mapping bodies

2012-02-13T21:34:00.003-07:00

, originally uploaded by megan amber cox.

2012-02-13T21:34:00.001-07:00

, originally uploaded by megan amber cox.

2011-02-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

the shape of your torso grows and swells
and carves out the inside of my hollow little body
my form falls around your breath and weathered, you carry us proudly

2010-11-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

crypted and fortressed
in cool, shady places
pregnant and brewing
potential!

the true thing,
they ask us
politely ignore

but, still, you see
it seeks to see light
to flourish, give life

it's not just but crude
as they say
a way not to see
to fruitlessly labor and die

(see, shame, ego, and lock
do all but let go;
thwart acquisition and growth)

and worlds unravel, all falling apart
language is clever though tongues wander off

this truth holds the key with which to align
eons of tokens and heart
with it we read, decipher, uncode

the truth too is that
ambiguities do haunt,
and threat stalks in blackness
but true still too
is that urge moves us on
relentless, to fatness

2010-08-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

the last of the light dragged its feet in draining out the day
between the two peaks, just beyond the water
a hint of color clung to the gray sky

as it grew dark, the clouds no long holding light
we left. one and then the other and then the other.

I kept you in sight as your headlights bent around mountain hills
following me, keeping watch
always a comfort as the drive became saturated in distance and darkness

with the sunset low, his headlights followed dark mountain roads with your headlights behind me,
keeping watch whisked away in an armful of cave paintings

2010-08-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

pregnant with potential...i always like that phrase, "pregnant with..."
but with what potential? the one to stay? or to go? and even then, when?

the family seems smaller and the creatures can feel it.
they can see that I feel it too, and more so
I try to fool them by keeping busy

2010-07-20T09:46:00.001-07:00

2010-07-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

06/07/2010

2010-07-20T09:06:00.006-07:00

a long list of necessary distractions is made
and with them, the stroke willingly grows swift

a pull of the lever and like vapor you leap
so volatile, quickly changing the very elements of existence

my feet fumble and i fail; a stride without structure

on the way down I can see your dream:
motorcycles and shoulder naps
and all those sweet, sad songs

2010-07-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

2010-07-19T09:22:00.005-07:00

2010-07-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

2010-07-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

between the two peaks and just beyond the water a hint of color clung to the gray sky.
it was the first of the last of the light and it went out in a quiet, rosy moan.

2010-06-29T12:27:00.008-07:00

I used to have this horrible and persistent pain. Over the course of a few years, it changed who I was. I became more fragile, in my body but emotionally and psychologically too. In 2007, when I got health insurance (the ostensible upside to an aggressively mediocre desk job), I spent a year trying to surface its causes. I went to many doctors and had many many tests. I was poked. I was prodded. I was put through CT scanners and MRI machines. I got x-rays and ultrasounds. I had enemas, a colonic, a colonoscopy, blood tests, hormone tests, IVs and acupuncture. I drank tinctures. I used poultices. I 'flushed' my gall bladder (don't ask, it's an uncomfortable and ugly process). I had body work. I took narcotics, and I was depressed.

I clutched my abdomen and cried. A lot.

Every expert said the same thing – "I don't know what's causing this."

I don't know

(I'm sorry)

No one could give me any information, and thus, no comfort.

No diagnosis. No prognosis. No treatment. No comfort.

Rivers of feral emotion flowed through me and left me as shredded meat. Its hard enough enduring chronic pain. Doing so in the face of disbelief, or even just the lack of understanding, is that much more difficult. You relate to people less and less in the moment, as your body is constantly distracting your mind with discomfort. You become isolated. And when your doctors doubt you, you can't help but begin to doubt yourself.

After about a year I finally got in and went to see a pain specialist, a neurologist. I was relieved and anticipatory to perhaps finally work with the right type of physician. One who could really empathize with me, because he/she had probably seen so much worse.

The resident-in-training who gave me my initial evaluation was a cocky doc who probably considered himself a pretty nice guy.

And he was probably right about that, on other days.

When told me "if you're not willing to get surgery, there's probably nothing we can do for you, "I heard "get cut or live with it." This was heart-wrenching and in a moment I felt that with this I'd lost everything. My longtime faith in my body and in perseverance was beginning to implode.

It made me angry, and through the tears I was determined that his mentor might yet have more comfort to offer me. And he did. He had that big man comfort you get from a thick strata of aged muscles, from thick coarse hair and a thick layer of worn and leathery hide. Those thick ones who use few and chosen words. Its like they've learned how to survive life, and now, for a moment, they agree to help me for a little while through mine.

After my consultation he asked me to go back to the hospital and gather some of my records so that he may look them over. As an afterthought gave me two chintzy pieces of equipment to try. Some contraption that sends confusing electrical signals to your muscles, and some goofy ass back brace.

Ultimately, it was that goofy ass overwrought girdle that fixed me.

Me, who lives in her physical form so fully and has since birth.

Me, the dancer, acrobat, yogi, and martial artist.

Perhaps it should go without saying that this brought about a major period of self-reevaluation.

After all those doctors and all those tests, it was some $5 piece of plastic that made me feel all the better. That, or the unsolicited discouragement. I can't help but hope it's the former. Because as much as I relish my

physicality, I'd sure as hell rather believe the disconnect was in my body than in my brain.

Here's to keeping it simple.

2010-06-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

you curled up and I kissed your coarse face
for every day, a kiss.

this morning I woke early after a lonesome but restful sleep
when I walked outside the sun was warm colored and cool
I drank my tea and looked on at what was just before covered by night
after shuffling in the soft mud in the dark, for a long time,
lovely things are indeed beginning to grow

this can be a restful place
and beautiful

2010-06-16T14:16:00.004-07:00

I remember that when we danced,
our bones were like windchimes
and with them we made arias

2010-05-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

As bloated bodies swell and rise
those wicked tricks drift up to top
and I spin around on lonely toes,
crying "love! my love! do dance with me"

2010-05-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

claircognizant whore

daydreaming of graveyards

2010-05-21T10:17:00.003-07:00

the night drinks deep mine aubergine

slick slit crimson breast, as wide as the sea.

bloated the dead they swell and do rise

for such wicked tricks must drift up to top

but while ships and sails and sirens all plead

by way of hecate my lover takes leave

2010-04-09T11:00:00.001-07:00

in my dreams last night, the ocotillo in my front yard went missing. it was tired and leafless, but alive and with promise. there was a new verdant, beflowered ocotillo nearby.

2010-04-06T14:05:00.003-07:00

its explosions of excuses
through a cracking voice
and splitting skin

2010-03-25T09:32:00.002-07:00

will I be buried at all? will I sit in place or will I float aloft the wind, silently entering the stories of others? will the waves carry me away, fishies nipping at my flesh? will the worms eat through my coffin, digesting silken linings, penetrating and burrowing through the strata of my anatomy?

2010-03-24T12:19:00.001-07:00

2010-03-23T11:28:00.002-07:00

2010-03-17T15:11:00.008-07:00

they're fleshing out fresh fish with a frank fingering and a false philanthropy

its a textbook farce, this suddenish spill on a blinding white

leaving itself to meander into eternity blanketed in a prideful tarnish so that the bricks and bone burn

bringing to bear the broken breads which sustain us

after all, we need this

from this meal to that, you're banking on blowouts and allocating assets to all manner of strangers

this all while you're spinning your curls on your sticky sticky fingers
and then suddenly, as if by complete surprise, you're stuck?

I don't think so

after all, I told you

we were just looking for somewhere soft to fall.

2010-03-17T11:31:00.002-07:00

2010-03-17T10:03:00.001-07:00

multicoloured tourmaline, originally uploaded by carlybird.

2010-03-15T09:22:00.004-07:00

I want structure
with braces and trusses and stanchions
fit with bridges that join
and levels to climb
sturdy enough, but with the courage to bend.

2010-03-15T08:53:00.005-07:00

it happens in an instant

colorful moments of activity

spinning curls and pots full of fingers

slick, sweet jam sticks

and then, finally, movement.

2010-03-11T12:56:00.002-07:00

languid and limpid, much like the day

my choices reveal themselves in symphony

meanwhile

i'd hardly noticed the time passing

2010-03-08T10:11:00.013-07:00

when I was young, there were puddles and rivers

big buckets for standing, large washes for watching

my traces

2010-03-08T08:16:00.001-07:00

Who’s Your Daddy?, originally uploaded by jurvetson.

2009-12-16T09:13:00.002-07:00

sometimes I forget to remember the things i've done, and felt

in the moment I don't think to go through the motions of creating memories

instead I stand, as a conduit of experience, as an empath, a medium,

my identity and emotion absorbed by the events of my surroundings

the only repository for remembrance being little squares of blacked out paper
and whatever else fits into a fingertip.

of course, there are the heaving gut and dried out ducts too. they remember, in their own ways.

paths like commuter tracks bear the marks of a constant weathering journey

they carry snapshots into the distance, falling fast and far into the fugue
leaving only trace footsteps to be remembered by.

and so then it goes, eventually and again,
i remember to forget.

2009-12-14T09:18:00.002-07:00

All I want is a quiet cup by a window that opens

A dry breeze, the bare ground

Fruit trees hanging heavy

And skin to fit a family.

2009-12-09T12:12:00.002-07:00

I am entirely unholy
without you around,
for I am a hole
defined by no more than
that which surrounds me

2009-12-01T12:09:00.004-07:00

With so much before me, so many emerald trees,

and weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

- Mark Strand

2009-12-01T10:21:00.008-07:00

2009-12-01T10:21:00.007-07:00

2009-12-01T10:15:00.003-07:00

body map, originally uploaded by Matt Marble.

2009-12-01T10:14:00.001-07:00

Erg : classwork SOAP Art Bach 1, originally uploaded by Marc Wathieu.

nervous pangea

2009-12-01T10:13:00.003-07:00

pangea, originally uploaded by emilyroe.

2009-12-01T10:11:00.003-07:00

mapping 004, originally uploaded by honeeyybeeee.

2009-12-01T10:04:00.003-07:00

Cygnus, originally uploaded by the wunderkammer archives.

2009-12-01T09:56:00.001-07:00

Head Plastination - Transverse Section, originally uploaded by otisarchives1.

2009-12-01T09:13:00.003-07:00

"Anatomical Venus," 1782, originally uploaded by astropop.

the beginnings

2009-11-25T15:39:00.008-07:00

in branches and rivulets, the myths of our creation meander across vast landscapes weaving fleshy allegories through blades of grass

and as these legends wander the endless expanse of the earth,
they give birth

to salty waters and dusty plains

to epic tribes and fabled jungles

to the Mimis and the Julunggul

they festoon fields with grazing cattle

and stuff sunken treasures into fattened waters

as they plant the seeds for our future histories

and we, the blind bearers of blueprints, carry with us mythic maps which track totems, like breadcrumbs, as we navigate evolving arcs

2009-11-25T15:33:00.016-07:00

"I surrender myself," I cry, yielding white skin like a canvas bereft without hue.

"I am your archive. Your memoir, your trophy case.
I am your slate of precious signage.

I will storytell of the Flood of the Tears and the
Reign of the Great Fire over the Era of The Heartache."

2009-11-24T14:03:00.013-07:00

i would drink gallons

of your bathwater, only

you won't let me

2009-11-24T11:26:00.009-07:00

did you know that my skin is transparent?

you have to look closely, and open me up wide

but when you hold my flesh up to the sun

you can easily tell that i'm really quite small.

2009-11-24T11:10:00.009-07:00

tie me up, tie me down.

either way, I said

its all the same to me

2009-11-24T11:09:00.009-07:00

we labored to build

this body, he and i, it

bearing scars like riverbeds

2009-11-24T10:56:00.004-07:00

its impossible

to moderate the things which

are not ours to own

2009-11-23T22:28:00.006-07:00

i used to have words

for everything but now

i am just speechless

Fingers and Toes

2009-11-20T12:32:00.007-07:00

I started out with two feet, ten toes,

a million little tufts of treacly toeheadedness,

and loads of other shit in between.

In a dark room I once found that in place of the eyes,
the ears and the nose and the skin themselves begin to see. To think.

I know my own logic lies in my fingertips

With them I find that I can make sense out of life
and take in the shape of all the stuff in between.

3:24

2009-11-19T12:13:00.009-07:00

I was tugged at with tools, pried at and squeezed out in a harsh smack of hello to the world. A scar stitched in
in the first moments of life, thoughtless
torsion bearing broken boxes.

Yet immediately my form took to the details, to the softer strokes.Still knowing in itself that it was built to bear great weights. And with heartening
humility it knew what lay ahead.