“Physical pain has no voice, but when it at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story.” — Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain
Write about an experience of being sick or injured. You are free to recount the event of injury or accident, the what of time in a hospital, the slip-clips of your lengthy recovery. But, let those be ancillary writings. The purpose of this exercise is to try your best to capture the feeling of being a body when it hurts.
My guess is that something comes to mind right away. If not, it doesn’t have to be big—just something you remember, a bee you stepped on that summer, a wriggling tooth at 10. You could think of the most recent feeling of pain—even toward the line of discomfort—you’ve had.
Be experimental, because you have to be. The philosopher Elaine Scarry wrote about pain as the end of language. Perhaps so. Test the limit.
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