Review

08.8.2021

During vacation I went to the beach with a simple task, to read at least two stories I’ve been wanting to read and write about the experience of reading and processing them through. Sounds vain, but I saw it as a mindful exercise.. heck you gotta start somewhere.

Diary of a body

I thought it was interesting when I read what it’s about, and I had been wanting to read it since may. The author (Daniel Pennac) tells the real story of his friend’s father who kept this lifelong diary, describing his body’s sensations and evolution from the age of 12–87. Writing about stories of how he wants raised, how he started to take care of his body and how he prepares for the future, how he sees other bodies and especially female’s, how he became a father and grandfather, and how his body and mind went through every sickness until the last one that took his life slowly.

In the beginning I think he wanted to get to know his body so he would own it in a real sense, gain control over his muscles and separate his physiology from his mental state or anxiety, because he certainly didn’t feel like he was mentally in control from the way he was raised. It helped him gain more confidence and focused knowledge towards his body, because he understood it’s his living organism, his property, his temple.

He started the journal when he was a sissy. Quite a skinny, weak kid afraid and sensitive of anything alive and moving. That’s why he decided to get the power somehow. He didn’t want to let the outside world (starting from his mummy) push him around, that’s how I would put it. So he found this model, a definition in his dictionary of a very fit athlete’s body, almost transparent (little amount of body fat), with each of his veins, fibers and built muscle showing through his skin. That was who he wanted to be one day, and he was willing to work on his body every day, and he would even keep notes.

The book/diary was very long, a walkthrough of the most important chapters of this person’s life, and random entries or funny stories here and there. Little life lessons really. Towards the end, I became so attached to this body’s story and all it had been through, that I couldn’t stop reading his agony towards the end of his life.

You can tell I really cared about this book, and there’s of course a message that comes with this (sort of biography) book, being aware of our individual bodies and what they are able to do for us. Even though this paragraph is pretty hard for me to write about, I’ll say this; it was a call for me to note my body and its power. There’s so much power our bodies have, even if you’re sitting in a wheelchair like me, you still have power and potential believe it or not, and by learning to separate our anxiety, or anything that influences our bodies negatively, we get more control over ourselves.

This was delayed, but I might write about the other story soon.