Prompts for Begrudging Embodiment
9 questions on the indignity & delight of being in a body
Last week I was in Manhattan, killing time and sitting in a Blue Bottle Coffee on the ground floor of an office building in Midtown.
I was on day 3 of pretending I wasn't sick: gurgling chest cough, limbs that felt leaded, my brain in the clouds.
Back at Blue Bottle, a man and a woman were seated on a bench. Maybe colleagues. Maybe killing time, too. She wore a pencil skirt. I listened to their conversation about tech, about robots, automation, “AI agents.” All are terms I’ve started to mentally mute like white noise dialed to the Impending Doom channel.
The thing about AI, he is saying, is that they just never get tired! She nods knowingly; I yawn (see above re: lethargy) which triggers a mini coughing fit.
When it’s time to leave, a man walking ahead of me gets himself fully stuck in the revolving door, and a fireman has to come dislodge the panels to free him. “The body is not a thing, it is a situation,” wrote Simone de Beauvoir.
I’ve been thinking about how perhaps the opposite of being alive isn’t being dead. Maybe the opposite is actually living in automation: going through the motions until the motions are all there is. Repeating your routine until deviation feels threatening. Saying you want pleasure, but actually just doing everything possible to avoid the possibility of pain. Seeing your body as something that always needs to be corrected, or better controlled.
To be a human is to be flawed. It is to be embarrassing. It is to be wrong, and tired. It is to sometimes carry grief and fear with you like a dead leg. It is to be the exact opposite of artificial intelligence, by nature if not by design: built to wear down, to break, to end.
But there are certain things, noble and inexhaustible robot, that will simply never be yours:
Have you eaten burned toast? Slurped down the disgusting delight of a raw oyster?
Have you fought a fever — willing yourself into wellbeing — only to be brought to your knees by a single shiver?
Have you felt ecstasy that starts at your toes?
Have you ever had to say, you need to pull over the car so I can throw up?
Have you cracked the crystalized surface of a creme brûlée with a cold metal spoon?
Have you ever jumped into water that is, unquestionably, the perfect temperature?
While we were home for Christmas, my eight-year-old niece offhandedly referenced her body as: “my cage.”
The body keeps the score, and thank god it does. We need somebody keeping tabs.
This month’s prompts are about being here, in a body: the one you didn’t order, can’t fully control, and can’t give back. The cage that makes you undeniably, sometimes inconveniently, human.
1. RUNNING ON FUMES
When you’re totally depleted, what reliably goes first? Maybe the sleep, the fridge, the exercise, the patience?
Name your physical tells: your clenched jaw, or stiff neck, or mounting isolation, popcorn for dinner?
2. SELF SURVIVAL KIT
When you’re in the situation above, what’s your actual system for saving yourself?
Examples: the emergency walk around the block, the little rubber ball you bought off Amazon to release pressure from your shoulder, the very very long and hot shower, the friend you call who always answers.
3. BEAUTY MARK
Take an inventory of your scars, marks, physical anomalies, permanent alterations. Which one is the most interesting?
4. YOU LOOK TIRED
