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.
You hit that one pretty good.