The Maenad
IN PRAISE Of THESE UGLY-ASS FEET
(Purple metallic freedom)
I used to really hate my feet and honestly of all of the parts of my body even my teeth, traitorous
Legions of them, have earned more love and understanding from me than ever these two alien
monkey forepaws
Nowadays we have a tremulous criminal understanding
We need each other but don’t necessarily think this equates to a happy marriage.
My feet blame me for arthritis, for being broken, healing poorly, bad circulation, worse
coordination. My feet hate my diet and the times of general inactivity
So my feet probably hate this writing
I, on the other foot, claw, or hand, hate them for not being pretty. Not being dainty not looking
girly but looking like something that would make a fine bride for some alien tree swinging
orangutan thing
Perhaps on the home world we are part sloth I don’t know they won’t speak to me return my
calls or send the mothership to come get me.
I hate my feet for always being bruised, for growing calluses at the slightest provocation -
For not being soft and new
But if I got my wish I could not stand would not be able to walk, and probably
Barely able to crawl
Then I think they would want me they would love me and they would love my feet
But
This trickster is wise I know they would only love my subservience, always on my knees but with
pretty, pretty feet.
I’ve seen that life I know that world.
It is not for me.
So take me as I am, love my ugly feet, keep your imaginings to yourself about what distant star
cluster produced such enormous long wide treats
We have an understanding it is not love but it tastes free
Free like freedom, you take the bad with the good
A lifetime of liberation over subservience
Aren’t my nails pretty? Purple metallic
Chipped but glittering, needing
Constant attention and upkeep
A Body, claimed
(An embedded embodiment manifesto)
I stretch, my body responds
But it was not always this way
I had to master this body
To learn it, to know its secrets.
First I had to accept what came with
Accepting broken firmware
And software I was told was wrong
But from acceptance comes salvation
From understanding comes communion
My body and I are allied now we speak as one save on those days when I do not listen.
My body is the foundation of all I have built
No matter what, I will live here
My body is the only true possession I will ever have it is the only thing I own it's the only thing I
seek to own because I need it to exist to interact to create and destroy to touch and feel
No mere brain in a jar this one
Though I often wonder what would be a brain that could move and interact through unseen
forces while still being free and merely a brain
This is a safe thought experiment for it will never happen if real its mere possibility could destroy me
In some other world some other range of possibilities perhaps where brains in jars are capable
of moving and interacting with things through psychic powers or electricity,
Some other version of me longs to be free floating in some buoyant nutritional bath immersed in
a tube seeing without looking precisely the kind of longing that this mind and this body once sought through transitioning
Becoming a bodiless Manifesto seems roughly as transformative to me as changing my body
into what we needed to be.
But in this world, this life, through many burning Gardens of strife my body and I have made this
wholeness
And I would not
Could not
Never will
Surrender it for anything
My software is fine but different from yours firmware upgraded trading softness for corners