Modern Love: The Form of this Body

       This week's "Modern Love" column is a very poignant piece, by Jennifer Glaser, reflecting on her boy friend's untimely death.  He was dying of leukemia and they made love as they could until the illness separated them physically.  She found that the sex gave meaning to the time they had together:

We flirted, canoodled, talked about sex, and had sex when he was sick because, well, sex wasn’t death. It was the antithesis of death, and damn if it didn’t feel good to forget for a while that nothing we could dream up could act as an effective talisman against the iceberg floating into our sights.

     The carnality of it all leads her to something like celebration, with a hint of "I Sing the Body Electric:"

Eulogies praised his imagination, writing prowess, generosity and warmth. I praised those qualities, too. But, praise be the body, I told them. It is only in such praise that I could give my boyfriend back what leukemia took from him, trace the contours of what he had lost: his material form, with its capacity for messy emissions, spontaneous erections, parted lips, enveloping bearhugs and leg cramps — beautiful all.

     The contrast of the physical form of the body and death is also to be found in Chuang Tzu.  Here he echoes Glaser's celebratory tone:

We're cast into this human form, and it's such happiness.  This human form knows change, but the ten thousand changes are utterly boundless.  Who could calculate the joys they promise? (87)

       Our physical form is a process of constant transformation: we grow, we develop, we strengthen, we come into our own.  These are the joyous changes, opening up for us exhilarating facets of our humanity, sex included. 

    But, of course, not all of the changes bring joy.  There is another side to the physical story, as Glaser knows all to well.  Here is Chuang Tzu's take:

Once we happen into the form of this body, we cannot forget it.  And so it is that we wait out the end.  Grappling and tangling with things, we rush headlong toward the end, and there's no stopping it.  It's sad, isn't it?  We slave our lives away and never get anywhere, work ourselves ragged and never find our way home.  How could it be anything but sorrow? (20)

     We are trapped in our material form, doomed to inescapable demise.   Inevitable physical deterioration means that we can only "wait out the end."

      This seems quite depressing.  But, Chuang Tzu is not really so pessimistic.  There is a way out, and it is pretty much what Glaser and her boyfriend did: give yourself over to physical reality and live as fully as you can within those limitations.  Here is Chuang Tzu, speaking through a character whose body is falling apart in old age and infirmity. 

"Why should I resent it?" [he] replied. "If my left arm's transformed into a rooster, I'll just go looking for night's end.  If my right arm's transformed into a crossbow, I'll just go looking for owls to roast.  And if my butt is transformed into a pair of wheels and my spirit's transformed into a horse, I'll just ride away! I'd never need a cart again!

"This life we're given comes in its own season, and then follows its vanishing away.  If you're at ease in your season, if you can dwell in its vanishing, joy and sorrow never touch you.  This is what the ancients called 'getting free'."

     None of us ever really escape the sorrow of losing a loved one.  But it sounds like Glaser and her boyfriend came pretty close to "getting free."

Comments

[Rod Amis]

Thanks for this! I enjoyed reading it immensely.

Regards,
Rod