D H LAWRENCE AND THE BODY

.................................... Discovered by Elizabeth Little

.......Elizabeth has found this stunning piece of writing by D H Lawrence that’s the perfect follow-up to my last blog The Ghost in the Machine. Let’s forgive Lawrence his sexist language – it was the style in his day. Really, he is anything but macho. .......................Stanley

............... On Being a Man
................By D H Lawrence

......Man is a thought adventurer,
Which isn’t the same as saying that man has an intellect. In intellect there is skill and tricks. To the intellect the terms are given, as the chessmen and rules are given in the game of chess. Real thought on the other hand is an experience, which begins as a change in the blood, a slow convulsion and revolution in the body itself. It can end as a new piece of awareness a new reality of being.
.....In order to think in this way man must risk himself doubly. First he must go forth and meet life in the body, and only then can he face the result in his mind.
.....The risk is double because man is double. Each of us has two selves. First is this body which is vulnerable and never quite within our control but the self that occupies that body part of me I can never fully finally know. It lets me in for so much irrational suffering, real torment and just occasional frightening delight. That me that is in my body is like a jungle in which dwells an unseen me, like a black panther in the night, whose two eyes glare green through my dreams. Or, if a shadow falls through my waking day.
.....Then there is this other me that is fair faced and reasonable and sensible and complex and full of good intentions. This is the known me which can be seen and appreciated. I say of myself ‘yes I know I’m impatient and rather intolerant in ideas. But in the ordinary way of life I am quite easy and rather kindly. My kindliness sometimes makes me a bit false. But then I don’t believe in mechanical honesty.’
.....This is the known me having a talk with itself. It sees a reason for every thing it does and feels. It has a certain unchanging belief in its own good intentions. It tries to steer a sensible and harmless course among all the other people and personalities around itself.
......To this known me everything exists as KNOWLEDGE. I am what I know I am. Nothing exists beyond what I know except the acquisition of more things to know.
......So this is how we live. We proceed from what we know already to what we know next.
......Take the case of men and women. A man proceeding from his known self likes a woman because she is in sympathy with what he knows. He feels that he and she know one another. They marry and then the fun begins. In so far as they know one another they can proceed from their known selves, they are as right as ninepence. Loving couple etc. But as soon as there is real blood contact a strange discord enters in. She is not what he thought her. He is not what she thought him. It is the other primary or bodily self appearing very often like a black demon out of the fair creature who was erst the beloved.
.....The man who before marriage seemed everything that was delightful, after marriage begins to come out in his true colours a son of the old and rather hateful Adam. And she who was an angel of loveliness and desirability emerges as an almost fiendlike daughter of the snake-frequenting Eve.
......What has happened?
......Marriage is the great puzzle of our day. It is our sphinx riddle. Solve it or be torn to bits is the decree.
......When man and woman actually meet, there is always terrible risk to both of them.
There is always risk, for both him and for her. Take the risk, make the adventure. Suffer but enjoy the change in the blood. And if you are a man, slowly, slowly make that great experience of realizing- fully totally conscious realization. If you are a woman on the other hand make the same great experience of realizing within you the strange slumberous serpentine essence which knows without thinking.