It’s just the body of some man seen standing at a window, waiting. You might have seen him earlier -at a table having coffee with his friends, along the boulevard with a cell phone, in a classroom, in an office, beside a truck. Scenes like that are from his life, his functions as a man. But here, he’s just a body, something heavy, hot and physical; something that occupies the air.
Bodies are a constant subject in the press, on the tube, on the web. How to make them healthier, cleaner stronger, sexier. Bodies are the perfect target for the minds that advertise anything; after all, everybody has one. But is a body something we have, or something we are? We see ourselves as being bodies, or minds, or even souls- depending on our circumstances. But nothing we do is completely any of these.
Our most heavily physical activities- running, swimming, making love- these things need our minds or they can’t be done at all. And even ice-sharp works of mental concentration need our body’s heat and breath to be accomplished. You can get just as tired from reading as from running.
Minds and bodies also have insides and outsides- the outside is what we see in the mirror, what our friends and lovers see. Only doctors ever see the insides – lungs and liver- and then only if something goes wrong, and then only to fix it. Insides are not poetic- many thousands of poems have been written about woman’s eyes and hair and smiles, but never, I think, about their livers.
The mind has inside and outsides too- the outside is what we think and say, our “personality”; the inside is a dark recess, that sends out memories and dreams and images without our asking.
Body, mind and spirit- we are all three at once, and the Church tells believers that all we are is not just for now, but for eternity-for better or worse. Not just our spirits, but our bodies also. “I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”- Christians say that in the Credo every week.
This man, standing in a window, waiting– when that window, the building, the earth, the sun and the stars have all disappeared, he will still exist- in mind, spirit, and in body. So they say. Hope, and believe it if you can.
