I have similar feelings from different times of my life playing music with people - which is also very physical, also very much about what one is doing with breath and body. And how it is impossible to experience online.
What a thoughtful essay. In the early days of the pandemic I walked between four and five miles each day, two of them with my wife and the rest by myself. We rarely saw, let alone met anyone else in these jaunts and walking up a gentle slope or down a steeper one made me acutely conscious of my body. It also brought back memories of how much we'd walked in Salzburg or Pt. Reyes, California. Yet I hadn't quite viewed the body as a memory store, which upon reflection I realize even the simple act of massaging my head and hair did carry me all the way back to childhood evenings of my mom and other women in our family in India, having an evening ritual of detangling, oiling, and braiding hair in our backyard whilst trading gossip or tales, something I share with my own daughters and family now!
I love this memory you shared here so much, because playing with hair is a central form of connection in my own family — with my mom, grandmother, and son. There’s nothing quite that relaxing sensation, and I love the idea that my child might remember it even when he’s a grown man.
I’m increasingly convinced that the body remembers absolutely everything, whether the conscious mind can access or not, all of our experiences are written somewhere in the body. And too often I’ve ignored my body’s memory at my physical, intellectual, and emotional peril.
Your point of view so well describes the new reality. Totally agree with the unfortunate social consequences brought in by the new technology which will never replace the human connections. Lovely essay Irinus, a real pleasure to read. Thank you for sending it to me.
"...how thoroughly we have been convinced that it’s our duty to keep self-optimizing and self-improving and self-disciplining, at all moments, right to our dying day."
this line hit home, particularly because i am in the midst of some massive self-optimisation right now.
Lovely thoughts, thank you for sharing them. I'm old enough that the digital life is only a small portion of the whole. At first, it was novel, as these things are, but lately I find I'm more interested in spending my limited time left in the physicality of nature and the real world. I do wonder about those younger though...
I assumed the cost was in the kinds of relationships we have with others — to what extent we are connected to people, embedded in a community and a place, able to communicate by all the means human beings have, with gesture and facial expression and tone of voice and touch. I think too that a deep sense of place is crucial to a sense of self?
Tell me more? I do wonder what those of us who have emigrated a lot can do for a deep sense of place — to some extent that was taken from us by circumstance before we had any choice about it.
Well, and maybe this doesn't address exactly your comment that emmigration can impact sense of place (or for that matter moving a lot as Mallet notes), but here's what N. Scott Momaday said in his novel "The Way to Rainy Mountain": "Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk." So it doesn't have to be where you come from, the value comes from immersing yourself in a landscape--as you do when you garden?
I can identify with not having a place I come from. My father was in the US military, we moved a lot, and while there are places I’ve lived that I like, I’ve yet to find a place where I “belong.” The rest of my family of origin settled in Kansas in the US, but I still feel absolutely displaced and I don’t know if that will ever change.
Just yesterday, I decided that I would go for an hour-long walk. I was inspired largely because during spring break our family spent a week in Amsterdam and The Hague, and I ended up walking and walking in the mornings while my wife and children slept. And my body remembered how much I used to love walking, moving. It remembered how awake and alive I felt. It remembered how much I danced when I was young--rock, disco, Swing, even a few classes in ballet and modern. I walked again this morning, and though I got a hefty step count, that wasn’t what mattered. It was the attention you wrote about, not just from being in my body, but also of consciously feeling the space *around* me. For me, that kind of movement brings presence; it’s a way of meditating, like doing tai chi. And as wonderful as online interaction can be, I’m determined to prioritize and hold on to this physical presence.
I have similar feelings from different times of my life playing music with people - which is also very physical, also very much about what one is doing with breath and body. And how it is impossible to experience online.
What a thoughtful essay. In the early days of the pandemic I walked between four and five miles each day, two of them with my wife and the rest by myself. We rarely saw, let alone met anyone else in these jaunts and walking up a gentle slope or down a steeper one made me acutely conscious of my body. It also brought back memories of how much we'd walked in Salzburg or Pt. Reyes, California. Yet I hadn't quite viewed the body as a memory store, which upon reflection I realize even the simple act of massaging my head and hair did carry me all the way back to childhood evenings of my mom and other women in our family in India, having an evening ritual of detangling, oiling, and braiding hair in our backyard whilst trading gossip or tales, something I share with my own daughters and family now!
I love this memory you shared here so much, because playing with hair is a central form of connection in my own family — with my mom, grandmother, and son. There’s nothing quite that relaxing sensation, and I love the idea that my child might remember it even when he’s a grown man.
I’m increasingly convinced that the body remembers absolutely everything, whether the conscious mind can access or not, all of our experiences are written somewhere in the body. And too often I’ve ignored my body’s memory at my physical, intellectual, and emotional peril.
Your point of view so well describes the new reality. Totally agree with the unfortunate social consequences brought in by the new technology which will never replace the human connections. Lovely essay Irinus, a real pleasure to read. Thank you for sending it to me.
Thank you so much for reading, Leontina! I hope things are well and I'm thinking of you & family.
"...how thoroughly we have been convinced that it’s our duty to keep self-optimizing and self-improving and self-disciplining, at all moments, right to our dying day."
this line hit home, particularly because i am in the midst of some massive self-optimisation right now.
All of this was great, but "Naval Club of Toronto" really hit me.
thank you for speaking these things, for tuning back in to the body for the information it freely provides yet seems only valuable when data-fied.
Lovely thoughts, thank you for sharing them. I'm old enough that the digital life is only a small portion of the whole. At first, it was novel, as these things are, but lately I find I'm more interested in spending my limited time left in the physicality of nature and the real world. I do wonder about those younger though...
I suspect this is why I’m finding gardening really interesting now for the first time in years.
I assumed the cost was in the kinds of relationships we have with others — to what extent we are connected to people, embedded in a community and a place, able to communicate by all the means human beings have, with gesture and facial expression and tone of voice and touch. I think too that a deep sense of place is crucial to a sense of self?
Tell me more? I do wonder what those of us who have emigrated a lot can do for a deep sense of place — to some extent that was taken from us by circumstance before we had any choice about it.
Well, and maybe this doesn't address exactly your comment that emmigration can impact sense of place (or for that matter moving a lot as Mallet notes), but here's what N. Scott Momaday said in his novel "The Way to Rainy Mountain": "Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk." So it doesn't have to be where you come from, the value comes from immersing yourself in a landscape--as you do when you garden?
What a beautiful excerpt, thank you. And now you've piqued my curiosity about the book.
I can identify with not having a place I come from. My father was in the US military, we moved a lot, and while there are places I’ve lived that I like, I’ve yet to find a place where I “belong.” The rest of my family of origin settled in Kansas in the US, but I still feel absolutely displaced and I don’t know if that will ever change.
Just yesterday, I decided that I would go for an hour-long walk. I was inspired largely because during spring break our family spent a week in Amsterdam and The Hague, and I ended up walking and walking in the mornings while my wife and children slept. And my body remembered how much I used to love walking, moving. It remembered how awake and alive I felt. It remembered how much I danced when I was young--rock, disco, Swing, even a few classes in ballet and modern. I walked again this morning, and though I got a hefty step count, that wasn’t what mattered. It was the attention you wrote about, not just from being in my body, but also of consciously feeling the space *around* me. For me, that kind of movement brings presence; it’s a way of meditating, like doing tai chi. And as wonderful as online interaction can be, I’m determined to prioritize and hold on to this physical presence.
Beautiful and very evocative essay, thank you.