LUDIC LOG

I don't really like my body.

In this, I join ranks with most of the rest of humanity, who don't really seem to care for my body either; from random passersby to major league baseball scouts to people who avoid sitting next to me on buses, dislike of my physical aspect seems to be one of those storied characteristics that quite literally separate us from the animals. (Proof of this: my cats adore my body. It's huge, warm, and useful in getting them food.) But, looking at the whole situation from the inside out, as it were, I feel I come to my dislike a little more honestly than everyone else.

Note that I don't say that I'm "uncomfortable" with my body -- the preferred term of the therapeutic class -- nor do I feel that I have the wrong body, and that it needs merely to be modified into one in which I can feel at home. In fact, I'm quite comfortable with and in my body, with the comfort of 30+ years of familiarity; and I spend much of my free time trying to make it even more comfortable than that. And I don't have the wrong body; I have exactly the right one considering my genes, my activities and my ill-considered lifestyle choices. What I mean to say is, I just don't like it very much, and I think I'd be better off without it.

It's really quite a shame, because it could be a lot worse. It could be crippled, functionless, grotesque. It could be shattered, frail or prone to embarrassing leakage. It could even have come with one of those paint jobs that gets people into so much trouble. And there have been a few people, may Allah favor them all their days, who have, for reasons inexplicable to me, liked my body. It's not without its good points. It's big, it's strong, it takes cosmetic modification easily, and it gives me a cheap, reliable place to store my brain.

But in so many ways, it falls apart on me. All the things I really don't like doing have to do with the fact that I've got this stupid body. It's filled with sexual desire, but too unattractive to be useful in fulfilling those desires; it's strong enough to be keen on athletics, but too fat and slow to be any good at them; it's big and tough enough to be useful in a fight, but too graceless to stave off the sort of resentment that often makes those fights necessary. My mind is the one running the fuck in this duality, but my body thwarts it at every turn. My mind loves to write; my body hates sitting in one place typing for hours and hours. My mind loves to eat; my body hates the systemic strain overeating places it under. My mind hates cosmetics and socializing; my body screams out for sex. My mind wants to live forever; my body wants to crawl into bed and never get out again. And now, the body has developed what is no doubt the first in a long, long series of ailments that will simply have to be taken care of -- at great difficulty and expense -- and which will necessitate a number of sacrifices and considerations. And who has to take care of all this? The mind. It's got to take care of everything. And it's pissed off about it. The body is like a junked-out car that you need to get to work. It's just a huge vat that swallows up your money and time and attention, and you can't get rid of it, ever. We like to flatter ourselves that the mind is in charge, but the body cannot be denied. You can favor the mind most of your life, but eventually the body will have its say, and its say is its way or no way; whereas conversely, you can ignore your mind your whole life to no real detriment.

I've often said that if it were up to me, I'd just dump my brain, or the digital equivalent thereof, in the nearest convenient giant crushing robot and be done with the goddamn body once and for all. Those of my friends who aren't horrified by the concept tend to think I'm joking; but, like almost all my philosophical notions, I'm both joking and serious. Donna Haraway's "cyborg feminism" is fascinating to me not only because of the post-gender sexual framework it puts on social interaction, and not only because of the liberation ethics she puts behind notions of technology, but because she quite literally suggests that as we become more mechanical, as our bodies and minds become more closely linked with machines (or, more correctly, as machines become more like our bodies and minds), our lives will improve in profound and progressive ways. Like Haraway and her philosophical predecessor Gilles Deleuze, my differend is one of extremism and disruption, which I would love to see manifest in the body. One frustrating aspect of her writings is their purely theoretical nature; she's really got only the internet to fall back on until science catches up with philosophy. It's also a reason why I'm so enamored of cyberpunk fiction -- the notion of (precisely) self-effacing body mutilations, of rude, intrusive, obvious cybernetic implants, of men and women who proudly and defiantly shove the futuristic cyb onto the archaic org, is powerfully appealing to me, practically, viscerally and philosophically.

But, I live. I live and I compromise, as must we all until something better comes along. It's certain not to happen in my lifetime; maybe it will never happen. But it's comforting, not depressing, for me to contemplate a world in which the tyrrany of the body is threatened, in which we replace decaying bloody meat with reparable machine parts. The body will always be the boss of me, and its arguments cannot be appealed; but it's fun to imagine the mind running the joint one day.