I am a bag of meat.

I am a collection of bones and water in a protein and fat based cover.

I keep my true self in my brain box up on top of a ladder of unreliable sensors.

It can’t be extracted.

It can’t be pointed to on a scan.

I’m not confident it really exists.

I spent nine months in a meat incubator

Then eighteen years in meat apprenticeship

To learn how to interpret what my bag of meat tells me

My fingers tell me about hot and cold

My nose identifies honeysuckle pollen

My mouth reports fried chicken.

Piece of cake.

My eyes and ears report the body language of another bag of meat,

Report the sounds and gestures,

Send messages to my brain box using both electrical and chemical signals

Pass the interpretations through a sea of mind-altering hormones and steroids who are busy just running the shop

My grey matter receives all of it

Compares it to past memories, degrading them

Tries to fit it into a framework

Increases or decreases other chemicals as a reaction

And then somehow instantly and interminably I “understand”

Sending new messages from the brain box to other systems to reply

It’s a wonder we get anything done

Every system has cells, every cell has memory.

My thighs remember things.

How to stand

How to run

My fingers remember complicated sequences.

Take away their memories and my brain box’s orders can’t be completed.

Is my true self in my fingers?

I guess so.

I don’t feel like me when I’m re-learning how to something my injured hand forgot.

I host an ecosystem.

Eyebrow mites.

Probiotic bacteria.

Mitochondria.

Germs.

Viruses.

Possibly even a parasite or two.

I like to think my true self is independent of my meat farm

But studies of toxoplasmosis say “probably not”

I am in a totally different meat bag than I was seven years ago

Every part of my meat bag is under construction every minute of the day

I am the city that never sleeps

It takes seven years to swap out the oldest parts

So at best I change a little each day

At worst, the meat bag’s intricate systems fight to keep me alive

I prefer the slow change, to be honest

We are all bags of meat.

We are each a collection of bones and water in a protein and fat based cover.

We are all changing ecologies of life

We are all trapped in cells

Trapped by cells

At

The

Whims

Of

Chemicals

We

Produce

“How are you today?”

Damned if I know.

Let me check with the meat and get back to you.