1.21.26

“The spirit and the soul are the body and brain, which are destructible – that is precisely why they are so precious.”

––Ta-Nehisi Coates

Dear Katie,

My American friend Ben who lives and teaches in Orihuela asked me to accompany him on a trip across Europe over Christmas break, and while I haven’t particularly gotten along with this continent since I’ve been here, I figured it beat cooping up in my tiny apartment and spending Christmas alone in a town where no one knows me. And I have gotten along with Ben decently enough.

He and I have spoken to each other a lot about freedom and what it means to live freely. From an American perspective, I think freedom has a lot to do with how much money you have. I define freedom to be one’s ability to enact their desires, and the level to which they are free is correlated to the amount of obstacles that prevent them from doing so. For example, in a philosophical sense, we are all ‘free’ to travel to France over Christmas, but some have more obstacles preventing them from doing so, be they financial, familial, temporal, or perhaps governmental if you don’t have the right passport. This ‘freedom’ is highly dependent on where and when we are born, and to which family. I was born in the United States of America in the year 2000––the very “land of the free” which allows me to go to most countries with little red tape and little questions asked. What that really means, though, is that we have the most money, we set the global standard for the economy, and when other countries see me coming as a tourist, they see green dollar signs. Not yen, not pesos or soles, not rubles. Dollar signs. I am free not because I am American, but because America is rich and has privilege. I am rich and have privilege, and so I am free to go to France over Christmas break with a dude I met two months prior and even though I haven’t received my Spanish residency card and my tourist visa will literally expire while I’m in France, I do absolutely no research, ask no questions, and somehow trust that when I fly back into Spain on New Year’s Day, I will be let back into the country. I am correct.

I write this because I want to get to an explanation for a level of freedom I have further contemplated that I believe cannot be taken away, and manifests in something called a skullet. That is, the freedom of the body. Bodies can be disabled, or handicapped; they can be violated, abused, and killed and thus have a limit to their freedom, but I do believe that our physical body and its autonomy is the only thing we truly have in this life. It is what we are given when we are born, and it doesn’t even go away after we die except that our atoms are split apart and decomposed and distributed among a fungal network that eventually will reorganize itself perhaps into a new human body, or maybe a bug or maybe a tree. But right now, I have two legs that work and if I don’t have any Euros to take the bus back to my hostel in Geneva, I can walk. And if the police arrest me in Munich for drinking too many pitchers of winterzwickl, they’ll have to put me and my body in the jail cell. They can’t separate it.

So, the night before Ben and I board a train to board a plane to board a bus to get to France for Christmas, I give myself a skullet, because it is my body, and I am free. And I spend nine days travelling Europe with the most insane-looking haircut I have ever had and I feel more free than I have ever felt. The thing about having a skullet is that whether or not you wake up wanting it, you have it, and thus have to live into it. A man with a skullet cannot walk into a crowded room apprehensively––the skullet demands that he embrace his personality and courageously accept his innate confidence. The skullet demands respect from the person who wears it and the people who witness it because it is a rebellion against bodily conformity. It is an outcry against those who impose their wills and their beliefs on society, who call us to compliance and convention. It is a shaved top and a long nape that screams: I am my own.

Let me say this, too: I am largely a conformist. I am not a person that screams. I am a people-pleaser, I am attracted to convention and desperate for acceptance. I am willing to do many things to get someone to like me and I am not a fan of rudeness, brazenness, or impropriety. But. The skullet is not those things. And it didn’t matter what I thought, what my beliefs were, because my body carried a haircut that said everything the opposite, and what I have first before my thoughts and beliefs is my body. For nine days across three countries in Europe, I was that guy who had the skullet. The body dictates action, and thus the direction of belief. 

The body too, keeps the score. I’ve spent much more time in Spain sick than I expected or wanted––an affront to my body by nature. And it has reminded me of how precious and fragile the body is––how unfortunately fragile, given that it is all we have. We’re nothing more than an egg, born already half-cracked and always at risk of cracking fully, and it is our duty to prevent that from happening. I do these rituals every morning; they are deeply spiritual yet profoundly physical––I brush my teeth, I take a shower, I floss, I sleep. I put this weird lotion on my head every night called shampoo, and I have absolutely no clue what’s in it, what it does for me, or even really why I do it. Yet I do it as if I believe my life depends on it. No, not ‘as if’––I do it because my life depends on it. My body needs this weird liquid because I believe that if I don’t do it I’ll be dirty and if I’m dirty I’ll get disease and disease means the end of my body. I put a different strange cream on my teeth every night for the same reason, and I run a minty thread through each crevice as well. I don’t pray but I might as well––every action I take to care for myself is no more than an offering to some higher power to whom I am asking, ‘may I continue to live?’ and I’m so grateful every morning when that higher power has answered yes.

This too, is an aspect of freedom, though it is wrapped more in the form of obedience. As long as I do these certain things, I can receive certain benefits: no dandruff, no toothache, etc. If I eat well I can have smooth shits. If I work I can have money. If I have money I can be more free and go to France over Christmas break. 

This bodily freedom, though, is fragile, and it is a privilege. I think about many people in this world who have less of that, many that you work with in the shelter, I’m sure, who are confined geographically to where their oxygen tank can reach, where their wheelchair can roll, or where their hospital bed can sit. While I have my freedom now, I want to find its limit. I know freedom in America can get pretty expensive, but wages and therefore costs are lower in Europe. Freedom here costs about 2.99 euro––the price of a pair of scissors from an office supply store with which you can give yourself a decent skullet.

Luke