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writing Assignment #256, attempt 3

Today's words: heel, toe, point, flex. Today's numbers: 4, 7, 5, 9, which come to II Corinthians 5:9--

“So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.”

People I don’t know talk about an out-of-body experience: The heel hardens and the toe reaches out, pointing to God, the small of the back flexes, ribs catch fire and warm the body, which has been pushed into a winter lake. Or maybe they’re all faking it.

Five years’ distance reveals that we were all just a bunch of kids dry-humping in college dorm rooms, hoping the dorm-mates wouldn’t catch on. At the time, though, everything is new, extreme, throed. In-body and out-of-body are one, and we become faux-gnostics. Unbeknownst to us, we’re no good at loving, but what else could there possibly be?

Outside the coffeeshop this morning, a man, severely handicapped, rolls to a stop beside my table. He asks me to reach into the left pocket of his bag and get him a cigarette. He inches his jaw forward slightly, motioning me to put the cigarette in his mouth. I do, then light it. He rolls off. Five minutes later, he returns and asks for an ashtray. I set it on his wheelchair tray, then realize that he's asking me to take the cigarette out of his mouth. I blush for the intimacy. My ribs warm and I feel something like altruistic joy. I feel like I might do anything for this man.

Then he mentions the tomatoes at the market down the street, how he looks forward all week to those tomatoes but his friend hasn't shown up to help him get money from the ATM. “Man, I love those tomatoes,” he say. “I have to go now,” I respond, my altruism revealing itself as perverted Messiah complex. Offer me extremity, an out-of-body experience, and I will devote myself to you. Offer me mundanity—ATM’s, dirty dishes, being on time, some semblance of effort during phone conversations—and I might bother to fake it, but only if you’re new, if I feel you might offer me something someday. And who, the same author said, will rescue me from this body of death?