get well soon

Being sick these past couple of weeks has made me doubt, a little, my until now vehement repugnance at the very hint of talk that tends to create a body/mind, sacred/secular dichotomization.

What if my body is out to get me? What if, indeed, my body and my essence (or soul, or "true self", or whatever) are at best uneasy allies, and at worst, outright antagonists? What if my body positively resents me and spends its time yearning for a return to that dust from which it was yanked? Could it be that to my corporeal frame is to it a sort of torture device, by which it is dragged to and fro and forced to enact my heinous acts of living?

Maybe that is why people who do live wicked, bitter lives are so often afflicted with ulcers, narrowed arteries, blocked urethras, and all other manner of ailments. Their bodies could just be crying "Enough! Release me to the wholeness from which I have been plucked and permit me once more to sink into the moral neutrality of the earth!"

A fanciful notion, to be sure. Could be the drugs playing mumbledy-peg with my brain.

If it is true, however, I have this message for my body: what about pollution? Go back to the dirt and you're going to have to deal with the byproducts of industrialization and improper farming techniques. Plus, you'll be buried in the midst of a bunch of other dead people, and everybody knows that dead people are even more toxic than live ones. Better just stick with me - I'll try to be better and who knows? I might just take up vegetarianism and the drinking of wine. Think about it, and get well soon.