Anthropology of the Body [1.1]

Jennifer S. Cheng
(The Normal School Online, June 17, 2015)

If temperature were a way to know the world, then
waning heat, half-heat, these would be names for the body in progress

and not merely words for the time of day. If texture were our
primary experience, we might have ways of calling ourselves

to others. I would know the angular purpose of an object, its porous
surface, and the force that perforates us together.

This is how we shape the world around us: we contour our skin against an edge

we are touching. We yield our bodies to the imprint of another, and it yields
something back. When we were children, we thought our bodies
were for exploring things of the earth: soil, water,

hard surfaces. When we were children, we thought out skin was a tool
for knowledge. We spent hours bathing in the tub, in the park sinking
our fingers into piles of leaves, buckets of sand. We did not know

the impermeability of certain surfaces, how certain boundaries
are set like stone.