Do you think you have a body? How do you know? (SuperGroup and collaborators are interviewed by a contact lens specialist)

A contact lens specialist will be with you shortly. Don’t want to wait? Call us at 1-800-266-8228 or email us at info@1800contacts.com

You are now chatting with ‘Kathryn’

Kathryn: Hello!

Kathryn: It looks like it was a card error. Do you have the card you were trying to use with you?

Erin: Now more than ever I have no doubt that I have a body.

Kathryn: Okay, so that I can enter your account, what is your last name and billing address, please?

Erin: My body talks to me every day.  I am 20 weeks pregnant so I can feel muscles and bones expanding, skin stretching and even baby moving!  My body is on its own track and I am just along for the ride. I am not disconnected from my body, though, it is what makes me myself.  I don’t think the mind or soul is disconnected from it.  But I do think the body helps to shape the mind and soul.

Kathryn: Are you trying to use the Mastercard ending in 2232?

Erin: More than ever in my life, I am aware of my body constantly.  It feels like a giant spaceship moving through space.  It attracts attention from strangers.

Kathryn: Alright and what is the expiration date for that card?

Erin: I just read something about a long-time hermit who explained that he lost his identity because he had nobody to reflect against.  He liked it and it was peaceful.  This body in this time is the opposite of that. But it is still peaceful because despite how public my appearance is, the physical sensation is so personal and private.

Kathryn: Okay, that should be fine then. You can try reentering the full card number again or I can place the order for you.

Crystal B: I have a body.

Kathryn: Okay, I can wait on chat to be sure it goes through this time.

Crystal B: I know because it bumps into things.

Kathryn: It could be. We have 1353 18th Ave for that card?

Crystal B: My skin gets dehydrated and itchy.  When I run or bike really fast my lungs gasp for air, the same air it bumps up against.

Kathryn: Okay, if that doesn’t work, I can try placing the order as well.

Crystal B: My feet get dirty in the summertime and I have to wash them.

Kathryn: sURE!

Kathryn: *Sure

Kathryn: Do you wear the Biomedics Toric and the Biomedics 55?

Crystal B: My body changes.  It responds.

Kathryn: Okay, in both eyes? Can you confirm the powers?

Sam: I don’t think I have a body, I think I am a body. Or at least I try to think that. I try to limit separations between self and body, even though that separation is still a pretty prevailing phenomenon in our language. I can go to a place of wondering about conceptions of “I” too, of I am a body as much as I am anything else, or what if I don’t know where “I” ends?

Kathryn: Is it the Biomedics 55 Premier?

Sam: In this vein I think we learn or grow or discover or evolve in relationship to our physical presence in the world, to the input that comes in, that our cognition is dependent on our physicalness, and that vice versa our conception of ourselves as discrete physical units, separate from everything else strikes me as a cognitive construction, so perhaps it is this that lets me know that I am a body, that I am a body because I engage in the world and I am a body because I have decided or been made to draw borders around a presence I call me.

Kathryn: From the Smart Optical?

Liz : I know I have a body because it causes me problems.

Kathryn: We will call them to verify that prescription before the order ships out. That can take 1 business day unless you can send in a copy via, text or email. Did you want to send it in or are okay to wait that 1 day?

Liz: I want to be free of my body, but I feel its limits. Not always, but sometimes. When, for example, I want to run faster…but my body won’t let me. Or when I can’t stop sneezing.

Kathryn: Okay and did you want the free standard shipping?

Liz: Or when I have to sit in a chair in meetings all day, and my back hurts. I have to carry my body with me everywhere. It enables me to do things, but it’s also a burden, the idea that we can’t just live in our minds, that we have to have these cumbersome bodies to deal with all the time!

Kathryn: Sure! Hang on while I see if I can get this through for you.

Kathryn: Okay, I have total of $81.73 and that is including a little bit of tax. Is that the total you had?

Jeff:
house
elope
entry
yellow
wowza
attack
karma
alarm
meade
enough
hello
oh
higher
retard
direct
topography
yawn
now
whatever
resounding
ground
dig
grand
dormitory
yes
say
yikes
sour
rewind
dwindle
early
yippee
ears
sound
down
norwalk
kindly
yangtze
ersatz
zebra
agape

Kathryn: Okay, sorry, let me figure out that different.

Kathryn: *difference

Kathryn: Well, I can get it to $81.48. I’m not sure how it’s getting $81.59 but are you okay with $81.48?

Jeff: I think I have a body, or maybe I should say I think and I feel I have a body. Like it’s one thing to think with my mind that I have a body, and it’s another thing to feel with my body that I have a body, and it’s another thing to think with my body that I have a body, and it’s another thing to feel with my mind that I have a body. But I do all those things and I think/feel I do them all at once. Because my mind is my body and my body is my mind. I was listening to a podcast once while I was driving from Milwaukee to Minneapolis. I had just been to the John Muir Homestead National Historic Park. I had gone for a walk there and I remember my legs and hips and ankles and feet moving, and also my arms and hands, and also my neck because I was looking across the landscape trying to get my bearings – orient myself. I was curious about the vegetation one of the descriptive signs was describing and I was interested to see if I could differentiate the changes of ecosystem or sub-ecosystem in my surroundings. I had the feeling in my body of being hot. My body was hot. Also I sat and I felt the breeze against my skin, and blowing my hair. I also got a text message (I had just written phone call but deleted it because it was a text message) I remembered it wrong. But then I felt the place and saw myself and felt the phone in my hand and the screen with the information connecting with my eyes, rather than my ears. My body knew it was a text message. My mind thought it was a phone call. It’s hard to not pit them against each other. It’s hard to not pit myself against myself. Through a series of notice-ings I realized it was a text message, not a phone call. While I was walking around the lake, that is when I got the phone call. I also remember thinking about musical theater at the time, but that was more a memory of my mind/body rather than my body/mind.

Kathryn: And I have the shipping address at Dayton Ave?

Kathryn: Is that right?

Jeff: But the podcast was an interview with a neuropsychologist or some sort of neuro-gist or other named Ellen Langer. Sorry Ellen that I don’t exactly know what you are, but she was talking about how early on she had an epiphany in her research where she said, well, if we assume that the body and the mind are actually one thing and not two things, then that assumption opens up a whole new way to approach research. It was strange that I was listening to her on the radio and have no idea what she looks like. No context of her body, except for what I know from her voice, which when I think about it could be quite a lot. All this is to say I’m pretty sure I have a body, or at least I’m perceiving these feelings and thinkings and experiences as though I have a body. But I suppose that maybe I don’t. Like that idea that if all matter is made up of these same tiny building blocks, including what I perceive of as my body, then really is there any distinction on that smallest scale between say, my wrists and the wooden desk they are resting upon and on and on and on?

Kathryn: Oh okay, let me get that on the shipping address.

Jeff: But I suppose that maybe I don’t. Like that idea that if all matter is made up of these same tiny building blocks, including what I perceive of as my body, then really is there any distinction on that smallest scale between say, my wrists and the wooden desk they are resting upon and on and on and on?

Kathryn: It went through for me! You will get an email confirmation.

Rachel : I think I do have a body! I can’t know for sure (this whole life might be someone else’s dream) – but lately, I keep waking in the night from strange spasms in my back, and I can’t imagine why this silliness would be happening apart from my body feeling the need to remind me it is there.

Kathryn: Sorry about all the hassle, I’m going to send this on to my webteam.

Jackie: I do think that I have a body.  In the words of the great Cartesian philosopher Descartes, “I think therefore I am!”

Kathryn: Yep, you will also be able to see it under My Account in the upper right hand corner on your order history tab.

Rachel: FYI, I have been prescribed muscle relaxers, to take at night – and the first sleep on them, I woke up in the middle of the night, but instead of pain/spasms, I felt like my whole body was liquid, like if I moved I might risk pouring myself out of the bed into a puddle!

Kathryn: It just takes a few minutes to sync.

Rachel: Really strange, these things we put into our alleged bodies.

Kathryn: No problem! Is there anything else I can do for you?

Crystal M: I do think I have a body. I know because I can feel it and I look down and see it.

Kathryn: You are welcome! Have a great day!

 

Leave a Reply