Lock-downs and liberty

Sue Wootton

Remember MRS GREN, the mnemonic for the biological features necessary for organic life? Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion, Nutrition. The great shared factor – the one that is present in them all – is movement, which occurs at some level, micro or macro, during every one of these functions. This intimate association between life and movement is reflected in human languages, which are laden with movement-related metaphors, imagery and symbolism. In English, for example, we speak of life cycles and seasonal cycles, of money or kindness making the world go round, of giving the nod or of shaking things off. We advise ‘going forward’ and ‘moving on’. We run ideas past other people; we are caught on the hop; we leap to conclusions; we take it step by step. Life, we say, is a journey. Sometimes we see the path clearly and lope along. Sometimes, however, we can’t see the woods for the trees, or our plans are stalled, or the wheels fall off, and everything comes to a grinding halt.

If your physical mobility is constrained through injury or illness, you’ll already know the impact that loss of freedom of movement can have on your sense of self. You’ll already be aware of the extent to which who you are, in our ableist culture, tends to be very connected to what you can do. And you probably also understand how the onset of physical disability or immobility can force a serious re-jigging of ideas about who you think you are, a re-evaluation of your life’s meaning and purpose and of what really matters. It wouldn’t surprise me if the requirement to stay at home during the Covid-19 pandemic triggers a similar re-jigging for many people, especially for those whose identity is usually thoroughly wrapped up in a job, sport or outdoor recreational pursuit that it is currently not possible to do. Rarely do so many people at once get thrown by sudden immobility onto their personal inner resources, but here we are, all of us seriously constrained and needing to find new ways to move and connect.

Constraints on freedom of physical movement are a reminder that we have (in a sense) two bodies: a biological one and a subjective one (your body of the inner self, of sensation, personal feeling, thought and imagination). These ‘bodies’ are deeply inter-connected and interdependent, and if things are running smoothly their bonds are seamless and invisible. But if freedom of movement is curtailed? Bind the physical body, wrote Emily Dickinson (in her poem number 384) and the other body flies. Her poem is a meditation on the role of consciousness and the imagination in achieving liberty despite confinement. Timely words for all of us right now.

No Rack can torture me –
My Soul – at Liberty –
Behind this mortal Bone
There knits a bolder One –

You cannot prick with Saw –
Nor pierce with Scimitar –
Two Bodies – therefore be –
Bind one – The Other fly –

The Eagle of his Nest
No easier divest –
And gain the Sky
Than mayest Thou –

Except Thyself may be
Thine Enemy –
Captivity is Consciousness –
So’s Liberty.

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Sue Wootton is co-editor of Corpus.