who am i what am i just write
By Giania • May 7th, 2008 at 12:36 am • Category: FnordNothing makes you think harder about the quality of your life than having the shits. Truly. Nothing gives you more pause for thought than when your colon is doing things you know damn well it oughtn’t do at all.
You sit there, straining to either get things out or keep things in and wonder how it got to be like this. What in the world could cause such fundamental disruption in your body’s essential functioning? Part of you doesn’t want to know. Part of you is focused on the horrific smells your body is producing. (Is this what death smells like?) Part of you can’t help but pause and go over the last few days of your existence. Not just food, because that in and of itself is always tremendously unremarkable. No, you have to tie those feeding periods to other events in your day. Recall all the cups of coffee you sucked down to first chase away the hangover from the night before, then to have something to put in your mouth to avoid telling people what you really thought of their fabulous new insert-item-or-idea-here.
It’s unbearable, and you’re chained to The Throne. The John, The Shitter, The Can. It’s always preceded with “The” as if this toilet, the one you are on right now, is the only piece of crafted porcelain and modern waterworks known to mankind at that particular moment in time.
Didn’t remember to pay off that bill today. Again. The phone keeps ringing and it gets ignored again. It’s not as if it’s family or friends or even the neighborhood dog catcher wondering if you’ve seen fluffy. It’s just the same three or four or five debtors reminding you that in your race to keep up with your own perceived material desires you’ve fucked yourself. Bitten off more than you could chew, as the expression goes. And boy are you feeling it now, too. What did I eat, anyway? Roadkill by the smell, cement mix by the effort it’s taking to make anything happen.
Such a vulnerable position. It seems like for as progressive and open society may get, there are still so many taboos and social mores surrounding the act of voiding one’s digestive system. Why shouldn’t there be? The body saves all the worthless, all the diseased, all the least usable parts of everything it ingests for this part of the process. Urine is supposedly sterile, but everybody is taught at a very early age that shit is not in the least bit sterile. There’s somewhat of a culture of guilt surrounding taking a shit (taking it where, those interested in linguistic semantics might muse). Everyone does it, no one likes to talk about it. Especially moments like these when things Just Aren’t Going So Well.
Of course, when things Just Aren’t Going So Well in other arenas of life, no one actually wants to know about it. Even when people ask “how’s it going?” “how are you?” “hey, what’s up?” they never actually want to know. Most people have things that Just Aren’t Going So Well, but if you told Joe Lunchbox at the office that, he’d chuckle awkwardly, try to come up with something comparable, and shuffle off without making eye contact with you for the rest of the day. With some, they’d whisper to others that you weren’t Quite Right, and Poor So-And-So Is Having A Tough Time. Misery is said to love company, what misery really adores is a conduit. It’s rare that people want to share their own misfortunes, but to hear about someone else’s puts the whole world in a ray of sparkling perspective. If they don’t actually have to empathize or even talk to the person suffering, more the better. That’s why gossip is so popular. All the misery, none of the unfortunate emotional connection associated with the company.
Of course after this enema-esque clearing of the soul occurs, the unstoppable bowels under some pretense of control again, the brain shuts back off. Thank your lucky stars, it is over, free at last! Time to clean up, flush all that away, and pretend you’re just as free of vile thoughts and substances as the next asshole - no pun intended of course - you come across.
Then it’s wash the hands, check the hair, inspect the clothes and the shoes for anything amiss, and back to smiling and watching. Watching and smiling. Got to keep any eye out for aberrant behavior. Can’t let anybody catch you in an off moment. Certainly have to assure everyone you encounter that nothing could be better. What could be wrong? Nothing that’s what. Truth be told a lot of this activity is a form of mindless self-indulgence. Two seconds of thought about the people you deal with will tell you that most have no concept of the life you live. An extra two seconds - mind you, this is if you really think hard about it - says that they don’t understand half of your thoughts and couldn’t care if they tried because the simple fact of the matter is: your life is outside their sphere of understanding. They could no more understand you, who they see every day, than they could a Polynesian tribal leader. Even with proximity, so many lives don’t really intersect on meaningful levels.
Yet at those most vulnerable moments, when we are only human and not even really an individual, nothing is more desirous than basic understanding. “Know that I’m a person just like you!” “Things don’t always go just right!” But who really expects that level of understanding? It’s painfully hard to come by in most seemingly ideal scenarios. Taking a shit is a lot like death in that regard. If you have a particularly nasty bowel movement, you get treated rather awkwardly by anyone who knows. If you lose someone particularly close to you, you get treated rather awkwardly by anyone who knows.
It might not be entirely the same; people are less apt to make fun of you for losing your favorite grandparent than they are if you shit your pants on a long car ride, but some elements surely remain the same. Lack of eye contact. Not knowing what to say. Not sure whether they should be sorry or not. Lingering desires to make sure you’re “ok” - whatever that means.
These kind of thoughts hover in the back of the mind when you slide back into your pain-inducing office chair and wonder for not the first and not the last time what exactly you’re attempting to accomplish by getting up every morning and coming to this place. Can’t sit comfortably, can’t shit comfortably, can’t get a word in edgewise out of pure desire not to ruffle overly sensitive feathers, can’t think straight, can’t figure out if these are all really “can’t” type things or if it’s just a lack of willpower. Deep inside something screams “get out” and another voice says “this is nothing, you can whip this, beat it, call it Sally and make this j-o-b into a real accomplishment”.
And ain’t life just contradictions.
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It is pretty amazing how much conversation is totally useless. I’m told that this is called “small talk” and is important for social, um, something or other. I forget.
And another thing, the Subgenii have used defecation as a meditative technique for millennia, or at least since alt.slack has been around. See this thread on excremeditation for examples.