Category Archives: body

On a sore neck

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You ever get a sore neck that makes turning your head just about impossible? Whenever anyone speaks to you, or you hear a strange noise, or you turn to get a plate out of the cupboard, your neck just stops working–the swivel is broken and you feel about a hundred years old. You have to turn your whole body to see just normal stuff. I pulled a small muscles in my shoulder about two weeks ago, and I’ve been having a lot of fun since. First, driving is impossible. Second, any time you have to turn around, your neck is having second thoughts about the whole operation. Third, no matter what you do for a pillow, sleeping and lying down are new adventures in pain. You have to turn your whole body to see what’s behind you, and it looks so unnatural. Instantly, everyone is asking, “What’s wrong with your neck?” as if you didn’t know there was a problem. It seems, too, that just about the time it starts feeling better, you fall asleep sitting up in some strange position, and it continues to hurt like the devil every time you need to turn your head. You don’t dare look behind you because if you do you risk snapping your head clean off. Yes, you can take some “pain relievers” but they only solve the problem temporarily because it always comes back. A sore neck reduces you from functioning human being to orthopedic nightmare that can barely move, and all the while you feel like the oxidized version of the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. My kingdom for an oilcan.

On a sore neck

Posted on by

You ever get a sore neck that makes turning your head just about impossible? Whenever anyone speaks to you, or you hear a strange noise, or you turn to get a plate out of the cupboard, your neck just stops working–the swivel is broken and you feel about a hundred years old. You have to turn your whole body to see just normal stuff. I pulled a small muscles in my shoulder about two weeks ago, and I’ve been having a lot of fun since. First, driving is impossible. Second, any time you have to turn around, your neck is having second thoughts about the whole operation. Third, no matter what you do for a pillow, sleeping and lying down are new adventures in pain. You have to turn your whole body to see what’s behind you, and it looks so unnatural. Instantly, everyone is asking, “What’s wrong with your neck?” as if you didn’t know there was a problem. It seems, too, that just about the time it starts feeling better, you fall asleep sitting up in some strange position, and it continues to hurt like the devil every time you need to turn your head. You don’t dare look behind you because if you do you risk snapping your head clean off. Yes, you can take some “pain relievers” but they only solve the problem temporarily because it always comes back. A sore neck reduces you from functioning human being to orthopedic nightmare that can barely move, and all the while you feel like the oxidized version of the tin man from the Wizard of Oz. My kingdom for an oilcan.

On body and soul

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What is the relationship between body and soul? About a million philosophers, random theologians, persistant poets, and iconoclastic songwriters have debated, denied, and celebrated this strange relationship. If we are more than just our mechanical, chemical, and electrical body parts, and I suspect we are, what are we really? Some weirdly watery container of consciousness, I suspect. But there in lies the problem, that we are trapped within ourselves unable or unwilling to see more than we might be for fear that there is a supernatural side to us that we can’t explain, can’t fully understand, and can’t fully control. And isn’t that what contemporary life is all about–controlling everything? Are not our electronics a feeble attempt at a simulacra of the human mind? Yet, the more we depend on our electronics, the more slave we become to our dead end materialism. We substitute materialism for spirituality, attempting to bury, once and for all, that poor little soul that only wants to laugh and dance and shout, who wants to be free. What is wrong, however, with not knowing everything there is to know, or even recognizing that there are mysteries in this life that have no solution, and perhaps we are better off that way. Isn’t it a little nutty to want to know what is going to happen in any given moment, every moment, every day? To be spontaneous, to give your soul a rest from the incessant barrage of cultural materialism, to think, to contemplate the beauty of the rose as an abstraction without being caught up in the obsession for possessing the perfect rose. The body has ways of getting your attention–food, drink, whatever–but it is the soul which will set you free. These two, body and soul, need each other and exist in a strange symbiosis of love and hate, up and down, backwards and forwards, but what is only too obvious is that as the body burns, the soul rejoices, gathers energy, memory, and love, for on this old earth, body and soul gloriously enjoin to celebrate life.

On body and soul

Posted on by

What is the relationship between body and soul? About a million philosophers, random theologians, persistant poets, and iconoclastic songwriters have debated, denied, and celebrated this strange relationship. If we are more than just our mechanical, chemical, and electrical body parts, and I suspect we are, what are we really? Some weirdly watery container of consciousness, I suspect. But there in lies the problem, that we are trapped within ourselves unable or unwilling to see more than we might be for fear that there is a supernatural side to us that we can’t explain, can’t fully understand, and can’t fully control. And isn’t that what contemporary life is all about–controlling everything? Are not our electronics a feeble attempt at a simulacra of the human mind? Yet, the more we depend on our electronics, the more slave we become to our dead end materialism. We substitute materialism for spirituality, attempting to bury, once and for all, that poor little soul that only wants to laugh and dance and shout, who wants to be free. What is wrong, however, with not knowing everything there is to know, or even recognizing that there are mysteries in this life that have no solution, and perhaps we are better off that way. Isn’t it a little nutty to want to know what is going to happen in any given moment, every moment, every day? To be spontaneous, to give your soul a rest from the incessant barrage of cultural materialism, to think, to contemplate the beauty of the rose as an abstraction without being caught up in the obsession for possessing the perfect rose. The body has ways of getting your attention–food, drink, whatever–but it is the soul which will set you free. These two, body and soul, need each other and exist in a strange symbiosis of love and hate, up and down, backwards and forwards, but what is only too obvious is that as the body burns, the soul rejoices, gathers energy, memory, and love, for on this old earth, body and soul gloriously enjoin to celebrate life.