a sore shoulder

a subject that interest me–how bodily feeling is attached to emotional feeling. i don’t mean the direction relationship between, for example, physical pain and emotional pain (my shoulder aches and i am faintly anxious) but in less obvious, or more surprising ways. does manipulating the body (myself or another person) draw out a memory?

link to this week’s “speaking of faith” with eckhart tolle. he speaks about something he calls the “pain body.” i am curious, but also skeptical. inevitable, i am always skeptical of anyone who professes knowledge of how another person’s mental landscape is formed and how it changes. i would only speak for myself.

i have been meaning to read “the body in pain” by elaine scarry. since i have just finished the delicious “ship of fools” by katherine ann porter, perhaps i will actually read scarry’s book.

not that he looks like he is in pain, but john coplan’s self-portraits impressed me immediately as revealing something truthful about the body and consciousness. maybe i was just started because he’s old (i hope i am not so obvious.)

i have also