bodies
I'm having a hard time waking up. My roommate Zoya, volunteering to get me on my feet no matter how foul tempered I may be for the next few hours, pulls the duvet, tickles my feet and threatens me : "This is the third and last warning: next forty five minutes I'm doing qi gong!" (Note: I'm observing some serenity and movement involved. To me it's all yoga and scenes from Karate Kid.)
When I finally descend from the heavens to our shabby-chic-rustic kitchen with a sloped roof and no heating, I feel in my bones that I need to be hibernating instead. Grind beans, whistle the kettle, sniff, slurp, sniff my morning coffee. In slow motion I climb back the stairs and Zoya is already in our study/art room at the desk, next to the plastic leopard on the windowsill.
I tell her I still have a soft spot for the beauty of a man who, like mercury, fills the cracks of my psyche and leaves without a trace. I mutter classic proportions, universal beauty...takes nanoseconds to annoy Zoya, who nevertheless patiently reminds me that beauty is socially constructed. Ah! I love me some squabble. I give the most crooked examples involving politically incorrect and overall nonsense (OK, fine! lepers, midgets, golden ratio, Ancient Greece... happy?) arguments. She won't have any of it and she cuts it right then and there, making it clear the discussion is over. Offended, I sulk my way to the kitchen, make tea, come back up, all the while thinking about the body of mine. I have disguised its erratic limbs and alien transformations as a teenager under loose shirts, I have learned to fend off undesired attention to it, I have let lust or loss bulldoze it, I have lived with the scars of humiliation and aggression engraved on it. I have lately observed it age, a violence unbeknownst to those who haven't aged yet. For years, I have secretly feared its ability to engender life. Now when it becomes questionable that it still could, I am too much of a coward to feel it fill with a mystery organism.
As I place the cups on the table Zoya says she is sorry and that this subject touches a chord with her. I am already ashamed of my misplaced claims. Bodies bear inscriptions. Bodies are time capsules with inbuilt annihilation license. Bodies bleed to death glued to asphalt. Bodies bend over with pain or joy. Bodies are exquisite corpses. Part of me still knows that I succumb to the image of the body beautiful in the stereotypical sense, beauty that I don't excavate or unveil through love, beauty that is ephemeral, unruly and oppressive, for it is the ruler, the slave and the kingdom all at once.
When I finally descend from the heavens to our shabby-chic-rustic kitchen with a sloped roof and no heating, I feel in my bones that I need to be hibernating instead. Grind beans, whistle the kettle, sniff, slurp, sniff my morning coffee. In slow motion I climb back the stairs and Zoya is already in our study/art room at the desk, next to the plastic leopard on the windowsill.
I tell her I still have a soft spot for the beauty of a man who, like mercury, fills the cracks of my psyche and leaves without a trace. I mutter classic proportions, universal beauty...takes nanoseconds to annoy Zoya, who nevertheless patiently reminds me that beauty is socially constructed. Ah! I love me some squabble. I give the most crooked examples involving politically incorrect and overall nonsense (OK, fine! lepers, midgets, golden ratio, Ancient Greece... happy?) arguments. She won't have any of it and she cuts it right then and there, making it clear the discussion is over. Offended, I sulk my way to the kitchen, make tea, come back up, all the while thinking about the body of mine. I have disguised its erratic limbs and alien transformations as a teenager under loose shirts, I have learned to fend off undesired attention to it, I have let lust or loss bulldoze it, I have lived with the scars of humiliation and aggression engraved on it. I have lately observed it age, a violence unbeknownst to those who haven't aged yet. For years, I have secretly feared its ability to engender life. Now when it becomes questionable that it still could, I am too much of a coward to feel it fill with a mystery organism.
As I place the cups on the table Zoya says she is sorry and that this subject touches a chord with her. I am already ashamed of my misplaced claims. Bodies bear inscriptions. Bodies are time capsules with inbuilt annihilation license. Bodies bleed to death glued to asphalt. Bodies bend over with pain or joy. Bodies are exquisite corpses. Part of me still knows that I succumb to the image of the body beautiful in the stereotypical sense, beauty that I don't excavate or unveil through love, beauty that is ephemeral, unruly and oppressive, for it is the ruler, the slave and the kingdom all at once.
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