Materiality and Exile

On BBC radio today there was a short documentary remembering the political violence and unrest that protesters met in Argentina a decade ago, and a man was being interviewed about his experiences. He had fled Argentina because of the danger, and when asked how that affected him, he mentioned the family that was left behind. "My parents are old, and I hardly ever get to see them," he said. "How many more hugs will I be able to give my father before he dies? Twenty? Forty? It's not enough."

The statement stood out from everything else in the documentary, and it made me cry. The image was certainly moving -- of a man embracing a frail, elderly father -- and what struck me most was the connection between longing and the body. There are so many ways to describe the loss of a life, the loss of loved ones, but he chose to focus on his inability to make physical contact. He wasn't being particularly poetic in this moment - it seemed to be the example that best fit the interviewer's question.

A couple of weeks ago, in one of the many outpourings of grief, love, and remembrance continuing to be generated after the tragic death of Jenna Morrison in Toronto last month, Jenna's friend Matthew talked about the impact of bodily loss. He was speaking at a yoga class held to raise funds for Jenna's son:

"There are lots of asana classes to raise money. At times they may feel like nice gestures only. But I want to tell you that sometimes asana is the most real thing you can do. You may have heard in new-agey spiritual circles, or even from classical yoga, that “you are not your body”. But when someone dies like this, you realize that this is cold comfort at best, and complete nonsense at worst. You are most definitely your body, and moving it and loving it and dancing with it and touching others with it is exactly how you experience being alive. Where else is experience, but in and through this flesh? Jenna’s embodiment is what has been amputated from those of us left here. She is now our ghost limb, and whenever we remember her, we move it, and it will hurt, until we find her movements in our very limbs, and the ache begins to soften with fresh circulation"

You can read the whole posting on Matthew's blog.

Losing someone close to you is a painful ordeal on so many levels, but Matthew's point about the loss of their body rings loud and true to me. So much of another person lives in our memory - whether they are alive or dead - but their physical presence, in the body that we know and love so well, is irreplaceable. The material can feel like everything in the face of this loss.

Whether through death or exile, the impact of this loss can be profound. The Argentinian man on the radio had to face this loss when he fled his country. And how many countless others are affected by this loss through exile of one sort or another? I think also of my partner, who left her own country because the prospects for hardworking, honest young people were so dire; for her, regardless of how much she was ready to leave, there is still a kind of exile.