What do you think? Can you imagine it? Do you just see the possibility as that of an absence, of being reduced to a disability, of being an incomplete person? Of having to “adjust”?
Somebody asked me that question in a bar last night - “what’s it like to have one leg?”
It’s a really difficult one to answer. I have one leg. I have a thigh - a residual limb - a stump - as well. It ends about 6 inches above where my left knee would be, if I had a left knee. I don’t. I have one knee, one foot, and five toes. That’s me. I don’t normally think of myself like that. As an “amputee”. Most of the time we don’t think of ourselves as a collection of body parts, unless one aches or pains us. We’re just hale and whole. So that’s how I feel. Because I am what I am. I am my whole body, and how I relate with my body to the world of objects. How it feels to be the subject of the sentences of my life that I write. And I don’t know how to be, or how to live otherwise. One day, I would like to learn how to live. Finally. What does that mean? Don’t we live each moment by moment, if only we are aware of it? And isn’t that how it should be?
And if I hadn’t lost my leg when I was young, I’d have been different. I don’t want to be different to what I am. I want to be what I’ve become. Through living, and suffering. And rejoicing.
This is a very free translation of Aeschylus from the Oresteia. It means a lot to me partly because it was cited by Robert F. Kennedy in the spontaneous speech he made in the ghetto the night Martin Luther King was killed. And partly because it’s so beautiful:
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
Aeschylus meant the Gods. It should read, from the Greek:
Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise,
has established his fixed law—
wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
so men against their will
learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods
seated on their solemn thrones—
such grace is harsh and violent.
(I like that too. Grace that is harsh and violent pierces our hearts.)
And perhaps he meant the Gods with reason. Fate is something we make our own. And Kennedy knew it, and he lived bright and optimistic because he was marked by fate and nemesis and sorrow. Yet he overcame. Is that how we learn - at last - to live?
Sometimes I have two knees, two feet and ten toes when I have phantom pains. At least it feels like I do. But I can’t scratch the itch because this perception of embodiment does not correspond to my flesh. As it exists in the real world.
I remember when I was 14 and I had cancer and the surgeon told me my leg would be amputated. I will show you fear in a handful of dust. What would it feel like not to have two legs? How much did I want to wiggle my toes before they were gone? How much did I want to walk along the beach and feel sand between my ten toes? Is it about numbers?
But the question - What’s it like to have one leg? - after 18 years - makes no sense to me. Sometimes - most of the time, I have a C-Leg, which unlike your leg, cost me USD40,000. I wake up in the mornings and hop over to where I can fit it onto my flesh. But it’s not me. It’s a prosthesis. At my most naked, I interact with the world without it, and when I interact with the world with it, I never feel like it is me - except when I do because it becomes a habit, an easy gait, a step I take.
But I don’t feel like I’m an incomplete person.
What I do know - and this goes for all of us, whether or not we’re four-limbed - is that the experience of my life is written on my body, and writes my body. And I am my body, and it is me - complete. As I know it, and reach out with it to touch the world, so does it become me and my world.
Descartes’ Cogito gives us an incomplete fantasy. Only. We act as if we have an essence - a self - separate from who we are in our embodied selves. But we don’t stop to think that we display emotion with our bodies. When we’re tired, we feel tired. If you prick us, we bleed. When we’re happy, our whole body feels alive and we have a spring in our step. But we claim that we can see and understand the world as if that weren’t the case. As if we could escape from our experience. As if our bodies were a prison, and we could float free. As if one day, we could download our consciousness into a computer. Think about it. Think about what makes a lived in body, a face with a few crows’ feet around the eyes, more attractive than a teenager’s, whose visage has yet to register too much sorrow, but also too much joy. Think about how sterile a computer generated image of a person is. Are you your gravatar? Are you just text? Compare Lara Croft to Angelina Jolie. Do not think that you want to live forever - think more about how you want to spend the time you have. And live it. Think of the weariness of the thousand year old vampire. Undead. And if we want to live on, our tradition tells us that our bodies will be resurrected. Transfigured, but recognisable. Do you love an essence? Or do you reach out with your touch?
Merleau-Ponty wrote - “we are through and through compounded of relationships with the world”. Think about that. And feel it.
What’s it like to have one leg? I don’t know. I just know what it’s like to be me.
At first I felt shattered, lost. But every day is better. I have walked behind the sky… Sometimes, at night, I hear a voice in my head. Is it me, Kim? Is it true that the beyond - that everything beyond - is here in this life? I can’t hear you. Who’s there? Is it only me? Is it myself?
[adapted from the film Nadja]
In illa tempore. In that time. We live in the eternal already, if we only knew it. In saecula saeculorum.
As we grow older, we walk along the same steps. We tread the same paths. We settle into the same groove. But we don’t have to. We can embrace our ghosts, and what life and the world has written on our body. And remember the touch, and the voice, of those who have gone before. Transcendence is experience. Experience is transcendence. This life is all - bare humanity, to be embroidered and stitched together as we will. And then we let go, to join the ghost who walks alongside.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?
How many legs walk the path? Would I still be me, if I could tickle you with all ten toes?
As we walk through life, we shed skins. We write knowledge and pain and love on our brows. Sometimes we lose a part of ourselves, only to find it. And as we walk towards the light, increasingly ghosts go along with us. Until the End. This should not be cause for fear or fantasy. It’s just living. It’s our choice whether we learn to live. Finally.
I have heard the mermaids singing…
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown black
When the wind blows the water white and black.We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
But Jesus was a sailor, then, when he walked upon the water…
Quod scripsi scripsi. Quid opus et verbis?
Wish I could write like you, Kim.
Yes, beautiful work, Kim. You’re giving Simone de Beauvoir a run for her money in the literary/philosophical stakes!
A bit more reflection - an excellent interweaving of lived experience and phenomenological philosophy which gives meaning and illustration to the latter.
Merleau-Ponty talked about the choices we make being embedded - a sort of geographic strata. We sometimes don’t think when we walk down one path what vistas it opens up but what roads are not taken, and perhaps can’t be again because of that choice.
There’s also a serious ethico-philosophical point about choice. By definition, it brings responsibility. The presence of choice in life, and the limited, finite and constrained nature of life, is what gives ethical weight and meaning.
ps - I like your use of Aeschylus and Eliot, and the ghost of Derrida hiding in the interstices of your text!
And Cohen! And the imagery of water and walking. And the question posed and implicitly answered about solipsism and being in the world. A very rich and rewarding text, Kim, worth savouring, returning to, and reflecting on.
“And then we let go, to join the ghost who walks alongside.”
I’ve always loved St Francis’ use of “Brother Poverty/Sister Death.” (Actually, it may have been Pope Roncalli who used the latter phrase). The idea that afflictions are our siblings is comparable to your idea of ghostly companions.
I could say more about how this post relates to my life - as I suspect most readers could - but, for now, I lack your wise woman’s nonchalance about ghosts.
More proof of why the wonderful Kimmy is a favourite.
Thanks for recalling Prufrock, Kim. Yours was a lovely piece.
A wonderful piece, Kim, thank you.
Don’t go all po-mo on us now, Mark - I just think it reads beautifully.
But I did like the Eliot/Cohen juxtaposition, even if it does flatter the latter.
What a wonderful, amazing piece, Kim. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Tony, phenomenology’s very far from po/mo. In fact it was the philosophical movement that po/mo reacted against in the 60s (properly speaking, after the structuralist reaction).
I think Kim displayed some adroitness in weaving philosophical themes into a very personal post which gives it resonance beyond her own lived experience. As no doubt she intended.
See? What do I know!
Thanks, everyone.
Naomi, I didn’t take the question amiss. It’s actually quite a good one - just one that doesn’t admit of an easy answer as I’ve tried to show.
I also acknowledge the contribution of Merlot in the writing of the post!
Just had time to sit down and really enjoy this piece, Kim. Wonderful.
Now about all this merlot drinking…..;-)
It’s little known but if you lose a limb you get pissed easier - think about it! Less body mass and smaller circulatory system. Saves money. Or bigger hangovers!
Oi - I was buying the drinks, Kimbo! “Save money” - whatever
Guys, I’m worried about the idea of drinking merlot not the act itself I’m worried about. So its Mark’s fault is it?
What’s wrong with Merlot, Irant?
What’s wrong? The question should be what’s right with merlot good sir!
Actually it is oenology in-joke (wine snobs tend to look down on merlot) made not so in with the movie Sideways. Merlot just never seems to excites winophiles as much as other reds it seems. Myself I tend to go for Pinots or Shiraz. However I wouldn’t knock back any merlot from Chateau Perus.
Merlot excites me, Irant!
Long may that be so!
For wine is the horse of Parnassus,
Which hurries a bard to the skies.
I’ll have a pinot or two tonight, Irant
As shall I as my muses seem quiet of late.
Cin Cin, Irant. Have been looking forward to the next science post.
You know, I was thinking about something similar the other day. My partner is an identical twin and people often ask him “what’s it like being an identical twin?” To which he often replies “what’s it like not being a twin?”
There is a kind of un-know-ability in certain physical realities; or at least a sense in which we cannot communicate in language certain things about our physical selves. What is it like being a woman? What is it like being an amputee? What is it like being a child?
How do you describe a state of being in such a way… it seems impossible to grasp/communicate the essence of these differences. I can’t be both a man and a woman (ok, you can, but you know what I mean) in one body, so how can I compare the two states in any interior way, in any sense of knowing what it means to be both?
I’m not sure that made any sense. Oh well.
Precisely, Kate. Except I guess the difference is that I once was bipedal. But the thing is that you live and know with your body, and after 18 years, I’d find it hard to answer the question “What’s it like to have two legs”?
Also, not sure that made any sense. I think we lack a lot of the vocabulary to talk about these things sometimes - because we too tied up in thinking with words not thinking with the body. If that makes any sense!
Lovely work Kim. Kind of you to share it here with us. Im just back from a conference in China, and it makes me wonder: why do academics - who (with a few honourable exceptions) write so badly - get the yearly junkets?
Anyway, for what its worth, I reckon this piece deserves a free airfare to an exotic location. Certainly more than the paper I gave!
Cheers, Lefty E.
I’m a San Francisco girl, myself!
Ps - good to have you back, Lefty E.
Thanks Kim - I did try LP once while I was away, but it wouldnt load. Probably considered subversive by Beijing.
And I’ll have a word with Yarts Minister Peter McGauran about funding travel for fine online work. Im sure he’ll be most receptive to a well-worded funding proposal.
Here we go:
Aims:
Going to San Fransisco
Activities:
gonna meet some gentle people there
with flowers in their hair
Rationale:
Cos summertime will be a love-in there
National Benefit:
All across the nation such a strange vibration
Outcomes:
A whole generation with a new explanation
Been there, Lefty E? It’s much more edgy now. Not very hippie-ish at all. Still lots of love though!
I live there in the late 90s and early 00s for a few years.
No I havent Kim - so I admit I rely extensively on Scott Mackenzie’s lyrics for much of the proposal’s content. But if I read McGauran correctly, he’s a sucker for the flower power angle. Its love, love, love with the Coalition.
I have been to Mexico - does that count? Isnt SF part of greater Mexico these days - all over again? I reckon they wrote off Santa Ana too quickly in the 1840s. He’ll win eventually. Personally, I cant wait to go back to Los Estados Unidos when I dont have to listen to their annoying English anymore. They’ll be much more of a laugh in Spanish.
Vota uno elitista izquierdista!
Yes, Naomi, notions of “historical sciences” tend to put me off my catering. Even though I rather like Sydney for conference fun.
And as soon as they trot out claims of “distinguished scholars” I run a mile. Disingushed by what? Hanging around long enough to need a chair?
AHA is a good conference. Cant say the same for APSA, but hey, you gotta pay yer dues.
It was good to meet you, Naomi, and had I been able to I’d have stuck around longer. Let me warn you against using the word ‘girl’ though around my partner!
That’d cause the stoush to end all stoushes.
Historical comrades, that’s not too dissimilar to my experience of the 2002 World Congress of Sociology here in Brisvegas. Many of the “international stars” were frankly self-indulgent and underprepared, and unless you’re a quantitative sociology nut, the American contingent pretty dull. So I had enormous fun hanging round with 20 and 30 something Oz Sociologists and generally drinking most Vegas bars dry for a week.
There were of course some honourable exceptions among the US contingent - mostly Australians and British folk who’d defected to USAcademia because of the super salaries.
Naomi - can’t stand Kangaroo and Crocodile. Did Indigenous people actually eat those animals or is it just postmodern kitsch Aussie cuisine?
Kim,
What form was the kangaroo? Steak, mince, cubes? And how was it cooked? I love the stuff and think it superior to lamb and beef - especially since you can use as a substitute for both. Never heard of Aborigines eating crocodile, though.
Apparently vegetable Bush Tucker is quite popular overseas, but basically doesn’t appear in shops here. Does any one know of any?
Lovely post. I agree about ghosts - sometimes you just have to embrace them.
Kim, I was away on the weekend and slow to catch up. A beautiful post.
And harry, lemon myrtle is all you need to know. Particularly in the form of King Island lemon myrtle and maple syrup yoghurt, or Gwydir Grove lemon myrtle olive oil.
Steak, harry. I bought it at Woolies for like $26 a kg or something and it was so repulsive I ended up turning it into a curry. Ewwww!!!
Thanks, Zoe!
Still eat kangaroo up here in Alice. You can buy frozen kangaroo tail from one or two of the local IGA supermarkets. Still hunt kangaroo up here too. Not sure about crocodile. Probably catch small ones up around the islands, or use guns nowdays.
If I see a large bunch of tourists around the bbqs near the river taking photos of the locals then I know that they’re bbqing a goanna (perentie) that they’ve caught. Still quite a few people eating bush tucker around here.
Saw an interesting documentary on aboriginal women in the Tanami Desert hunting feral cats. Three large women running for ages to chase down this cat. Amazing to see, I would have been puffed in minutes and they would have had 20 years and probably 20 kilos on me. Anyway they caught the cat (cats can run fast over short distances but tire quickly and hide) and roasted it over the fire and ate it. I covered my cat’s eyes so she couldn’t see.