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[ofbirdsandwires]

the memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

- - from Rhapsody on a Windy

Comments

[ofbirdsandwires]

I have always found myself using the body (altogether or separated (obsessing and overworking ideas about bones etc. etc.)) in my writing, but then always feeling entirely detached from it - like it was just a convenient store of metaphor-parts. In my head it went "here is a body, there is your body", allowing my thoughts about people to lace them with their physical selves but never letting the same be true about myself. Does that even make sense?

It's only very very recently that I've felt connected to my body as myself in any way. It's just (publicly insignificant but personally revolutionary) things like the way I danced for three hours straight at my prom, the first time I'd honestly danced in public in all of my teen years. A lot of the writing that's sitting around waiting for a form (or for me to decide how much I can allow to be public, and what that uncertainty means to the purpose of the words) is about my body and choosing (or being gently forced) into inhabiting it and just accepting that as far and as much as I can.

It is terrifying and wonderful and big and brand new.

(I'm not sure if you've noticed, but responding to your comments makes me babble mercilessly. I really enjoy your comments (and your journal) but you make me so darn nervous (and I don't mean that in a bad way. I like people who make me nervous sometimes. Comfort gets boring.))

ah messy with html, too.

[overtures]

Yes, yes.
I've been thinking lately of athletes and models -- how their lives are their bodies. How the religion of a long-distance runner is to just consistantly jog, and they choose to put their minds in a place that is outside of their body, while at the same time being so aware of it. And models, how for photos and sculptures and works of art, they are so aware of how their body appears; they know how to make their body look kind or vulnerable or intimate or really anything they want it to be.

And yes, there's that inherant maturity in finding thiat marriage between self and body, it is terrifying. And even in the literal sense, when at some point you notice that they are your,/i> hands on that typewriter, your hands pushing the hair off your face, or touching someone else, or instinctually squinting at something unpleasant. It is growth, one that can interestingly be found in different stages in almost everyone; something that cannot (or should not) be expedited.

It's funny, I always have a bit of nervous apprehension in commenting on your entries, too. It's that I want you to know that I am reading and appreciating, but I sound like such a mess most of the time.
My friend Eric and I were online-friends before we became close offline, and sometimes when we are very jokingly cutting down one another's ego, he says "you know, you're not as intimidating as your livejournal icon suggests" and I stand with my hands on my hips and we laugh and laugh.