i think my drunken poetry muse has abandoned me.
insert metaphor about longing.
insert metaphor about time.
this is the part where i talk about the night.
then a reference to embodiment.
maybe a simile about an iceberg will pull it all together?
disappearance.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

~e.e. cummings

you don't know me well enough to know that i have this thing about skeletons. and embodiment. the heart, with its ventricles, and atria, and valves. the human body as a metaphorical landscape.

but you do know me well enough to know that i am intoxicated by your loveliness. it's not something i am good at hiding. as if i even have the option of hiding it. with you i am all yes. yes yes yes.

i guess what i am trying to say is that i am glad they did not take a bone saw to your sternum.

i know the metaphors of my heart. jewels in the cardiac muscle. the beating of wings in my chest. birds waiting to fly towards the light.

i know nothing of what circles around your heart.

what would the doctors have found? by all accounts you have a lovely heart. copper light, perhaps. or fat green caterpillars. but i don't really know. i don't really know you.

and lately God has done nothing but press reset buttons - for me, for you, for everyone. definitely for "us." the possibility of "we" has been set aside, maybe for ever.

i guess what i am trying to say is that even though i may never learn the metaphors of your heart, i am glad they did not take a bone saw to your sternum.

Themes

The song for the week is Masterswarm by Andrew Bird. Particularly these lyrics -

"so they took me to the hospital
they put my body through a scan
what they saw there would impress them all
for inside me grows a man
who speaks with perfect diction
as he orders my eviction
as he acts with more conviction
than I"

You can hear the song here.

The question for the week - is "discovery" actually an act of creation?

Enjoy your week.

Mmm. Embodiment Theory.

"Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the world, and it's cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle round itself. Things are an annexe or prolongation of itself; they are incrusted into its flesh, theys are part of its full definition; the world is made of the same stuff as the body."

~Maurice Merleau-Ponty

This entry is self-referential. And also heavily influenced by Rumi, Douglas Hofstadter and office politics.

I could probably write pages and pages about language. Which might be lovely and meta and self-referential and ironic because, well, I mostly dislike language. During my brief foray into the land of internet dating, I actually spent some time trying to accurately describe myself for the "About Me" section. And one thing I wrote was that I like words but dislike language. Which is so very true. So many things about my relationship with language are paradoxical. I'm a good writer, but I mostly hate writing, except sometimes I have to get the words out and they have to be exactly right and there is something, I don't know, almost cathartic about doing so. Except cathartic isn't really the right word, because when I write, the sense of release isn't quite as intense as the word cathartic sounds. Or I don't experience enough joy at the release or something. Hmm, maybe I should look up cathartic in the thesaurus (or Visuwords) and try to find the exact, right word for what I experience when writing. Except thesauri are often dangerous for me, what with all those lovely, shiny words all nestled together like chickity chick chicks under their mamas feathery belly, just waiting to distract me... but I can probably handle it. Oh! Did you know that cathartic is used medically to refer to a purging of the bowels, so writing is sort-of like taking a shit? Hmm, what an interesting metaphor;I wonder how far I can take it? So the words are what remain of things I can't digest, or that I don't need to digest? And I excrete them through my finger-tips and/or pre-frontal cortex? Digestion itself is such a great metaphor. You can do all sorts-of things with it. Except it is not even really a metaphor, in some ways, because you actually have millions of neurons in your intestines, so that you can actually know things with your gut. For real. Not speaking metaphorically. You can literally know things with your gut. Hmm, I wonder how many neurons are outside of the brain? Because even if it is only like a tenth of the neurons in your brain, it still has major repercussions for how we conceptualize mind and body, so that your whole body, is in a sense, your brain, or your brain is just a part of your body... Wait, why do I have this thesaurus? Oh, right, I was writing something.

The above is why I have turned in every paper I have ever written in grad school late. Usually days late. Because language and I don't really get along. Despite the fact that I write well and love to read and want to kiss individual words, language actually traumatizes me a little. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to pare down my actual, extravagant experience of the world into something I can stuff into tiny, tiny squiggles which I then give to you so you can de-squiggle and un-pare them and arrive back at my original experience so it becomes part of your experience? How? How how how how how? Is what I have to say even worth the time and effort?

Wouldn't you rather go dancing?

The truth is, I am right-brained, dancing mystic living in a left-brained, disembodied, secular world. And I have to write email messages. E-mails! Which people then take seriously and get upset about that one clause I used and take that clause really fucking personally and want to talk to me and my supervisor about the repercussions of that clause (Yes, this entry brought to by office politics). I don't give a damn about that fucking e-mail. I would rather talk to you on the phone. Or in person. Or hand-craft a letter to you, embossed with artistic nudes and decorated with washers I found on the street. Or take you out to coffee and talk about what it is like to be alive. Or teach you to meditate. Or play with you. Or dance with you. But no. I've got to send you an e-mail message apologizing for my last email message.

I've forgotten what the initial point of this post was, so I shall stop. Words no work anymore.

It's too bad I cut back on drinking, because I sort-of love horrible, drunken, embodiment prose.

I've lost track of who I am writing this to. If I ever knew. But this is what I want.

You, standing close to me while I take off my flesh. I will carefully peel back the layers of my eyes - conjunctiva, cornea, sclera, iris, lens, retina, macula, vitreous, choroid. Each layer has a god(dess) who answers a prayer hidden in the lines of my fingertips. I will rest my lenses in the curve of your collarbone, while you blur the memory of past lovers with watercolors pooled in the corners of your lips.

You, standing close to me while I take off my flesh. Unseeing, I will move toward you and offer my ribcage to all your hidden prayers. They will break through bone, they will find where every blood cell dances. The prayers on your thumb and the litanies on your palm will brush against the jewels embedded in my heart. You will break them free and press them against my blind, seeking lips. Feed them to me one by one.

This is when I know who you are.

This is when I surrender.

Dancing makes you smarter!

Researchers from The Albert Einstein College of Medicine studied the link between mental acuity and physical and cognitive recreational activities in senior citizens 75 years and older. Turns out, the best protection against dementia was frequent dancing!

"They studied cognitive activities such as reading books, writing for pleasure, doing crossword puzzles, playing cards and playing musical instruments. And they studied physical activities like playing tennis or golf, swimming, bicycling, dancing, walking for exercise and doing housework.

One of the surprises of the study was that almost none of the physical activities appeared to offer any protection against dementia. There can be cardiovascular benefits of course, but the focus of this study was the mind. There was one important exception: the only physical activity to offer protection against dementia was frequent dancing.

People who played the hardest gained the most: For example, seniors who did crossword puzzles four days a week had a 47% lower risk of dementia than those who did the puzzles once a week.

Reading - 35% reduced risk of dementia
Bicycling and swimming - 0%
Playing golf - 0%
Dancing frequently - 76%.

That was the greatest risk reduction of any activity studied, cognitive or physical."

Musings by Richard Powers can be found here.
The original article is over here.