The Light That I Am: Notes From The Ground Of Being by J.C. Amberchele

Author:J.C. Amberchele [Amberchele, J.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-14T05:00:00+00:00

PHYSIQUE, PHYSIQUE

Now are you going to identify with the body? Or are you going to identify with the light?

—Joseph Campbell

As far as I know there are no full-length mirrors in this prison. At least I’ve never seen one. The best we inmates can do is to buy a little 4" X 6" plastic one with a magnet on the back. Good enough for shaving, but useless for checking out the rest of the body, especially the full view. Which, come to think of it, maybe I should be thankful for, since I have 20-plus years now of little reinforcement on what this human body looks like that I’m supposed to be living in. All I can get from my mirror is parts.

Occasionally, however, I’ll ask a friend to draw me, and of course I’ll do the same for him. I’ll hand him a sheet of paper and a pencil and ask that he sketch me on the top half of the page, with this one requirement: that he draw only what he sees, not what he imagines he sees or what he has learned from others to see, but only what is currently presented to him. And then I’ll stand facing him and we’ll draw each other.

No problem. Even though I’m a lousy artist and he ends up resembling a mummy, at least I’ll get him right-side-up and complete with major body parts, head to feet. The same with him—he shows me his rendition of what I look like to him and we have a good laugh at our goofy appearances and bad artwork.

But then I’ll ask him to draw himself—exactly as be sees himself—on the bottom half of the same page, so that when finished the completed drawing should depict the two of us facing each other. Usually at this point there is confusion, and questions arise: “What do you mean? As I see myself? You mean, here where I am?” To which I repeat the conditions of not what he thinks or imagines or has learned from others, but what he actually and presently sees. More confusion, and here, often he’ll turn the page upside-down and begin drawing what he imagines himself to be, to which I’ll respond by asking if his rendition of me, which is now upside-down and at the bottom of his page, is what I currently look like to him. (Figure 8)

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