Growing up as a gymnast instilled this innate understanding of my body as an instrument. It's funny how whatever you learn as a child seems to embed itself as natural process. In public places, I sometimes feel my body preparing for a front tuck as I'm walking. It feels strange to my bones that something so fluid to my being would cause social disruption.
But I do see my body as belonging to a world beyond itself. I feel that any pair of eyes could be on me at any moment and I hold myself with a certain self-consciousness. It is a body to be looked at, as anything belonging to the earth. Yet it is the only thing I own.
