Unsubstantial

I was on the bus home today. He was sick and sniffling beside me. And it got me wondering about the substantiality of our bodies. His thin frame racked by sneezes reminded me of Kafka. Somehow when we’re ill our bodies just appear so much more frail. Unsubstantial.

So this got me wondering about the relationship between the physical well-being of our bodies and our state of minds about our bodies/ourselves. When we are sick, we seem to lose a part of that physicality of our bodies—the more ill we are, the more bodies become less substantial, as though the slightest sneeze or breeze might have cause us to fall apart.

And I also wondered about the actual size of our bodies. Do fat people feel more substantial as they move around the streets? More mass, more presence? Thin people seem to have less…impact? Imagine, a big woman entering a ballroom, compared to a thin woman’s entrance: would the crowd not feel the big woman’s presence more? Do big people feel the materiality of their bodies more? I mean this ties in with the anxiety Kafka had about his own body—

“nothing can be accomplished with such a body . . . too long for its weakness, it hasn’t the least bit of fat to engender a blessed warmth, to preserve an inner fire, no fat on which the spirit could occasionally nourish itself beyond its daily need without damage to the whole.”

Hmm. Anyway.