identity

The Body

~ ERWhittington ~ 2 Comments

What’s a four-month silence, between friends?

… I’ve been thinking a bit about bodies. I think this is going to be a bit of a wayward body of text (God loves a punner), writing as I think rather than with any plan, as usual, but since this is a largely secret blog, which I write primarily for myself, I shall hereby forgive myself in advance, as though there was ever anything to forgive.

I’ve been reading something mindblowing – the kind of thing that has you stopping to pause and recalibrate your world every two sentences – and one of the things I’ve been pondering is the body. The human body, is of course, always simultaneously a separation device and a means of connection, and this two-pronged potential for splitting oneself in half (we can’t serve both masters) means we have to make a choice, in most moments. In any given situation/setting/moment/mode, we can use the body either for love or for attack. Continue reading →

Bundle of Perceptions

~ ERWhittington ~ Leave a comment

I am absolutely convinced that some people will only ever view the urge to travel as wanting to escape or run away from reality. I sit here with flutters in my chest, blood pumping, that familiar restlessness that has hit me over the last couple of days – come sooner than I expected, this time. I don’t want to go away because of hating my life – I love vast swathes of my life and many of the tiniest moments that make them up, I’m very happy, in fact – I’m not in search of anything, unless you count being in search of experience. I always want that – to know how everything feels. I think I want to greet or acknowledge my other possible selves. It is a strange thing to feel that you are made of so many components, and that you have scattered those components around the globe. There are parts of this planet that I genuinely feel I have stayed in; that to drop in to a particular country or revisit a recent place would be akin to catching up with myself; I see myself still in these places, getting on with things, living differently and looking up in a garden, casually, upon my arrival, face to face with myself, saying – oh, look at these flowers I planted; look how I started a band. It is these possibilities I chase or want to revisit.

It’s not just about myself though; it’s about this enormous, preposterous thing we live on; this earth. Continue reading →