I've got a one-track mind about my digestive system these days. Friends would point out, this is not much different than usual.
I've been reading BodyStories, a book of experiential anatomy by Andrea Olsen with one of my classes, and have been excited by the idea that we evolved from starfish-like creatures into vertebrates to not shit out our mouths. This is my interpretation of the information. It is good to think that we didn't develop brains to comprehend anything in an objective way. Rather, the brains ended up in our heads where our mouths were - and started understanding everything in light of that end of our digestive system. In this way, out the other. One-way path. No mixing. Separation of stuff. The moral system reels out of this (long as our small intestines), as my friend Sharon Estacio notes.
To be fair brains aren't just in our heads - they run down our spines and feather out into every tip. And each cell of our body does the dirty work on its micro-level - absorbing and dispensing in the same gulp. Here we trace back to single celled organisms - who didn't know the difference, or why that might be bad.
I'm continuing to unpeel. I am so pleased with the thought that our brains might or could have developed in our asses that I dedicate this corsette undo-ing on the up-turned tree to that alternate universe of possibility.
