The Second Body
The idea of a body which can reach over to the other side of the world is not one we tend to speak of in everyday language right now. In normal life, a human body is rarely understood to exist outside its own skin - it is supposed to be inviolable. The language of the human animal is that of a whole and single individual. You are encouraged to be yourself and to express yourself - to be whole, to be one. Move away from this personality, self-expression, and you risk going out of your mind, being yourself, failing to be true to yourself, hearing other voices or splitting your personality: it doesn't sound good. This careful language is anxious, I think - threatening in a desperate way. You need to take care of yourself, it says. You need boundaries, you have to be either here or there. Don't be all over the place.
Climate change creates a new language, in which you have to be all over the place; you are always all over the place. It makes every animal body implicated in the whole world. Pg. 13*.
Every living thing has two bodies these days – you are flying into the atmosphere and back down to the ground right now, but you can’t feel it. You breathe something in, and what you breath out is something else. Your first body is the one belonging to “you”, the place you live in made out of your own personal skin. Your second body is the body belonging to Gina, a body which is not so solid as the other one, but much larger. This second body is your own literal and physical biological existence – it is a version of you. It is not a concept; it is your own body. The language we have at the moment is weak: we might speak vaguely of global connections; of emission and circulation of gases; of impacts. And yet, at some microscopic or intangible scale, bodies are breaking into one another. The concept of a global impact is not working for us, and in the meantime, your body has already eaten the distance…. It understandably difficult to remember that you have anything to do with this second body – your first body is the body you inhabit in your daily life. However, you are alive in both. You have two bodies.
I need to find some place where real life and this global truth – the two bodies – come into one another. I want to make the second body come into the first body. I’m not going to tell you what to do with your second body or how to use it. The purpose of this book is just to find its real life. I want to incorporate the second body with the first. Because the body exists at different scales, I need to close in on it, starting from its most expansive expression. I want to start by talking about the whole world. Pg. 25 – 26*.
(*The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard)

The Second Body

The idea of a body which can reach over to the other side of the world is not one we tend to speak of in everyday language right now. In normal life, a human body is rarely understood to exist outside its own skin - it is supposed to be inviolable. The language of the human animal is that of a whole and single individual. You are encouraged to be yourself and to express yourself - to be whole, to be one. Move away from this personality, self-expression, and you risk going out of your mind, being yourself, failing to be true to yourself, hearing other voices or splitting your personality: it doesn't sound good. This careful language is anxious, I think - threatening in a desperate way. You need to take care of yourself, it says. You need boundaries, you have to be either here or there. Don't be all over the place.
Climate change creates a new language, in which you have to be all over the place; you are always all over the place. It makes every animal body implicated in the whole world. Pg. 13*.

Every living thing has two bodies these days – you are flying into the atmosphere and back down to the ground right now, but you can’t feel it. You breathe something in, and what you breath out is something else. Your first body is the one belonging to “you”, the place you live in made out of your own personal skin. Your second body is the body belonging to Gina, a body which is not so solid as the other one, but much larger. This second body is your own literal and physical biological existence – it is a version of you. It is not a concept; it is your own body. The language we have at the moment is weak: we might speak vaguely of global connections; of emission and circulation of gases; of impacts. And yet, at some microscopic or intangible scale, bodies are breaking into one another. The concept of a global impact is not working for us, and in the meantime, your body has already eaten the distance…. It understandably difficult to remember that you have anything to do with this second body – your first body is the body you inhabit in your daily life. However, you are alive in both. You have two bodies.

I need to find some place where real life and this global truth – the two bodies – come into one another. I want to make the second body come into the first body. I’m not going to tell you what to do with your second body or how to use it. The purpose of this book is just to find its real life. I want to incorporate the second body with the first. Because the body exists at different scales, I need to close in on it, starting from its most expansive expression. I want to start by talking about the whole world. Pg. 25 – 26*.

(*The Second Body by Daisy Hildyard)