This body is like all others,

it is there, even if not seen or felt, it is there. The idea that I am not within the boundaries of my body had to be felt not as an idea but as a sensation. Which led me to believe there is an unseen border between us and the other(s).

This border I look at much like that of an island. An island has its own land, land above water and land underneath the water. The “bodily” border of it would be where it meets the ocean, the felt border outside of the body would be all its unseeable space held underneath, where there is both land and water.

Between walkable land and the next foreseeable land there is water , we can choose to see it as something which links the two pieces of terrain, or as a separator of the two. It is possible to face our body as that of an island, one moving with a tide. There is a similar reduction to be made, that of the body, that of the space around the body, and that of the place where it is situated.

A relationship between these three notions is to be understood as one, as you and myself, as they are. In the same manner water reflects on to the land, our environment is reflected on to us, through our bodies.

I’ve grown affected by the restrictions of the island, delineated by a thick blue line. A solid appearance, as that of the land. (water is just fluid land). The sense of distance towards the world is an always present one, one starts to see the body as the island itself “The visible about us seems to rest in itself. It is as though our vision were formed in the heart of the visible, or as though there were between it and us an intimacy as close as between the sea and the strand. And yet it is not possible that we blend into it, nor that it passes into us, for then the "vision would vanish at the moment of formation, by disappearance of the seer or of the visible.” Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible, Northwestern University Press, 1968 131 - a dissociative state towards the world, its farness, seems to belong to islanders especially. It becomes more than a condition, it is a singular perspective I am grateful to share with my fellow islanders. But this is a double-sided perspective. On one hand, as described, we feel secluded from the world lá fora (out there) on the other the opposite is perceived. Being in a place that is of itself welcomes a sense of belonging and inter-connectedness both with the land, a huge backyard, and the people that share this experience with you, your neighbours.

Being “closed” within physical boundaries forces people to appreciate and embed this space as it embeds you. You can either see it as being stuck or being liberated. The sensation of distinction contrasted with that of insertion.
  

The border I’ve described, where the two meet, where the fish are separated from the humans, is where the crab lives its life. Dictated by the contrast, and change of planes, it sheds its skin as to adapt. Its shell hard, has been soft and moulded by its movement within the world. A solidified proof of exchange, made to be again replaced and left at the shore as one more swap in the site.

Site which surrounds our appearance in the world. The middle ground between our body and the world, a personal shoreline where some is given and othersome taken.