside by a parental parasite.

Our bodies are fictional.

"Having a body is in itself the greatest threat to the mind....The body encloses the mind in a fortress; before long the mind is besieged on all sides, and in the end the mind has to give itself up."

Marcel Proust.

I looked at myself in the mirror and I said to myself - that can't be me, but it was.

It was a frightful recognition.

I was thinking that there were pages unwritten that I was reluctant to turn.

I don't want this story, I don't want this story.

In writing, I realise that indeed it is the story which is writing me and not the other way round.

I thought of my elders and they offered me a knowing look.

It wasn't much consolation.

I fell upon a passage from Toni Morrison's Beloved.

How can we ever imagine a body free from (his) stories?

"In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. and all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver - love it, love it and the beat and the beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. This is the prize."

"The me you know."

There was something ironic about the title of Maha's blog post.

I am continuously discovering me's that I didn't know.

Some of those me's...well meh...I would rather not have known.

I click on the link.

"People close to me in person seeing me as something different from how I view myself as a whole person. Because they don’t read me. And that’s a big part of who I am and what I think and how I feel and how I process my life. Do they really know me if they only know my behavior and not my thoughts?"

People read us all the time, not just our words.

How can I even venture to know someone without living, those readings?

I am reminded of reading an article of Dave Snowden

"Humans in effect are able to adopt multiple identities in parallel as well as in sequence. I can be father, brother, husband or son and my behaviour will alter according to the identity that I am assuming. I am increasingly convinced that in a human system it is the identities that are the agents not the individuals"

I suspect that the text is written from the perspective of a man who feels he is able to "assume identities."

We are constantly dressed, trussed up even, with the identities that others thrust upon us.

It strikes me that we are incapable of seeing ourselves as a "whole person".

How on earth can we expect that any other might view us as a "whole person"?

None of us are whole.

"By day each soul must walk within its shadow. Only night can make us whole again..."

Nicolas Gordon

I think of my parents.

At no time would I have been able to know them as "whole persons."

They were my parents.

They were at times wholly present for me.

Any attempt to consider them as "whole persons" is dependent on imagination.

Crisscrossing stories...

I think of the party for the  anniversary of my uncle's passing.

My story was one in a crowd of volumes which crisscrossed.

To each person present the person absent was wholly alive.

To the person absent, each person present must have represented a vital part of his life story.

It is a theme that I realise I visited in a blog post entitled "Story Bound"

I find myself quoting myself.

"Not noise bound, their stories were miscellaneously entangled. Their personal footnotes were hidden and unimportant."

It suddenly occurs to me that even here, in this MY blog I am lost.

I am incapable of keeping the stories in order, under control.

They have ganged up on me.

I can hear them skulking in a corner, complaining how once written they are left to their own devices.

I threaten them with erasure, then realise that will be no guarantee of closure.

They have escaped, gained their independence.

I return to Maha's blog post.

"The me you know"

"It makes me think about how my embodied self could never live up to my (albeit still authentic) digital self."

I find comments that I wrote on Facebook:

"Fortunately your readers can live up and beyond what any embodied self could ever do. Cos we are distributed - always."

"Reckon we need to think about movements more than about bodies."

There was a question from Bonnie Stachowiak:

 "I'm curious about this and wonder if you could share more of what you mean (re: movements).."

Dem bodies

We are not the sum of our parts.

Once born we are never whole.

We are forever seeking our other halves, our lost youths, our salvation.

Once dead we are never soley bones.

While written we are never soley words.

Our bodies, our lives, our identities, our stories escape us.

They become the (be)longings of others who pick them up in bits, to be reused or abused.

Dem bones

Ezekiel connected dem dry bones
Ezekiel connected dem dry bones
Ezekiel connected dem dry bones
Now I hear the word of the Lord.

Well, your toe bone connected ot your foot bone
Your foot bone connected to your heel bone
Your heel bone connected to your ankle bone
Your ankle bone connected to your leg bone
Your leg bone connected to your knee bone
Your knee bone connected to your thigh bone
Your thigh bone connected to your hip bone
Your back bone connected to your shoulder bone
Your shoulder bone connected to your neck bone
Your neck bone connected to your head bone
I hear the word of the Lord!

A dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around
A dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around
A dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around
I hear the word of the Lord!

Disconnect dem bones, dem dry bones
Disconnect dem bones, dem dry bones
Disconnect dem bones, dem dry bones
An' I hear the word of the Lord!

Well, your head bone connected from your neck bone
Your neck bone connected from your shoulder bone
Your back bone connected from your back bone
Your hip bone connected from your thigh bone
Your thigh bone connected from your knee bone
Your knee bone connected from your ankle bone
Your ankle bone connected from your heel bone
Your heel bone connected from your foot bone
Your foot bone connected from your toe bone
An' I hear the word of the Lord! Oh well

A dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones
A dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones
A dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones
An' I hear the word of the Lord! Mmmh

A dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones
A dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones
A dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones
An' I hear the word of the Lord! Mmmh


Footnote


A final movement catches my attention.

I note it here for further reflection.

"What makes us drawn to music is that our whole being is music: our mind and body, the nature in which we live, the nature which has made us, all that is beneath and around us, it is all music."

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Image credits.

Plate found on page 7 of Frankenstein Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley caption:

"FRANKENSTEIN AT WORK IN HIS LABORATORY."

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frankenstein,_pg_7.jpg