Shadow body

Eventually Scully´s door opened, too. He pushed his heavy frame out of the car and slammed the door causing a few sea gulls to swoop up in unison and to quickly synchronize their flight. I watched them enviously not so much for their ability to fly but for their effortless communication. Scully placed himself right next to me, leaning onto the VW front with some of his weight. For once he was quiet. Hard to say if it was just because his rage, which predictably flared up whenever things didn’t go as planned, had burned out, or whether because he had noticed the colors, the smells and the creatures eyeing us from all directions and enjoyed them. I couldn’t say. He had found a map in the glove compartment. It didn’t cover the area. He had also found the article I had written for the health blog and had planned to reread before submitting it. I would have  actually been surprised if Scully had asked for my permission to read it. For Pete´s sake, a few hundred people might read it, why not Scully. He waved it like a white flag. Did you write this, he asked, matter of factly. I continued to study the birds’ flight. He unfolded the sheet all the way and started reading out loud, though in a low voice, not actually mocking me, which kind of surprised me:

“Our physical body, all flesh and blood, rhythm and heart beat, clockwork and sensory organs, defines the outer limits of where we are at this moment, it gives the coordinates of our place in time. It also obeys the limits defined by space and time, it is as vulnerable as it is capable of adaption to a wide range of defining circumstances we perceive as exterior. What a strange thing it really is to behold: to see oneself directly, not mediated by a mirror or a picture taken, but to observe ones fingers, hands, arms, legs and feet in motion, knowing that this very motion has its source in the observing brain but can still be observed as if acting independently from that brain that, at the moment of observation, denies all knowledge of its own doing to itself, a great puppet master. 

My recent accident has directed my attention to my body perception. I have been stunned to realize that when I concentrate on the image my mind has formed of my body (feverish, aching, struggling, eventually recovering etc.)  I do not find one clear image but instead two merging images, like a form and a mellow shadow of this form in late afternoon light. My perception is that I actually have not one but what seems to be two bodies, a physical, touchable body and a non-physical body, acting like a fluid shadow to its undeniable twin. There is no esoteric search behind this, no truth seeking beyond science which would, by the way, be something utterly alien to me. But just to take stock I have to report this: if I concentrate on my body image I come up with representations of two images in my mind, not one.”

Scully coughed, but still did not comment. The birds swooshed back down and started searching for insects on the fields. One landed on the back of a sheep which trotted a few steps ahead and then just resigned itself to its visitor not unlike Scully who had resigned himself to my company. He continued reading out loud.

“These two bodies, I observed consequently,  co-exist, but my non-physical body seems to precede my physical body by a hummingbird´s heartbeat. Now, I could just sort this impression out, reject it as unreasonable and be done with it. After all, this is what the brain does, every day, select what it either wants to or is forced to acknowledge, rejects what it is at liberty to reject or has to reject even if at some cost. But by stating what I perceive I am not stating that I think what I perceive is an unnegotiable truth for everybody, I am not even saying that I have discovered a truth about myself. I am not saying: I am coming back wiser from the great unknown and now am able to report, if without evidence, that humans have a real, a physical, and a virtual body. By talking about this – after pondering this maybe perfect illusion for quite a while – I am simply not ignoring something that over the course of over six months, maybe as a brilliant psychological lesson in self-deceit, has been consistently been presenting itself to me.”

Oh, boy, he remarked, before he turned the page over, there is more of it. I almost smiled. But I didn’t. The sheep had started grazing. The bird on sheepback looked regal and ridiculous at the same time.

“The non-physical body I observe is very flexible, it seems to be an oscillating idea of my physical self, a representation of my physical body in code, a program that constantly adapts to who I think I am. I would say what I perceive is an image of my physical self, and its body matrix. Just like my physical body, my perception of this matrix, this fluid, non-physical body, is that it, too, though not exposed to physical forces originating in the environment perceived as “reality“, obeys its own laws of integrity. Over the course of the last few month, after reconciliating my perception of something I cannot prove to exist to some kind of notion about what is real (but neither can I prove my physical body to exist when I look at the reality of the particles that give me weight and form and that turn out to be build of nothingness, emptiness, resonating space) I have come to the conclusion that this perceived virtual body, the matrix, is vulnerable as well and that, if it gets injured, get so does the physical body that is connected to it. “

Is this about the accident ?, asked Scully. Is it? He looked at me sideways.The pages clearly stated that this was a draft for the health blog I was contributing to every once in a while. It paid quite well. Certainly as well as some of Scully´s legal work. I felt Scully´s glare as I looked at the sheep carrying the bird on its back. Scully was not amused. The bird on the other hand had gotten used to his ride and had fun, it seemed. Maybe they were friends, the sheep and the bird. I was reading too much into it, I knew that. But I liked the idea. This was Deichland, after all. My script. And Scully was my leading character. He did well so far, I thought.