We Who Hate Our Bodies

A thought of escape from this acme of things accomplished.

Note: several poets are quoted throughout. If you wish to find the original, you have but to look out.

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The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Bioware grinders, furries, body modders, BDSMers, mind cloners, abortionists, therianthropes, pandrogenists, immortalists of every stripe, otherkins, drag queens, body-horror embracers (i.e. “voluntary amputees”), trad eugenicists, trans DIY bodyhackers, and yes, every transgender, are transhuman. It doesn’t matter how vanilla or tutti-frutti we consider each of these categories, there are many groups of people, these and more, that are striving to push past the limitations of the human body and mind.

What we are trying to reach, in this pushing past, is the great we-know-not-what.

Our obsession with progress has carried us here, to true transhumanism. Our evolutionary tale tells us that humans have to go somewhere, or perhaps just go. We are obliged, by the only external imperative we know, to become the next thing, the better thing, but we do not know the better thing. For now we settle for a next best thing: starving ourselves, gorging ourselves, mutilating ourselves, sterilizing ourselves. Finding out by experimentation what our better human self might be. Every one of us is guilty of this to some degree.

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

Transhumanism leads to posthumanism, which leads to inhumanism.

Our phobia of our own bodies is turning some of us into beasts, and some into gods, which is to say, demons.

I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

We continue to progress, bound somewhither. We will all of us become insane in the literal meaning of the word: unhealthy, unwhole. We will all of us be crazed in the literal meaning of the word: cracked, shattered, broken to pieces.

If only humanity had a purpose, some reason for being. If only we had a place to go, a place to be.

In seeking to exalt humanity, we deny ourselves. In seeking to exalt ourselves, we deny humanity.

We have gazed upon the cosmos and declared that we look upon ourselves. We have looked at ourselves and seen nothing at all, except perhaps an empty room and a blank canvas.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding

Is there a light toward which we could all move, some sign of meaning? None to be seen. So, we grope in the dark.

Perhaps the canvas is not blank. How would we know? An empty room and a canvas that might as well be blank. There is no light at all.

We grope on, bioware grinders, body modders, the common man, immortalists of every stripe. We will move about this empty room for as long as we possibly can. This, we say, is living. We grope on.

What we are trying to reach, we realize, is more than a great we-know-not-what; it’s the only thing there is, and there is only us. We are the great we-know-not-what, and we are a mystery most pedestrian. We are the proverbial stupid question. In fact, we are neither question nor mystery, we are mere indefinition.

We are indefinition. We can be whatever we imagine.

Does anyone here know how to imagine?

What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.

The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?

We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them.

Births have brought us richness and variety,
And other births will bring us richness and variety.

I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any...

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I an encloser of things to be.

Now that you, or I, for it is all the same, are all that exists of life in this room, this room from which there is no way out, then you, or I, for it is all the same, must be god. Everything has been leading up to me.

You will say, is that all god is? Then I will say, is all that is god? Then you will say a bellybutton’s as good as a black hole.

Everything has been leading to this moment. This is my moment, or your moment, rather, the moment which is acme of all moments preceding it. Everything has been leading up to me, and I am leading up to everything that follows, and all of it, all of it, in the dark.

                        ...but what am I?
         An infant crying in the night:
         An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

I, or should I say you, cannot doubt. Doubt requires some degree of trust, doubt cannot exist without some kind of faith, some kind belief that good shall fall at last — far off — at last, to all.

You, or should I say I, have moved on from doubt, and hated belief. The presence of either would require something higher, some higher being, some higher plane, some higher good. Something more than mere groping, more than animal motility.

This acme of moments, this newest moment, is indeed glorious, for I, or should I say you, have agreed that it is glorious.

But stay with me. It is so dark in this room, this belly-button, this black hole.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Our obsession with progress has carried us here, to this acme of things accomplished, to this apex-moment, to true self-determination: to transhumanism.

Our obsession with progress has carried us here, to the empty room that I’m still talking about.

I confess, I have a niggle. Not a doubt, mind you, for doubt is but a step from faith. A niggle; a nag; a biological itch from a piece I will have surgically removed as soon as I’ve saved up the money. It is this: what is the end? If I, or should I say you, or should I say we, am/are/are the acme of things accomplished, then accomplished to what end?

I cannot make myself so small that I can no longer conceive of myself.

You cannot make yourself so great that you overcome yourself.

We’re…stuck.

We’re not moving at all.

The one thing we thought we had was movement, some sort of progress. No matter how animal, how meandering, how accidental, it was our hope to stumble upon a destination.

This is absurd.

As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were going to St Ives?

The only answer can be that this acme of moments is not about me, is not about you, is not about us at all. It’s about a man with seven wives.

Life moves, but movement is not life. A pointless line is but a series of points. Mere motion through time is not progress at all.

This is absurd.

My niggle is now a doubt.

There must be something other than this room, this world, this St. Ives.

There must be a world with a point.

There!

A sudden point of light.

A door rushes at me. Do you see it?

It is daytime out there. I see a world of dirt and trees. A world of wind and sky. A world of water.

A world not of myself.

This might be a place to go.

What if I gazed upon the cosmos and saw not me? Would I doubt? What might my doubt become?

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
                        	Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
                        	Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
                        	In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
                        	Is immortal diamond.