Human Shores
How many boundaries exist within a body? What are the simultaneously accessible layers of existence? The carnal, the mental, the spiritual, the sensed, the spoken, the felt…. all communicate and birth one another in the cyclical metamorphoses innate to the human condition.
I don’t think anyone is able to affirm yes or no to the question of the existence of the soul, or accurately define what it is, where and how it maintains itself. In a world that is not purely physical or visible there is much that lies beyond that which is questionable and answerable, and I find myself returning to the border between the two; between what is knowable and what floats in a fast empty darkness where nothing exists. A nothingness so vast and wide it holds every possibility that could at any moment tip over and make themselves known. I hold on to the rope that divides the two, and can’t help but think about the parts of me that exist beyond what I can see. Can the mind really reach beyond itself?
I look back at writings of mine from years past and find this constant return to topics that revolve around the idea that we have outlines, borders, layers, meat, bones, nerves, vessels, boundaries…… And to think so much about something so peculiar, so simultaneously tactile and abstract, can be a bit disorienting. But I can’t help but feel wonder at the evasiveness of the sensation that boundaries are our contours in space where we cease to exist in our physicality. Our shores.
But if boundaries are where things meet, do they really exist? How do I have a boundary, if my body is made of frequencies? How do I have a boundary, if I have a speaking mouth, eyes, and ears? How do I have a boundary, if the moon imprints her force on my body and acts through it?
The body is that which defies the notions of interiority and exteriority: we are neither and both internal mind and external body. Internal in the sense of existing within and for ourselves as identifiable individuals, with hidden, contained parts. External in the sense of being available to the flesh of the world, available for other sentient beings in our conscious materiality, material spirituality, spiritual materiality, material consciousness ……..
Where seas converge shores blur, and in our encounters there is something of an absorbable component to being sensible and sentient for ourselves and others. But it is easier to find my outline than to find my center, and borderlessness is only felt at the border. Is the center not the possibility of being a bordered individual? Do bodies grow inward infinitely? Does the soul spread like blood? Beginnings and endings are boundaries in time instead of space. Durar no tempo é durar também no espaço…. Qual a espessura de um contorno?
<3 qual a espessura de um contorno?
sempre achei difícil traduzir boundary pro português. achei lindo que cê usou contorno e não limite, ou fronteira. contorno permite movimento, expansão, fluidez, espessura, expressão! lindo, te amo