I just cut my toenails. They had gone too far. Fingernails get annoying pretty quickly, I work with my hands and anything that affects the feel of things can become a significant distraction and therefore, a real irritation. Toenails are less of a problem, they go unnoticed, silently lengthening, not a hinderance at all. Usually they make their presence known in the end by splitting at one corner and then trying to hook themselves into a sock when it's pulled on - with uncomfortable, or painful outcome, they get annoying in the end in some way. That's when I have to admit defeat (there's a pun to be had somewhere in there) and reach for the scissors.
Then the things annoy once again. They're so distant, down there at the end of the legs. At the end of legs that only bend the wrong way. I wonder if shoe-less jungle dwellers just wear their nails down naturally and would consider this problem of mine to be an entirely avoidable construct of a deranged hemisphere.
On I soldier, working with care to balance the offcuts on the chair arm rather then allowing them to ping off into the carpet, so someone else's eventual underfoot displeasure. The chore is then complete, I return the scissors to the cupboard and the fragments are unsentimentally discarded.
Then it's just me and my well tended toes.
So, I was sat there, not admiring them, but thankful that they looked alright and that the task was passed and the nails felt OK again. The feet just sat there too and it occurred to me that I felt nothing from them, they were so far away (from my head, that is, the bit that does the thinking), so far away that I began to wonder somehow if they were actually my feet at all. What actually made them mine, those oddly formed sensationless convolutions there at the ends of the legs? Then I stood up and made a cup of tea, that obviously answered the question to an extent that would satisfy most foot-owners.
That notion, I suspect, is what leads people to conclude that their bodies are to some extent non-essential companions to their minds. That their minds are somehow separate and don't actually need the body at all, when it expires, then the mind moves on, unconcerned. I have plenty of problems with such thinking, but I'll put them aside for now.
When my toenails were bothering me, I felt them, I knew that those were my feet. Otherwise, I felt less sure. When I'm feeling "well", which I ought to be content, is most of the time, then I don't feel anything much from my body, breathing going on, the regular pulse, again though, it's as though there is little connection to my mind. When I don't have a headache, or a buzzing stress-head, or a hangover - again, normally - then I wonder if my head is mine, the thinking, the wondering, is going on, but it's not obvious where, there are no throbbing transformers or whirring wheels.
Maybe the title of this record should be, "simple notions every philosopher had before he really learned to think", but I think it's like poetry - if I write it and like it, then is anyone really qualified to say "that's crap, he's not a real X,Y,Z". How qualified do I have to be? These are real questions and many still consider them at length and therefore consider them to be unresolved.
So, are those really my feet? I press them into the carpet and I feel it resist, I move them against the carpet and tickling sensations seem to be superimposed upon my feet, even though that feeling must be somewhat conditioned in my brain, I suppose. Yes, they are my feet, I say with reluctant certainty. And, yes, my mind, me, resides in my brain, in this unfeeling head. Maybe I need a glass of cloudy cider to help me feel something.
I sit and pay close attention to my body and as I listen with that inner ear, I decide that all these parts are me, and I am them. This is my world, with signals from a wider world plugged into my mind from still more unfelt sensing parts on my exterior. The more I listen and think, the more strange, lonely and unsettling it becomes. It takes some courage I think to really just sit there quietly and listen to your toenails.
