A GAME TO PLAY WITH YOUR BODY

A GAME TO PLAY WITH YOUR BODY is an internal roleplaying game for one player. To play, start by going to a quiet space with as few distractions as you can manage. Play will start in the next passage. You should be aware that this game will ask you to focus on your body in ways that might be unusual or uncomfortable, and deals with thoughts related to multiple consciousnesses and agency. This is a work of fiction. [[OKAY, I'll play.]] [[NO, THANK YOU. This is not for me.]]

Close your eyes and keep them closed for as long as is comfortable. Open them when you start to feel uncomfortable. When you've reopened your eyes, blink a few times to readjust to the world. Does it feel like you've just woken up now? Has the world changed? How is it different? [[How curious.]]

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Choose your favourite body part. Don't worry -- it's just for right now, and the other body parts don't need to know. If you can see this body part, spend some time observing it and getting to know it. If you cannot, picture its presence in your mind's eye. Attune yourself to this part of the body you find yourself in. [[Attuned.]]

Is this part an extension of yourself, a container that you fill, or is it more like a presence, separate from your own? Try to tense this chosen body part now. [[Trying to tense it.]]

Did it obey? Did you know without thinking exactly how to make this body respond, or did you operate by trial and error until you focused in on the correct group of tissues, nerves and muscles? Were you able to tense this part at all, or just the tissues that surround it? [[How curious...]]

Are you comforted or disquieted? Now, take a deep breath as you try to quiet your mind for a moment. Focus on the sound of your breathing and think of nothing else for as long as you are comfortably able. [[What is the first thought to intrude?]]

What is the first thought to intrude? Was it one of your own? Was it somehow alien, like a voice coming in over the radio? [[Well...]]

Are the subconscious parts of your brain, the ones that whisper at night, the ones that sometimes keep you , really "you"? Do you control them? Who got here first, you or them? Are "you" them? "You" can be plural, after all. [[Sorry.]]

Sorry, there was no need for that. That was uncalled for, and you were hopefully not unsettled. Of course you can't keep every aspect of yourself in mind at once. [[Of course.]]

Of course some parts are dormant. It makes you wonder, though. What combination of those aspects are "you" made up of? What is your essential "you-ness" made up of at any one time? How do you know that you're you, and not someone else? [[That first thought...]]

That first intruding thought just earlier...was it familiar to you, or did it feel like another presence, separate from your own consciousness? Such presences can be insidious -- after all, they literally appear to come from the inside. [[Maybe--]]

Maybe -- maybe you can isolate or identify other such intruders. This is a situation that you must handle with care. You could try to trick the "other" -- "others"? -- into showing their presence. If they exist, you can surely learn to detect their presence, train yourself to be alert. They likely mean you no harm, at least not for now, [[but...]]

But the continuity of your consciousness is what makes you -- with all those disparate concerns, needs, and forms of knowledge -- you. [[Right?]]

Take a moment to think back through your day. Do you have continuity? When is the last time that you lost that continuity? Did you wake up from a nap, or come back to yourself from a daydream? Where did you go, and who held down the fort in the meantime? [[Focus.]]

You could focus on cultivating habits that keep you in the present. Try this. Take your nondominant hand and raise it to an ear. Trace the ridges of your ear. [[Keep it up for about a minute.]]

What happened? Were your thoughts more lucid, closer to you, or did they slip further away? Was your ear feeling the touch of your hand, or was your hand feeling your ear? Where was your consciousness focused? Did you live in your hand or in your ear? [[You will find that hair is another matter entirely.]]

You will find that hair is another matter entirely. In fact, for most, the seat of consciousness is drawn to the place where the most nerve endings are active at any one time. Now then, if you have short hair and touch your scalp through it, you may find that your consciousness lives in your scalp. If you have some available, touch your longer locks. Most of the sensation is probably rooted firmly in your fingertips. [[Sensation -- being sensate -- draws one's attention and consciousness quite firmly.]]

Sensation -- being sensate -- draws one's attention and consciousness quite firmly. Ah, but it wouldn't do to forget that you are looking for strategies to detect the others that quite possibly share your body with you. [[Have you ever had a restless limb?]]

Have you ever had a restless limb? Have you ever found that you couldn't quite keep your leg from jiggling under the table, possibly in anticipation or boredom, except by effort of will, telling that limb to, for the love of cats, stop jiggling? What -- or whose -- purpose could that limb have been serving? Maybe, you'll tell yourself, that's just a nervous tic. [[Maybe that's so. Maybe it isn't.]]

Maybe that's so. Maybe it isn't. Now, how about this: think about someone else yawning -- picture them, if you can. [[What happened?]]

Did you yawn? Did you want to yawn? Where did that urge come from? Bodies are weird, you grant, but that doesn't mean that anything "other" than yourself lives in here with you, [[right?]]

But nobody said that the others weren't yourself. Do you speak another language with some fluency? They say, and maybe you've heard this before, that you might be a different person when you speak a different language. That language shapes our thoughts and opinions, our personalities. Just...for example. Try it out for yourself, although you might not be able to tell the difference. [[Or...]]

Have you ever found your words getting away from you in a heated argument, knowing even as you said them that you did not believe your own words? Have you ever behaved so competitively in what you might call "the heat of the moment" only to be shamed at your behaviour afterwards? Have you ever apologized and said, "I was not myself?" [[Maybe you were not.]]

Maybe you were not. You're starting to understand, and maybe you're thinking, "yes, but if it isn't anything more sinister than that, why, that's just what it is to be human -- irrational, changeable." The behaviours you have examined so far are the clumsy ones, the easiest to detect. [[You can, in fact, be much more subtle, much more insidious --]]

You can, in fact, be much more subtle, much more insidious -- so "inside" and so internalized that the signs of an other might be no more than an itch or a tingle, or a sudden craving. [[Take a moment.]]

Take a moment. Inhale at your own pace, holding a deep breath for a moment or two. Now, after you conclude this series of instructions, close your eyes and examine your body through your other senses, through movement and proprioception. Tighten, squeeze, and flex individual muscles and parts, becoming aware of them. Do any speak back to you? A returning tingle, a slight ache? If there was none, your others may be clever indeed. [[But do not despair.]]

Do not despair. The point of alerting you to all of this was not simply to alarm you. In fact, it is not as if there is a way to be rid or shed of the others who share your body. In fact, they may prove useful allies and companions -- the competitive one, the French one, the ones who you are when you are not yourself. [[You can tempt yourself.]]

You can tempt yourself. Although it may not be to your taste, a little competition may be just the thing to see you through that unpleasant chore. Maybe the promise of a reward might do you well. Maybe, in French, there is something of the philosopher in you. [[If you are already multiple, you may as well make use of yourself.]]

If you are already multiple, you may as well make use of yourself. My advice is to make friends, or at the very least, find enough common ground to sign a truce. [[...]]

This is an experimental prototype thinking through questions around embodiment and play for the reflective games workgroup. You can find more about my work and writing at http://www.jeka.games You can find me on twitter at @jekagames.