My Body
When I get bothered by little things I try to remind myself that I am millions of years old. Hang on, billions of years old.
The body I have has been "somewhere, a million places" evolving over that time, learning, growing, developing, with all other aspects of nature. Cells rotting down, becoming other life forms, growing into new things, informing and collaborating with everything else over all that time. In the food my mother ate when she was pregnant, in the seabed in which my great great great great great great axolotl grandfather was buried.
I am part tree and part shrimp and part ocean, rock, hill, mountain sky, SPACE, repackaged and repurposed into what I now call 'me', but really I am what is more like 'something I've borrowed from the universe for a bit', my body is made up of a bit of everything. Like a patchwork quilt, or a car, or soil.
When I think about getting old I remember that I am already billions of years old. I have not come from nowhere, I am made from what already exists and continue to be maintained from what is already there. My body has to be fed by things which grow out of other things, which come from seeds, bodies and soil. My body continues to exist because I feed it from what already exists.
When I feel alone I see that everything I do is a collaboration, I cannot be without others - people, nature, nourishment. I may feel alone but I am not. I am always connected, I just forget that I am. There is nothing of my body that could possibly exist without collaboration, even when I think I'm alone.
So, alone is a state of mind, a belief, a lie we tell ourselves and believe. Getting old is the same. I am already are old, as old as anything could be. I am born old and I will die old.
When my body dies it will rot or be burned to become something else, part of fire, part of the pollution that poisons, the fertiliser that grows soil, which feeds insects, that feeds a bird, which feeds a fox that dies in a field and rots to help grow a tree that bears fruit that someone else may eat.
So for now, I am holding this body together and then I will let it become other things again.
Or something
Can I be less bothered about little things?
Who am I?