| Chapter 2: | Solace |
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Solace
What would our lives be like if we took earthworms seriously, took the ground under our feet, rather than the skies high above our heads, as the place to look, as well, eventually, as the place to be? It's as though we have been pointed in the wrong direction.
—Phillips (1999, pp. 60–61)4
At first, I don't know that a worm5 is to become the body through which I will contemplate the wounds and wounding of dys-body. My own vulnerability.6 After our encounter, I begin looking at the ground, even underground, as I search to understand the experience of vulnerability. The trace of the shift in my perceptual field is soon evident; I question the direction and ground of my own scholarly research, as well as that of others. My thoughts, suspicious of this new order, are impatient; I ask them to hold their restless judgement in abeyance.7
