When she hung up the phone I just stood there. I was shaking. I realized I was cold and unable to stop my muscles from trembling. WTF. Not cool. Not OK.
I took steps to fix the situation. I poured a tall glass of water, opened up the small bottle of vitamins my cousin swiped from Whole Foods. I popped two of the vitamins and chased each one down with some of the water. I took a deep breath.
Two years of yoga didn't help at all. Six months of bible study didn't help either. At times like these when you are tremblin and your muscles have a mind of their own you need something to count on, something to hold on to with your hand, to wrap your fingers around it and just not let it go.
Most animals don't have hands and must use their mouth to do this. A dog will chew the fuck out of a piece of leather to let off steam. A rabbit will gnaw through a dozen carrots. A cat will lick down its entire body over the course of hours.
The closest we come as humans is smoking or biting our nails. Sig Freud called this oral fixation. I don't buy into that shit, I think it's just how we evolved to deal. The art of the deal.
Imagine you are a worm wriggling your way through the dirt, mouth wide open so that you can eat the dirt in front of you and extract nutrition from it. You're open at both ends, moving through the world and eating the world and shitting it out at the same time. You are a long-ass mouth.
A sucking, chewing, swallowing mouth is the most primal thing in the world. But then humans came into the picture and got grasping hands with fingers that contain almost as many nerve endings as the tongue. Each finger is like a little tongue equipped with a built-in scraper (a fingernail) that turns in into the perfect tool.
We hold what means most to us. For some of us it's the hand of a friend, the hand of a lover. Others like to hold the ass of their man or woman, some even like to hold their own genitals to make the world seem right.
We wake into the world as infants ready to suck life into our bodies, ready to grasp onto things for dear life. We're barnacles with brains but we're still barnacles.
I took steps to fix the situation. I poured a tall glass of water, opened up the small bottle of vitamins my cousin swiped from Whole Foods. I popped two of the vitamins and chased each one down with some of the water. I took a deep breath.
Two years of yoga didn't help at all. Six months of bible study didn't help either. At times like these when you are tremblin and your muscles have a mind of their own you need something to count on, something to hold on to with your hand, to wrap your fingers around it and just not let it go.
Most animals don't have hands and must use their mouth to do this. A dog will chew the fuck out of a piece of leather to let off steam. A rabbit will gnaw through a dozen carrots. A cat will lick down its entire body over the course of hours.
The closest we come as humans is smoking or biting our nails. Sig Freud called this oral fixation. I don't buy into that shit, I think it's just how we evolved to deal. The art of the deal.
Imagine you are a worm wriggling your way through the dirt, mouth wide open so that you can eat the dirt in front of you and extract nutrition from it. You're open at both ends, moving through the world and eating the world and shitting it out at the same time. You are a long-ass mouth.
A sucking, chewing, swallowing mouth is the most primal thing in the world. But then humans came into the picture and got grasping hands with fingers that contain almost as many nerve endings as the tongue. Each finger is like a little tongue equipped with a built-in scraper (a fingernail) that turns in into the perfect tool.
We hold what means most to us. For some of us it's the hand of a friend, the hand of a lover. Others like to hold the ass of their man or woman, some even like to hold their own genitals to make the world seem right.
We wake into the world as infants ready to suck life into our bodies, ready to grasp onto things for dear life. We're barnacles with brains but we're still barnacles.
