Eat, Sleep, Play
When angry at each other, our hearts grow far. To cover that distance, we shout to be heard. The angrier, the farther, the louder we shout.
When we fall in love, we talk but softly. Our hearts are very close. Love each other even more, we need only whisper. Finally we need not even whisper, only look, and that is all. That is how close we are in love.
When angry, keep our hearts close. Do not distance each other, lest we not return.
- Excerpt from a Folk Tale
What do you feel toward your Body? Anger? Resentment?
Drained from fueling them with all their needs?
How do they feel? Your Body?
Tired? Thirsty? Hungry?
The more we suppress our Bodies under,
the more we wish we did the work to mend
the buoyant vessels.
Exploit the Self for ego’s needs,
we end up with tiredness as loan, debt, theft.
Sleep: as reparations. And they charge interest.
Have you seen what happens to the oppressed when they but taste of justice?
Running on delirium, a few hours of sleep wakes us into exhaustion.
Far from satiated, breaking the fast fans our hunger.
Bodies get uppity.
Needy Bodies,
want, consume,
grow, amass.
If you were in your Body’s position,
watching Mind colonize Self,
Mind colonized by Capital,
then calling you: needy, cranky, bad…
When your needs, your wisdom
give life, evolution, abun-dance
of creative energy from Earth Body,
the community of the biosphere…
You do not have a bad back
Your back has been trying to speak to you for five years
Begun as whisper. Shooed away until scream-crying to be
heard. Tended to. Nurtured.
They whisper; we ignore them
They shout; we crack
down
Suppress the Body enough, they grow a mass
Bubbles, pressuring upward from the sunken place
Screaming for expansion. Screaming to be free.
Down, Body! Silence!
How far sunken is your heart?
Are they screaming?
Listen.
Mend.
Our Bodies are alive
Treat them like corpses
and they become so, young.
Sunken, rise, revitalize, and, together, float each other
Market the lie that you can sell your Self
You’ve no one left. Demand refund
Or the system will break you
Body and All
Many traumatized children and adults simply cannot describe what they are feeling because they cannot identify what their physical sensations mean… They tend to register emotions as physical problems rather than as signals that something deserves their attention. Instead of feeling angry or sad, they experience muscle pain, bowel irregularities, or other symptoms for which no cause can be found.
- MD Bessel Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
