Nervous System" (excerpt)
by Michael Dickman
When you look down
inside yourself
what is there?
You are a walking bag of surgical instruments
shining from the inside out
As some people who know me well know, I have had plenty of time in my life to contemplate the body and our relationship to it. It was never something I sought out, but it has become the primary relationship in my life. Isn't that strange? Not strange that it should become my primary relationship, but that it ever wasn't.
This is a weird plea in a blog that is mostly irreverent and trying not to frighten you away with too much information, too much intimacy. But today I am going to risk it.
This year, I think you should get to know yourself. And by saying that, I mean get to know your own physical being that has been nice enough to carry your brain for all these years.
We live at war with our bodies. After all, bodies are appalling in their inconsistency. They change, they grow larger and smaller at the same time, drooping and falling towards our feet as we grow older. The pizza we ate thoughtlessly in our late teens now keeps us awake all night. A friend called me recently and wondered why she was so hung over after just a few drinks - something that wouldn't have caused her any pain a few years ago. Ah, yes. Things, they change.
The body is demanding, too. It wants us to take time for it, to make changes in our schedule. It is always, always selfish. It wants more sleep, more exercise, more food and less food at the same time. You have kids? A job? A dog? Yeah, it doesn't care. It just wants you to pay more attention to it.
So this year I propose that we all enter into that difficult conversation with our physical selves. That we see what it wants. That we make sacrifices to it. That we do the hard thing, we do the inconvenient thing to give our bodies what they are asking for.
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