Where Do Bodies End?

I recall once long ago reading a piece, of the scientific sort, in which the author pointed out that discovering where our bodies end (or start) is rather difficult—provided we have sufficiently accurate measuring instruments. Some of the air that surrounds us will soon be incorporated as flesh and blood as we breathe it in. Some of what we breathe in is dust. Does it become our body? Or should it be segregated, at least statistically, as Not Me?

When tonight I take out our garbage, and it sits on the curb awaiting pickup, it remains, manner of speaking, our property; indeed I may not put it out until after 6:30 or the city could give me a citation. But we’ve already let go of it. When I breathe out the spent breath, stripped of oxygen, it remains around me, for a while anyway, except in a strong wind outdoors.

We’re surrounded by two auras minimally—the more or less solid kind of smells (read chemicals) and dried skin and hair being shed; the other is heat radiating from us, and if the right instrument is used, the heat is quite high as it flows from ears and eyes and other openings.

Who can draw the precise border between skin and clothing when these two phenomena interact so closely? And then there are those empires of one-celled creatures that cohabit this structure, my body, with me. When some tribes of nations of that empire are absent, I cannot digest my food. Some bacteria, airborne away from my body, enter other people’s by contact or by indrawn breath. (This is getting gross, and I apologize, but it is so.) In places frequented by people, bodies, in a sense, certainly at their aural extensions, mingle. And we do shake hands and sometimes hug. Attend a crowded concert. Visit a state fair where the bodies of farm animals share the space. Perceived by means of exaggerated science fiction senses, we are walking (sipping extra large cups of sugared soda, yes even in New York City still), we are as it were swimming through an ocean of shed skin, hair, bacteria, chemicals, heat, aerated sweat moisture, and discarded breath.

All this is objectively true. Very expensive experiments would prove it so. And as immediately outside us—so also deep within. We feature what is known as a microbiome made up of many nations and tribes of archaea, bacteria, and fungi (see illustration of just the cohabitants of our skin from Wikipedia link). Which illustrates that, even in quite banal and ordinary circumstances, our take on reality is merely probabilistic. What we are, as bodies, is virtually unmappable except in continental detail. Yet when it comes to us, to the me writing this, and never mind the bodily tooling that is keying these immortal words, that me is not locatable at all, not even with electron microscopes.

Thoughts in a Dentist’s Chair

I almost never watch TV in the morning, but I had an 8 a.m. dental appointment today. Patients are treated to television entertainment while the sharp thing scrapes and the drill whirrs, and above you, seen through half-closed eyes, a bright light shines and an eye looks down into your open mouth through a larger-than-life lens.

Morning shows demonstrate modernity at its silliest—all cheer and jokes and serious attention to such things as hair and skin and looks. Today, what with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in the news, I heard the Queen’s popularity described as “unbelievable.” Why even a bladder infection in such high circles becomes global news. So the chatty chair of this program informed me, and then, unleashed as it were, she told all about the Queen’s bladder infection while images of the Queen succeeded one another. I saw this, of course, before the scrape-and-drill began.

In my context this morning, I couldn’t quite avoid thoughts of bodies, as bodies. Alerted to the subject I watched the TV images closely and noted that all of these showed bodies clothed, except for hands and faces. In dignified contexts, such as the monarchial, dignity matters—but then it matters generally. We carefully cover up our animality and let the face—indeed if possibly the eyes alone—communicate what we are.

Meanwhile a large X-ray image of my right canine was on another screen to my side. Canine indeed. There is not only a monkey but bits of a dog in me too. When drilled on, even small things grow enormously in size, and this small object morphed into a tall stone column supporting a sort of temple; the issue was structural. Decay had attacked this column, just beneath its crown (whether Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian only Dr. Quinn knows). I closed my eyes and imagined a scaffolding on top of which men were hammering away at the decay—to be filled with modern miracle material that hardens almost instantly when stimulated by a wire that dings when it is done.

Our dimension ought to be known as the Order of Humility. Here we are, encased in these material but living structures. Even the hard stone in us has roots. Exalted, honored figures like Elizabeth Regina have bladders capable of infection. And the news are instantly wafted across the globe by wired, wireless communications bouncing off satellites.

Thinking such thoughts, amazingly, it was suddenly all over. I stood tall, made sure my sweater was properly buttoned, and gradually recovering my dignity I went out to pay the bill.

My Buddy, the Other, is Getting Tiresome

With age comes a clear experience of the body as machine—the other, not bloody hell me. A head-cold plagues me, its sequence predictable. Tight, swollen sinuses, runny nose; next comes the sore throat; the coughing will sink gradually down into the lungs. I work my way through this with the same sense of grumbling irritation that would arise if they had torn up our street for repaving and I’d have to squeeze past huge machines to do my daily rounds. The “other” is very noticeable at such times. When I’m normal, though, I also experience its equivalent. I’ll note, for instance, that I’ve left some book upstairs. Then I grumble about bodies—because to get the book, I have to drag this whole big lump up with me two flights of g.d. stairs.

My Body, My Butler

We were sitting around talking. The subject was a news account I’d heard on BBC radio courtesy of our Public Radio very late at night, driving home. In that account a BBC reporter had said, talking about one of the Muslim countries, I no longer remember which: “They’re all on the Internet now, but, you see, it’s Facebook. Facebook for them is the Internet.” We were trying to make sense of this, Brigitte and I. The thought occurred that many of these countries have developed late. Large elements of the ordinary population are accustomed to getting their information from others with whom they interact daily—rather than from media. And a leap into the Information Age suddenly provides them with an electronic form of their natural source of information—gossip. And Facebook is the channel. Could that be the reason?

By steps and meanders, we were soon noting our very different kind of upbringing in war-torn Europe. For us the international, the global news always and ever trumped the local. “I was quite ashamed of myself,” Brigitte said. “Monique asked me the other day if I’d listened to the State-of-the-State speech, and I had to confess that I hadn’t. It’s too close to home in a way.” — “Yes,” I said, “and with newspapers too. All we’re interested in is the international coverage.” Then a memory intruded. “I bet,” I said, “I bet we’d feel the same way if we were Danes. You know, I remember my first trip to—what’s the capital of Denmark again?” — “Copenhagen.” — “Yes, right. I remember when I first went to Copenhagen. By that time I’d been a world traveler and kind of accustomed to sizing up a city quickly, you know, just a bus-ride from the airport. And I remember thinking, there, gosh, this is just a small city. But then I thought, can’t be! This is Copenhagen. But then my body, my butler, he said, ‘With all due respect, sir. It’s just a small city.’” I noticed that Brigitte was scribbling something on a sheet of paper. “What are you writing there?” I asked. She was laughing. She looked up. “My body, my butler,” she said. “You do say the oddest things. But that’s a good one.”

Yes. Food for thought. My body, my butler. He keeps the half-dreaming, half-fantastic young nobleman inside this old body firmly grounded in mundane reality…

Motivation … For Humility

At a conference ages and ages ago—the subject concerned remote reading of electric meters using computers, radios, and software—I asked the kind of question from the floor that speakers rarely get but usually enjoy answering. The speaker said: “You want motivation, do you? Well, I’ll give you motivation.”

In that brief preamble to his answer, the speaker indirectly informed me that among the hackers, to whose community I’d long actually belonged, the word “motivation” also meant “a rationale.”

This morning I woke up with a strong motivation for humility. The dreaming self is, too, capable of thought. And the thought on awakening was: “How can we who must pass liquids, solids, and vent gases at right regular intervals behave as if we were the lords of the universe?” Our behavior toward our bodies reveals the very paradox of life. How sacred we hold machines that need their batteries recharged at very frequent intervals, machines that we must aerate at the rate of 12 times every minute—or Katie bar the door. Cut me some slack, but I’m reading Montaigne’s Essays (Brigitte’s Christmas gift to me) and the French Stoic was not averse to delving into odd things such as this. He mentions his own extreme reluctance to reveal his private parts (“unless moved by passion,” as he puts it). We surround our eliminative functions in physical and mental shrouds. Even in public bathrooms, as we enter them, we put on mental gowns of privacy and sort of look right through all others present; we have no ears for sounds we hear next door; we do not see part of that shoe under the economically abbreviated partition which belongs to that odd sound. During a 1,400 mile round trip at 70-miles an hour—during which the smallest mechanical failure, if it happens to take place in the right place and at an unlucky time would render these machines of ours inert and bleeding masses of expiring protoplasm—such sights and sound do indeed occur. But all this we carry in a kind of special luggage labeled “officially invisible”—while our minds contemplate news of lithium monopolies from thousands of miles away or alternately listen to breathtaking arias recorded in the 1920s…

Let us be comprehensive by all means. Those breathtaking young things yearning for love in Jane Austen novels, ah, yes, they too. All of us. Prisoners of matter. But are we? Really? Ultimately? Aye, there is the rub.