2006-02-08 - 7:27 p.m.
i went running yesterday. it reminded me that i'm alive - the irregularity of my breathing, the familiar pain just above my clavicle, the friendly sight of my (slightly more portly) shadow bouncing in front of me along the pavement... it was good. i will always find it strange how your body has a kind of consciousness that is different from your mind: and i'm much more aware of this when my body is doing something strenuous and rhythmic. sometimes i feel like my head is riding my shoulders like an african native would ride an elephant... if that makes any sense at all. this great lumbering thing beneath me is both familiar and foreign; it's graceful, but jars a bit.
i imagine that my feeling of separation from my body comes from what we know about the brain. i know, because i've been told, that consciousness stems from the gray matter that resides inside my skull. that makes it easy for me to think of myself in cartesian terms of "the ghost in the machine" or a spirit haunting it's own home, instead of as an organic, integrated whole. some ancient people, on the other hand, thought that consciousness sprung from the bowels or at least from the center of your body... and i think that must have made it much easier to be at home in the body.
so those were my thoughts as i ran. i like being alive. i'm going to try to do more of it.
