The Body

Illustration by Jayda Korn

The sound of my blender splits the morning calm. Another protein shake for breakfast, it's fast, it's easy, and it fulfills about a third of my protein and caloric needs for the day. 

It's a beautiful day today. The sky is blue, the air is crisp, and the sun is warm on my naked back. It’s a perfect day for a bike ride.

I’ve been biking for a long time. When I was a kid I would ride this old, broken, yellow mountain bike around town. I fixed it up to the best of my 14-year-old ability, but whether it be the wheels falling off, or the brakes failing, that bike almost killed me a handful of times. Eventually I got sick of all the scrapes and scars and I bought my first mountain bike, it was a grey and green hardtail. It was on this bike that my relationship with my body really took shape.

A bike ride is a good time for introspection. With a stretch of flat road beneath your tires and a cool wind at your back, the mind is freed and able to wander across the landscape. 

I used to be a fat little kid, a fact that most find surprising given the shape of me now. Children are cruel, but they are honest. Though I was teased and taunted for it, everything I was told paled in comparison to the venom I spat at myself in the mirror. This was the first relationship I ever had with my body. One built on ire and insecurity, a relationship that bled hatred into my veins and made me turn inwards into myself.

But, it was also this relationship that first put my ass onto that bike seat. 

I miss the trails I grew up biking on, but Kingston isn't too bad. I follow the country roads and fly past the corn fields. It's peacef-

Crunch

My right foot pushed down, and where the bike should have pushed back, it gave way. The chain slipped free of the gnashing gears which means it's time to pull off the road and fix it.

I like my hands. The red knuckles and calloused skin represent the way that I interface with the world. The chain grease rubs off into the scars and grooves of my hand as I feel my way through the gears. A small push on the derailleur and a bit of finagling on the crankset and she's ready to ride again. 

My hands were also the first place I started to realize the change in my body. The softness of fat gave way to the muscles that now ripple through my forearm when I grab the handlebars; I could even start to trace the veins that webbed across them. Eventually the softness gave way to muscle, the locomotive system, once hidden, erupted to the surface. Every motion now visible and written in the tendons that now adorn my body. 

I’m not fat anymore, I should be happy in my  new leanness, but it never feels like enough.

The wind is on my face again and it has blown my mind to wandering. I think often of marble. Limestone born in the Mesozoic sea, thrust into the hinterlands of the Apennines and cooked to the white stone we see today. A white stone that was eventually quarried in Carrara only to find itself at the skilled hands of Michelangelo. 

 Maybe it’s stupid, but to me, the ideal of man has always been David. It’s a large part of why I got on a bike for the first time all those years ago, and it’s why I’m riding through the Frontenac countryside right now. Every sore limb, every rest day, every ounce of protein that is metabolized to patch the broken muscles is a grasping wretched crawl towards the perfection of stone. I want to look in the mirror and see the man who felled Goliath. 

I am not David, as much as I wish I were. When fingers run across my body they encounter flesh, not the porcelain white and serpentine veins. My muscles tear and pull, my bones break and shatter, and scars paint my body from head to toe. His shoulders sit in perfect contrapposto while mine are racked with sobs and weighed down by the years I've lived. When the limbic system lights up and the sickness wells up inside of me it is a reminder that I am meat, I am a body no matter how I try to coat myself in marble.

I’m riding back across the Lasalle, the water rushes past me and the tugboat floats gently in the current. The ride is coming to a close as I approach the start of my loop. One more stop before the end though. I lean my bike against the bakery window and go in to get myself a pastry and a root beer. I sit outside on a concrete barrier with the sun warming my back. 
Maybe this is the folly of man. Given the ability to see the divinity within ourselves,  we can only ever strive towards it. We carve it into stone, capture it in words, colour it with the brightest pigments we can find. We break our bodies so that we can mold it into that image, but we can never quite find the perfection that we seek within ourselves. 

Maybe it's for the best, lest we all drown in our own reflections like Narcissus.