Body Clock

Earlier in the year, Imane Boukaila gave us her poem, “In the Quarantine Body,” a generous languaging for how the pandemic inhabits us.

As we move into this new year, she has returned to bring us “Body Clock,” a new resource for thinking about how time situates itself inside us and our experience of the world:

Now that you’ve read it once, I invite you to return to the opening section (YEAR), which utilizes the contrapuntal form to occasion multiple readings. In addition to reading left to right, you can also read your way down the two columns separately. I love how this form echoes Henri Bergson’s famous distinction between “time” and “duration,” the former being a structured experience of time governed by the clock and the latter being a more emotional experience of time facilitated by our passions and griefs. Now matter how time is living inside your body today, and I’m sure it’s multitudinous, I hope you find ways to feel it all: the estuary, the hammock, the daring trees, the motion omnipresent.

Intersecting Flows,

Chris