The Body in Turmoil

Jennifer S. Cheng

(Seneca Review, Fall 2005)

When two bodies of water meet, if one is colder and saltier than the other, there is a sinking effect so that one body falls through the murky depths of voiceless noise beneath the other.
When two bodies of land meet, they can be considered as one massive body of land.
A body of water, whether thrashing or still, separates two bodies of land.

The body of a car. The body of a whale. A body paragraph. There is a body in the car Ms. Hanley passed during her brisk morning jog. Our body is all we own. Busybody. Body odor. The Body Shop. Bodily functions. Bodily sins. This is my body. Body and mind. This body is not mine.

Sleep paralysis is a psychological, philosophical, and spiritual matter. The mind believes itself to be awake and fights to make this known to the body. As I watch G sleep, his body twitches and there is movement under his eyelids. When he finally sits up, he claims he has been trying to move his limbs, that he has been awake all this time. Sometimes, he says, he floats out of his body and can see it lying there. Most of the time he only sees the room, but cannot move. There is some sort of disconnect between himself and his body.
I once woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t lift my right arm. I struggled to scream for my mother, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out no matter how hard I tried to yell. I thought that perhaps I had lost my voice, but I couldn’t whisper either.
Some people feel a weight on their chest; this is the feeling of not having control over movement. The panic of this weight overwhelms them, and they see glowing red eyes in the air—a demon sitting on their chest, suffocating them. It is, at least, affirmation that their faith is so valuable, it offends the devil.

Body: a humming gathering of substance filled to the brim with either letters or ache or both.

We hurt ourselves to make our bodies feel what our souls feel, to make their experience one and the same. Someone should have told him that the soul is fickle, but what you do to your body is permanent. You commit your soul to a state of pain.
Sometimes the body is affected by the state of my soul without my awareness of either. There are unexplainable connections.

There is a man at the doorway, and he likes to host dinner parties.
There is a girl coming down the stairs who has learned to be invisible.
There is a pastor near the kitchen; the girl ducks.
She finds herself amidst a group of women, her mother’s friends.
One of the women turns to her. Hello, Jennifer.
Hello, Auntie.
There is a woman, and she has once said that her radio is a holy radio.
There is a girl, and she turns away too quickly--
She is under a gaze, and it belongs to the woman.
There is a woman who says to the man, You are too easy with your children.

Confession becomes a way of absolving the guilt, using the words as a metaphor as they are expelled out of the mouth, out of the body. The more you divulge, the cleaner you are.

Whenever I go to the doctor, she prods and pokes at me like a child explores an object with curiosity and ignorance. Her fingers are cold and firm, and they leave white marks that soon turn pink on the prickly texture of my skin. She asks what kind of symptoms I have been showing. I panic because I haven’t been paying attention; I accept everything my body does as normal, even pain, unless it is acute. I say to her, in overlapping words, something about a scratchy throat, or mucus, or headaches. She writes everything down on her clipboard, and the sound makes me pause. I open my mouth again because there must be more, but nothing comes out, and the doctor finishes her notes and moves on. Okay, let’s take a look at your throat now. Open wide! And in the car as I am driving home, I suddenly remember and want to make a u-turn to tell the doctor that wait, my prescription is wrong, I forgot, there is dizziness as well.

“For when we were controlled by the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
And God said to him, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body.”
And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?
You must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse.
My body is clothed with worms and scabs, my skin is broken and festering.
My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”
But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
For we know our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with.
My brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.
Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Some thus live in complete denial of their bodies, refusing to acknowledge any urge, welcoming but not feeling the pain that follows.
Others simply cover their bodies and sit with their hands hidden from sight.

“My body, which was broken for you.”

Rules to Govern the Body:

Marriage for them happens in a ceremony with a veil. Marriage for me either happened years ago in my body or will never happen because the ceremony won’t change the sickening feeling in my stomach.
My dad reminds me to take my vitamins every day to “build up your immune system” so that I won’t get sick.
In justifying the boycotting of Procter & Gamble for their endorsement of a “homosexual advertisement,” one man quoted the answer to WSC question #83: “Some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations are more heinous in the sight of God than others.”
In other words, some infinities are greater than others.

Once when I was younger, my brother punched me in the arm, and it left a purple-blackish mark. My flesh was under the pressure of his pointed fist, and the incident left a mark of resentment.

The average weight of a forty-year old body is about 160 pounds. In 2001, there were roughly 159 million people in the United States who called themselves ‘Christians.’ That is potentially 25.4 billion pounds weighing you down, sitting on your chest.

“What is wrong with you?” I look into the bathroom mirror.
It only echoes in my mind’s ear.
I am wretched. I am wrong.
Yes, yes. You are.
I am crude and disgusting.
Not the little girl you were born to be.
I am not myself.
This is who you are.
I lie flat on the cold white tiles, my arms spread out.

I once had a dream that I was being punished. A Hand passed over my face and it became disfigured, sunken. The things that I desired, a warm shadow, an intimate address, they were denied. I grew small and tried to move secretly, hidden from the wrathful fingers, but the room filled with a liquid so thick I could not breathe but give in and so I felt the rush of judgment ringing in my ears.
And this is what he said:

Your soul is hollow, my body is broken; your soul desires, my body is whole.

As he speaks to me about the love of God, I can see his chin lift and his chest swell. Soon his body will balloon up like a parachute over the ocean and float away from me into the distance, where he will see me waving goodbye.

My body is covered in scars (pink and red and a purple-gray), but so is yours. Look closer, because what is not earned is free free free.

My body is beginning to hurt. It aches as one who grows old, this old woman’s body grows brittle and thin. This body will be broken into many pieces, some which will scatter quite far. Sometimes the body begins to reflect what is underneath, even if no one is aware.