There’s nothing like a malfunctioning body to smash through the fallacy of the sovereignty of the brain-self. In December, I weighed in at a nice round 106. This is a good weight for a slight-framed shorty like me. For the better parts of January and February, I was suddenly and dramatically hard-pressed to keep food down, even applesauce. It’s the latest in a years-long steady erosion of the list of foods my body seems able to tolerate (no dairy, no fatty, no fried, no sulfites or nitrates, no citrus, no acidic, no tomatoes, no onion or garlic, or seed oils, or MSG, no avocado, no chocolate, no caffeine, no alcohol, no anything remotely palatable). Except that it didn’t seem food-related at all. My body was up to something.
By February, I had dropped to 96, by April, 94, and right now I’m sitting at a whopping 92. I’ve had every test available to modern science. They all came back normal. My doctors scratched their heads so hard, they gave up on Western medicine and the pharmaceutical cash cow that feeds it altogether and sent me to a naturopath. The herbal supplements and probiotics make me feel good enough to eat most of the time, but I’m still losing weight, despite vegan protein shakes and the lean meats I am able to keep down.
In modern Western culture, skinny = beautiful. I have to confess that, at 96 pounds, even though I was a solid 10 pounds underweight, I felt prettier. Puking my guts out, but attractive. This is problematic and endemic, and I’m ashamed that it was my first impulse. For all those who think we’ve achieved some kind of gender equality, ruminate on that. I’m thankful that those who care about me, including my husband and children, don’t see it that way, and they’re all anxious for me to put on some padding. At 92, even I’m avoiding the mirror because I’d prefer not to be a walking osteology lesson.
It’s a dramatic illustration of the relative autonomy of my ecological-self, all of these processes and entities whose activities all must coordinate in order for the organism they drive to continue. Conatus, my continuation, is theirs to command. One fails, and the system begins to crash. Or, rather, my “I” is all of these processes and this whole nonhuman biota. The speaking I that thinks it’s just a wet twisty noodle in my cranium has to wake up to its interdependence with the plebes that make its overthinking of everything, from which brand of toilet paper to buy, to how to untangle the syntax of this sentence, possible. Heidegger’s broken hammer thinking. We don’t think about the tool as an object in its own proper existence until it’s broken. If it no longer functions as a tool, is it still a hammer? We think about its parts and what made its job possible. We think about it. We separate out our impression of an essence of “hammerness” from its component parts and its function.
Is my body just the tool of my brain? We usually treat it this way. If I were a good person, I’d go track down this reference, but years ago I read an article that quipped that academics treat their bodies as the mere vehicle for getting their heads to meetings [insert laugh track here]. It’s funny because it’s true, but I don’t think most of us are far from this mindset (I did it just there – it’s in the language – mindset). Our self is body, is organs that feed each other in a reciprocal loop, is bacteria and fungi and archaea all doing jobs, living lives, trying to thrive, keeping each other in balance. All of them rely on what I put into my body. I feed them. Them is me. I am this community. I am plurality. We ultimately make decisions together. We get ourselves to meetings (when we’re not busy puking our guts out). There is no mind-body duality. We are body.
We’ll continue pounding the vegan protein shakes and inviting more probiotic guests to the party in my gut, but in the meantime, we hope this has been a little food for thought!
Life in the Multiverse 