Intending to approach the human body as a physical object connected to the world rather than a sanctified and separated spirit-housing, I determined to spend 30 minutes sitting in the grass of a wooded area to see how the world would act upon me, use me, break me down and perhaps nourish me. My hypothesis was that I would see a bounty of evidence that the world was trying to reclaim me.

I say “reclaim” not because I have successfully separated myself from the world, but as an organism with a survival instinct my body functions as a self-preserving system, meaning I both consciously and autonomically achieve some level of separation from the world. I still eat, so my body is created entirely of earth and energy from sunlight, but my tastes, instincts and digestive system decide what will become part of me and what will pass right on through. My skin is perhaps the most obvious of the body’s attempts at separation. Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings … Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die.” The skin houses our organs, keeps everything in one package and protects us from environmental hazards that either seek us out (fleas, mosquitoes) or indifferent forces such as wind, rain and falling branches (small ones).

“It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.” Nabokov again. Well, I wanted to try anyway. Yes, I would try to mix with the landscape, and I had no intention of succeeding, only starting the process in order to realize that separation is only an impermanent solution to the unavoidable fact of reunion, the unavoidable fact that the body is and always will be connected to the earth.

Removing all my skin, I decided, would be too risky. My safer alternative to this action would be inaction. Voluntary and involuntary actions are in constant control of the body — a perpetual protection. Obviously, I could not stop involuntary functions like homeostasis, but I could — and this is what I did — remain seated, limiting my hand movements to writing and my head movements to reading. I could not scratch, swat, fidget, avoid or otherwise attempt to protect myself from discomfort, unless in an emergency, for half of an hour.

I imagined I would observe and philosophize about what it meant for a mosquito to pierce my sacred protective flesh and steal my blood to nourish herself and her offspring. Equally important, I guessed, would be my observation of the hay-fever phenomenon wherein the body overreacts to harmless pollen, mistaking it for a viral intruder. Then leaves would fall on me, suggesting that if I remained long enough I would be covered with organic material and would soon be reabsorbed into the soil.

Here’s what really happened:

I sat down, let my bare legs rest in a population of grass, violet flower plants and dead leaves, and I set my journal on my lap, ready to let the world happen to me and ready to take notes on the experience. Then for the next 12 minutes — I only lasted 12 — wrote frantically, almost involuntarily, about the unbearable sensation of ants crawling over my legs and trying to get up my shorts. Every five lines of writing, I made an attempt at noting the sensation of sunlight on my shoulders or a piece of bark that fell on me. But for the most part, I wrote three pages about ants.

Here is an excerpt:

“Enormous ant headed for me, daddy long-leg crawling up my inner-thigh, very difficult to resist moving! Something stirring under my leg. This is difficult! World’s largest ant on my right leg! Sh-t! Red ant! My legs are crawling! Something going up my shorts!”

Then on the last page I attempt to muse on the subject of the sun: “Right now, sunlight is helping my body process vitamin D, but if I spent too long out here, the sun — Damn! I got bit again! I’m done with this. Too many itches and bites and spiders and ticks dropping on me.”

It felt glorious to get up, stretch, brush my legs off and walk again. I could say my experiment was a failure — one single genus of insect dominated my thoughts — but that, in itself, says a lot about the civilized human body. It brought to my consciousness my body’s obsession with protecting itself.

Our sealed houses and paved living spaces have thickened the illusion that the human body has successfully removed itself from the world, free to pursue its own goals as if in a bubble of superiority with pores that accept only pasteurized, processed foods equally separated from the earth. But sit in the woods for 12 minutes and all your sacred goals are forgotten when a fat black ant disappears under your shorts.

Amien Essif is a junior in creative writing. He can be reached at [email protected].