The Magic Of The Lizard Self
On the bodily experience of crisis and the importance of cognitive dissonance.
T he older I get, the more in tune I feel with the animal of my body.
Hear me out — I’m not saying this cavalierly. I’m not talking about connecting to my primal instincts or tapping into a kind of annexed consciousness, though I wholly believe in those modalities, too.
What I’m talking about is the very bodily experience of crisis. The ways our brain, in all of its loving, wise, sometimes ill-equipped prudence, tends to go into overdrive when a big, de-stabilizing event (or, in this case, series of events) happens.
I’m talking about the moment, in The Year of Magical Thinking, when Joan Didion decides to not throw away her dead husband’s shoes because you know, he might need them. I’m talking about the trauma relationship between Francis McDormand and Woody Harrelson in Three Billboards — the moment when, mid-fight, Sheriff Bill Willoughby spits blood, and the two of them crumble in the knowledge that he is about to die. I’m talking about the moments when we learn of someone’s death, and write to them all the same.
It’s a kind of cognitive dissonance. Okay. It’s exactly cognitive dissonance. But because it’s tapped into some kind of unconscious knowing —…
