Sick in bed, time crawls. Normally I listen to the news once a day. Anchored in bed, more detached than usual from the rest of the world, ironically I have never been so familiar with current affairs. Hearing the news with every meal, I can map the progress of the items. Breakfast's headline has fallen to second place by lunch; at teatime it has slipped to a footnote; by the evening it has been jostled off the agenda.
My condition, sinusitis generating an agony disproportionate to the cause, a simple cold, invokes rituals honed over the years. Analgesics, steamy showers, inhalations, hot and cold compresses. None are efficacious, merely desperate distractions. I do not know what, if anything, is best to alleviate the pain. And this exemplifies the chasm which exists between me, the 'I' in charge of the flesh, and the flesh itself. The conflation of the person with the body it occupies, a shorthand to which we all subscribe daily, is revealed as false. I puzzle over how to relieve my body of its pain as fruitlessly as I would struggle to assist a cat or dog in distress, unable to communicate the source of its affliction. Being trapped inside this body is at once the most intimate and most detached relationship, like sharing a prison cell with a stranger. Why has this spot on my arm appeared and what does it signify? No manufactured device is supplied with so little information about how to use and maintain it, yet my body can't be replaced or returned to factory settings.
If I were, magically, able to occupy a different body, how would that feel? More importantly, would it change me? We assume the body reflects the personality: physically attractive people are deemed desirable companions, and when this is erroneous, we are indignant. 'She looked so sweet, but she turned out to be spiteful.' Yet despite that duality, or duplicity, being a threadbare staple of romantic fiction, we struggle to discard it, the evolutionary purpose it serves trumping even the most superficial examination.
Clothes are a different matter. It is the inner being which selects the outer garments, subject to the physical constraints imposed by the body; no amount of determination will thrust an XXL frame into M tee-shirt. But rather than a true reflection of the soul, clothes merely reflect the extent to which individual taste is compromised by convention and fashion and limited by cost. Only those who are thoroughly disinhibited, very wealthy and completely immune to trends - a rare combination - can project themselves without distortion through their garb.
As the grip of the infection loosens and I am no longer shackled to pain induced torpor, I will once more assert my dominance over my body. Where knowledge fails, brute force will serve: I'm taking it to the gym.
© David Thompson 2016
© David Thompson 2016
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