Armless thought processes

I asked my father today, ‘How do you know that your arm is your arm and not the arm of another, that it is part of your ‘self’? He replied, ‘Because I can intend for it to move and as result of this intention it moves.’
This seemed sensical enough so I gave it some further thought.
So, if our arm is ours, is a fraction of our self, because we can control it, decide its movement after a plan is formed, then what of the cup on the table? If we see this cup, we want for it to be somewhere that it is not, we attach it as an adjunct to our very own arm, and based on an intention move it from one place to another, after which it is then detached, has this cup been part of our ‘self’? We have intended for it to move, it has moved in accordance with the will.
If the answer is yes, this cup has been part of us. This would seem to make the entire environment which we have altered, by whim and fancy, part of us. We would therefore stretch out almost infinitely from a central point into our environment, which is not separate at all from our selves.
If the answer is no, the cup is external, it has been moved by me, it is not inherently me. The this would seem to make our ‘self’ infinitely small, as our arm, our skin, our skeleton, our viscera are environmental, are moved by intention, but are not ‘me’. But where am I? This would make me an infinitely small spot in the centre of the things I move by intention.
If we are to reject the negative, accept that the cup has been an additional finger, then what of ‘others’? If I were to have a spiteful thought, to shove, push, knock into some body, they have moved, moved because I wanted them to, not because they have their own plan of motility. In that contact have they been me? Where has their ‘self’ been placed for that moment? Would it be extending into the things which they have made their own plans for? If they made action to steady themselves on an unstable chair, which was then to crash to the floor, would this be where they lay?
And so I say to my father, ‘Well what if by some awful misfortune, some accident, you have your arm paralyzed, you are no longer able to move this appendage, and it will hang limply by the rest of your ‘self’. Is this arm still you, more than simply yours?’ My father responds, ‘Yes it is still my arm, for I have moved it, it has been my intention, even if it is not so now. It is no-one else’s arm; it is still part of me.’
And so I consider. If our possession is lingering, on these objects of our, ‘It is my arm because I have had the intention and I have made physical change’, then does this cup remain a part after the moves have been made?
If this is to be the case then are these particles of self overlapping? If I have left this cup, and my good friend then enters the room. If he/she/they decide that this is a ridiculous place to allow a cup to be, they then attach themselves to the cup. The cup is incorporated; it is moved by their intention back from whence it came. Has this part of self, of ‘me’, been overridden, wiped clean? Or are these selves now overlapping, accumulating in the ceramic of this very cup?
Remember the really nasty one in Terminator? I’m just not sure at all as to whether I am very very big, or very very very small.

It's ok if they are deformed, I can just eat them first.

How easy it is to stray from the written word into the mirky world of practicality. So here I will record some of the more active moments which have occupied me.

Spontaneous gardening
After much deliberation I decided that a garden with weeds with the ability to tower above me can only be a dangerous thing, plus there is definitive consideration regarding my wish to actually see out from my kitchen window.
So I spontanously sprung into an evenings gardening early last week.
The plans have been made to replace the in enterprising Galium aparine and Senecio vulgaris with their prettier and more edible counterparts. More word when something wonderful grows.



Midnight baking
Last night, after much less deliberation, I decided to make gingerbread men (and possibly women.) I couldn't really tell you why but I don't suppose you have asked so there isn't yet a requirement for reason. I stray, back to the point, so I got together the ingredients and set about my baking expodition in the uncultivated setting of my kitchen. Needless to say the affair became somewhat of a marathon as I was, lets say, optimistic regarding timing. I too was optimistic about my shaping abilitities and my first crack at human creation was limited to a single vital organ, and quite mishapen they were too. Although this did give rise to the interesting thought process of, 'Its ok that those ones are deformed, I'll eat them first.'












Visiting a fraction of myself
This is my grandma, I went to her, I will give more words to her later when i can think of even one which deserves to describe her.

Sleeping in an unfamilial bed with an increasingly familiar body
The night before last, when I was still to have yesterdays thoughts, my boyfriend (I hate to use such an 'insert label here' term but it does save sentences from excessive length i suppose) and I, pushed by intense heat and the desire for turbulent air, slept in an unfamiliar bed. What was more noteworth was just how familiar he felt. In such an embryonic state as time has granted us thus far, still fresh with interest of what we are yet to know of one another, it occured to me how quickly this apoptoses and is replaced with the fervent desire for comfort, for predictability. He calls himself old, and me he calls new. And i call myself juvenile and him grown. It's difficult to tell what will come but I don't want to forget how known you felt. And believe me, if I was not of absolute confidence that there is no chance of his looking at his own face here he would never be placed here (as he would be most likely to have some stern words.)










Look a Jukebox
Yes a Jukebox inexplicably arrived in my living room. Yes it was beautiful and broken and now it is fixed. Although it plays at the wrong speed. Any ideas on a button which may alter this.

Spoons?

Being the good medical student that I sometimes like to be, I spent some of my day trauling the depths of the British Medical Journal.
You’d think that this would be dreadfully boring, and indeed on the most-part it was. And then I happened upon the most ridiculous of fantastical pieces of research. And it's even better than a single silly person within the medical profession (not to mention those who funded the project, those who published the findings etc etc.) There is infact multiple responses and a whole body of evidence surrounding this apparently contentious subject. A personal favourite within the responses is a beautifully ludicrous theory regarding the metamorphosis of socks into coat hangers within washing machines. Have a look over here!

It can be fixed

Thank you to a good friend who just yesterday taught me that an inherent property of the majority of broken things is the possibility of fixing them.
In other news, want to be the coolest geek? May i suggest www.pentrix.com

A picnic in Tintwistle

I did have a most peculiar evening at the end of this very day. Riding home on my bicycle I bumped into an acquaintance just by curious chance.
He suggested that we go and eat and that we do this out in the countryside on the gentle slope of the nearby hills (I might add not in so many words did he make this suggestion.)
I agreed. I was hungry. I live alone.
Now I know for a fact that this is someone whom I share very little. Its fair to describe him as the most selfish individual I have come to know. The other half of someone who is barely half herself that I would describe as a friend to others.
So off he meanders into the local shop to steal some food for us. He steals. He is not ashamed to be selfish and to steal.
And as it goes on I drive deep into the full countryside and find us a pretty evening light in the town of Tintwistle.
We sit, and eat, and talk of his ideals of which I agree with not a single one. And he raises the issue of moral value and the requirements of one over those which surround them. And he believes in the ideal of evolution. That we exist to compete, to beat others. And I argue and say that this is wrong and drink expensive wine.
And it occurs to me that all the time I am eating his food, and listening to his words, and taking joy which is not mine. And who has done the stealing? I haven’t stolen. I have done nothing. I have done plenty wrong, and I believe this to be one of the most lowly wrongs which I have done. And I am sitting now, with a full belly, feeling decidedly sick with myself. So who has wronged 'more'? And what exactly should be done of this?

The birthday of an independent lover.

Today it occurred to me, as it does every year on this day, that it was an old lovers birthday. I don’t wish to be mistaken and so its worth clarifying that I don’t mean lover in what would seem to be a simultaneous modern and traditional sense. Not a personified sexual partner but an individual onto which I have projected feelings of great affection. His birthday was on this day, the day of independence of one of the lesser nations, which is probably why I am most tended towards noting it each year. But it bares thinking of, especially seen as we are now so very independent of one another. He was my first experience of intense longing, of the overwhelming trust that someone can only give when they have no reason to yet believe all those stories of heartbreak and still hold a profound belief of their own immunity to loves great despairs. It is fair to say that he did succeed in squashing such an honest dependence with a boyish clumsiness and I will almost certainly never experience such a feeling again. I don’t hold him accountable for such a thing because we do not always know that we are one side of a triangle for another, that we support them without a single intentional push. And having not held him accountable, I do not feel the need to hold any sort of anger against a nearby inanimate object in place of him. I do not need this because I am aware that we all must fall, having our sides left unstable to know the cruel horizontal ground. And that having occurred a new form of dependence may be built. A stronger, deeper, informed dependence. A dependence which whispers, You know full well how much this could hurt, you have not forgotten, and you are willing to gamble that with them.
I may well have lost a dependence seated in youthful unawareness, but now I am able to knowingly reject independence with a wilful hand. Thank you always to my independent lover.