Voice of the Body

Posted on June 8, 2003 in Body Language Book of Days Cats

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: This is the voice of my body.

The other day, when Phoenix came to dinner, we got to talking about old cats. I told her about the time I met a cat who was twenty five years old. I do not bow to much, but I bowed to this cat who was older in the terms of his species than I would ever be in human years. (He died shortly after we met. I sometimes imagine that he lived just long enough so we could meet and I would bear a message to the world.)

Every vertebra bumped my palm as I stroked him. Phoenix said that it was because old cats spend all their time sleeping, that his muscles had atrophied from want of use.

I got to thinking how I, at age forty five, am like that old cat. Spending all my daylight time with the checked lap blanket pulled over my head, my nights at the keyboard busying myself with my peculiar form of play. I sleep with the sheets pulled up to my neck so my hands are under them because I can’t sleep with my hands exposed. My body disturbs me, rolls me about, keeps my eyes pried open — watching for danger — if I leave them out. Dangers include my cats biting me or my wife seizing or tickling my hand in a moment of impish lust.

That’s the main thing my body says to me — protect your hands — aside from the feeling of bloatedness that I get when I eat too much; the sneezing and burning eyes that I feel when I’ve walked too much in flowering fields without the aid of an antihistamine; and the cramps in my legs that I get when I’ve stretched and pressed them too much in the lifting and lowering of my body over precipitous hillsides.

I don’t count stress as a body message. Perhaps I should. Still, I am curious about this: With all this excess sleep that I am getting, why is my body silent? Or is it speaking to me and I’ve just not recognized the cant?

---

What about you? What does your body say to you?

---

Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.

Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Rising early to begin the journey.