Reflections on the Body
You hear the faint hints of a familiar tune in the back of your head. You try to push it away. What is this remembering, what is this song, I don’t have time for a song to be stuck in my head. I’m at work. I’m a worker. I’m busy. You can’t fight it any longer. The more you try to push the song from your head the more it fights back. Here it is.
“When will my reflection show, who I am inside.” Ah…you remember. It’s from Mulan. Disney — is she a princess? You can’t remember. For a moment you are thrust into the past as you danced on the beach in your new Mulan costume from yesterday’s trip to Disney Land, but then you are brought to the now. Your current self can’t help but to dramatize the song’s lyrics into more than a childhood memory.
You sit and you think. What does your reflection show about you? Is it a mirror of your surroundings, or is it splaying your innards everywhere you walk? Where do you walk? — America. You ask your country a question.
“When will your reflection show, who you are inside?” There it is. The question of the day, July, 2016, this country’s history.
You go to the internet. You skim through the news. What site is reliable these days? Where is the most up to date information? Why is this page not loading faster?
You see bodies. More dead black bodies. More people in the streets. More police. More anger. More sadness. More. More. More. You want to read more, but you can’t. You have to sit and think. Reflect.
As you sit reflecting you see America’s flag. Your flag. Her flag. His flag. “Born on June 14, 1777, in Philadelphia” These words. You heard them in a poem. A poem titled “I am the Flag.” You think back on this memory. It seems sad. Why is it sad?
The words of the poem echoed in your mind the day you heard them. They echo now. They seem empty. Empty promises to the people of this nation. You hear the flag promising liberty and equality for all, eternal principles: liberty, justice and humanity, protection, freedom again and again.
Why does this flag keep promising freedom when you’re reading the news and you see the disparaging of freedom of these bodies, people’s lifeless bodies no longer with any freedom but freedom from life. Freedom from living in a country that each day wakes up and says that its flag promises freedom and equality to all, but goes to sleep knowing this is a lie.
You remember the song that is stuck in your head. You remember your question. “When will your reflection show, who you are inside?” America wake up! You’re yelling. Not really. You’re at work, at a desk typing.
The inside of America is sick. It has been sick. Before the flag was born it fell sick. Sickness of hatred. Sickness of fear. Sickness of power. Powerful sickness.
What is this sickness? Nobody should be asking this question. Yet, just last week, you read a headline saying that Whites and Blacks in this country do not see race the same way. What! This is the sickness. This is the inside of America.
The negligence of people to see the sickness that started before the flag was born, but with which the flag has chosen to hide. Bury it. Forget it. Tell the people that it stands for freedom when there was never freedom for all to stand for in the first place.
You look back at the news. Black bodies. Hundreds of years of black bodies. Bodies making up the inside of our country but being told that only ¾ of their body is a body. What is a body?
A body is many things. It is the physical structure of a person. It is the main or central part of something. It is a large or substantial amount of something; a mass or collection of something. Black bodies are a substantial mass of America. A substantial collection of the insides of this country. Yet, day after day the reflection of this country says they are not there. Says they do not matter. Says that our country is ok.
We are not ok. We are sick. Where is the Black Body of our population when we look at our reflection in the waters of both shining seas? Seas that brought this Body to this land only to forget.
You ask again. “When will your reflection show, who you are inside?” Reflect America. The seams of your flag are ripping apart with each black body that falls to the ground and you ignore. Your long forgotten insides are bursting each stitch that was sewn with the words of freedom and equality ringing in the background.
You sit back. You read the news. You reflect on yourself. You reflect on your country. And you ask the bodies around you to do the same.