Section 70 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 September 21 Sunday.
(diary)   (previous)   (top)   (bottom)   (next)  (topics)  (contents)

We don't usually write the body. We don't usually even think about it - cells, bronchi, heart sounds, phlegm. To the extent that bodies occupy our consciousness, they are, as a rule, extensions of the fashion industry, realms of airbrushed symbolism, architectures of repulsion or desire. Recently, however, I've had cause to think about the body physical, the body of flesh and blood.

I've been teaching, for some time now, a course in medical English, which started off well within my grasp (in years past, I've had a certain amount of first aid training, complete with basic anatomy and physiology), and has gotten steadily harder. The next thing on the menu is "Medical Research Council randomised trail of endometrial resection versus hysterectomy in management of menorrhagia".

I learnt the word "resection" a couple of weeks ago. It's a singularly nasty word, meaning removing a body organ (or part of it) from a living human body (admittedly with a medical excuse.)

"Menorrhagia" turns out to be (and here I'll quote The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) "Abnormally heavy or extended menstrual flow".

The "endometrium" turns out to be a membrane which lines the uterus, and so an "endometrial resection" is, apparently, the surgical removal of this membrane. (I found myself reading about "endometrial ablation" with various forms of "thermal energy," such as lasers, and found myself thinking, "Ouch!")

One word leads to another, and "endometrium" leads to "decidua," the "decidua" being what the endometrium transmogrifies itself into if the implantation of an egg results in a pregnancy.

Thinking about the body of flesh and blood makes me conscious of the extent to which we are creatures of a world of symbols, living, for the most part, in realms of abstraction remote from the inner engineering ... most of which is, in any case, accessible to human consciousness only via some kind of abstract thought process.

Anyway, I've put together a poem about the physical body, the flesh-and-blood body engineering itself in a world which exists quite independently of our conscious world of abstractions.

I've been writing this poem over the weekend, and one of the things which feeds into it, I guess, is the fact that I was sent to an elementary school on Friday to teach little itty bitty kids for a couple of hours.

I almost never get to teach at schools these days - I'm too busy with other things, mostly teaching English to adults at various corporate locations - but I've had enough school experience by now to be able to teach with confidence at either an elementary school or a junior high school.

Friday, I was working with first grade kids. Japanese kids start school when they were six, so these kids would have been six or seven. The school was having a parents' day, so many mothers were on hand, spectating, some of them accompanied by toddlers or babies.

So I guess that helped set me thinking about the socialization of young children, and how this egg that gets implanted in the endometrium evolves into a functionary in the service of the system, sitting in its cubicle busy calculating the GDP.

The poem that I came up with is this:-