Embodied

Jan 24 2018

It hardly left a scar.

Not that this matters much

to an average man

who has lost a step

and whose looks, at best, were passable.

Amazing, how a cut near the eye bleeds,

one even far less deep than this.

And odd, but you hardly feel it

until you see the blood

startling in its redness.

Pooling in my palm, spilling to the floor.

Dripping thickly,

as if beginning to congeal

the instant it slows.

The horrified look

in the eyes of others

hustling hurriedly past.

But more amazing still

is the body

invisibly mending itself.

The wound

edges opposed, and tightly dressed

and left on its own to heal,

out of sight and mind.

The cascade

of complex molecules

which somehow know.

The ends

of severed vessels

that seek each other out.

Proliferating cells

in place, on task

in a closely choreographed dance,

assembling themselves

the way columns of scurrying ants

find order, somehow;

as mysterious

as the hive mind's emergence

from its simple singular parts.

And me, profoundly ignorant

of the intricate machine

in which I'm embodied.

The small incubus of consciousness

I call "myself",

so unaware

of my own doings

within this black box of flesh.

So who am I, exactly;

and how much less

than I imagined?

Looking in

at the inscrutable mind

and its vain conceit of will.

Peering out

at reality,

the surface of things

I take on faith as true.

Nevertheless, my body has once again

made itself whole.

Like a clever boat, battered by waves

that automatically rights itself.

Like a ceramic vessel

on a rapidly spinning wheel,

shaped and smoothed

by invisible hands

coated in cool slip.

Look close

and you'll barely make it out,

one more scar

in the succession of marks

a lifetime leaves.

Old faces

full of character, and strength.

Each glowing

with its own pride of scars,

the seasoned beauty

of lives well-lived.

After too many years to mention, you can read my life history in my body's accumulation of scars. Inanimate objects are broken, and done. The nicks and scratches never disappear. But living bodies heal. Invisibly. Invariably. Automatically. Unconsciously.

If we did not understand this as a natural phenomenon, we'd call it miraculous. And with the constantly increasing knowledge of cell biology and immunology and the immeasurably complex components of blood – its hormones and molecular messengers and self-regulating feedback systems – it does almost come to seem miraculous. One of the everyday miracles that surround us, and which we take for granted. I think, for example, of the human brain: the approximately 3 lbs of jelly-like material every single one of us carries around in our heads and blithely accepts as given, yet is the single most complicated thing that exists in the known universe. Who needs to look for biblical miracles or supernatural intervention, when we all carry around on our shoulders the most miraculous thing you could imagine?

The narrative here is exactly what happened: I immediately opposed the edges and applied a pressure dressing, and – except for dressing changes – left it like that: out of sight and mind, hidden under a bandage where I could ignore it, sure my body would heal itself; yet utterly detached from the process. A full thickness wound: yet a week later, it was virtually unseeable.

Which I think is analogous to how consciousness works: we think we know what's going on in our heads, we imagine we're in charge, we never question our sense of “self”. And yet so much of our brain is functioning outside of awareness; so much of our mind is subject to drives that have nothing to do with free will or agency. The workings of the body are as inscrutable as the workings of the mind. This blind healing is like our unconscious actions and thoughts. Except that the former we easily acknowledge; while with the latter, we find it hard to believe we aren't nearly as in charge as we think.

Perception is analogous, as well: it's truer to say that rather than believing what we see, we see what we believe. We see the surface of things, and are often content to go no deeper. We see what we expect to see, too often oblivious to the blindingly obvious.

These are the philosophical musings that occupy the centre of the poem. If I haven't lost the reader by then, she'll be relieved to find the ending brings it back to earth: the face, the scar, the life well-lived. Or if not well, then at least fully.