Got the bad news this past weekend that an acquaintance has diabetes; it’s common as weeds on both sides of her family, and she’s fought with her weight forever and ever, but it’s caught her anyway. She’s not down to the needles, it’s just a little pill, and a lot of exercise and very careful eating, but she’s angry, and I would be, too.
But then, she said something so brilliant that it sort of floored me — that love is not a feeling, but an action, and that the big cant in women’s lit is to talk about body image and acceptance and yadda, yadda, blah, and we always slant it to not worrying about fitting into some random prettiness scale as determined by a Photoshopped model in a glossy magazine. Maybe, though, love has to be more… or less… defined than that. Loving oneself means doing those singularly boring things like walking on a treadmill — not waiting for a flush of acceptance of love as we look in the mirror, but doing the actions that silently accept and cherish what we have. Life’s too short to do much else.
Meanwhile, this month’s poetry discoveries continue to challenge me. Like India.Arie’s song, I Am Not My Hair, this further delves into the question of identity… if not this, then what/who? If not the externals, who are you?
Not These Bones
I was not this body,
I was not these bones.
This skeleton was just my
temporary home.
Elementary molecules converged for a breath,
then danced on beyond my individual death.
And I am not my body,
I am not my body.
We are brief incarnations,
we are clouds in clothes.
We are water respirators,
we are how earth knows.
I bore light passed on from an original flame;
while it was in my hands it was called by my name.
But I am not my body,
I am not my body.
.
.
.
You are not your body,
you are not your bones.
What’s essential about you
is what can’t be owned.
What’s essential in you is your longing to raise
your itty-bitty voice in the cosmic praise.
For you are not your body,
you are not your body.
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– from The Manumission Requiem, “Not These Bones,” by Marilyn Nelson