Vaginas in love and brains fucking

"Which do you like more," he asked, "My body or my brain?"

To which, I, who like to be clever (the way the British use the word), promptly replied, "I don't believe in duality. You are you. If you insist on dualities, I like your writing. But I don't like you less than it. Your perception and ideas - and therefore you - are always conditional to the embodiment you are in. One can no longer think of man as the rational animal, or any form of Cartesian metaphysical duality involving a ghost in a machine." I could have added: "That question is based on the ancient, but also modern, assumption that the mental and the material are of substantantially different magisteria," but then I would have been waxing at that point.

At any rate, that word vomit was undeserved, after such a seemingly simple, not to mention brief and direct, question. It's like answering the question, "Can you tell me what time it is?" with, "Yes." It's  missing the entire point of the statement, "I want to fuck your brains out," and proceed to verbal diarrhea a treatise on how one in fact means fuck until thought no longer applies, until the mind no longer functions in the quotidian and shot straight through to the sublime; and not fuck until brain matter starts oozing out of ears, much, I imagine, to the chagrin of the one who wanted to fuck your brains out. (Who now I am imagining is now frantically gathering his clothes and bolted out the door, leaving his boxers in haste.) Pedantry as reply to an invitation is a way never to get your brains fucked out. Or even fucked, period.

Pedantry which, of course, I will write here. I am, after all, clever (again, the way the British use the word).

Consider, for instance, putting a PhD toga on this majesy. Or better yet, imagine living with her, walking in on her like this before putting on said toga:

Without thinking too much about it, or at all, even, that would be the ideal solution for the duality of the question, would it not? A sexy genius, is, after all, the best deal to be gotten out of the choice between any idiot who can be born with good genes or a nerd with all the attractiveness of potato soup. 

But also, of course, see, and by that I mean, think of it, that that delicious thought experiment I just put you through is rigged, as all clever machinations are. I asked you to imagine her first in a sensual pose, then add the identity of a doctor on top of it. The reverse, after all, wouldn't quite work: for what could I rig to begin with to make you see a beautiful brain? A picture of Russell Crowe?

The body and the material is what we see, first, foremost, originarily. Always already embodiment is there. However, far be it from being the ship that Plato envisioned it to be, or the extended machine that Descartes did, it is that which allows for being, and thought. No longer can we envision a Cartesian theater occupied by a homunculus that controls its bigger part counterparts that stick out to the world. 

The body is always already there. It is our intermediary between this rather nebulous thing we call "self" and the world. It is not only of the physical, although it is, brutely, that, but it is that which we use to interpret the world, and hence cannot be interpreted itself without generating Orouboroi-Hydra so complex it would shudder your brain to its very architecture: Not for nothing did Hofstadter say, "I am a Strange Loop."

There is a mentality to the body that is mental in its very embodiment: it is our - us, in the most fundamental sense - sui generis process of being. 

So in response to the question above, it would have been better on all accounts to answer, rather like a simpleton whose profile on OKCupid would read, "Personality trait: I love to travel," "Uh, I like you."

The simplest answers are the best, because, like all simple things, they are elegant in formulation and pregnant in possibility. What we did, though, as a species, was start with the rather simplistic idea that body and brain are two different boxes, and we still inherit that through to today. In fact, our culture is going through, if it is possible, a further simplification of the body into parts: nanotechnological tissue, eternal porn, objectification led by social media influencers, "No ovary no voice" slogans. 

Merleau-Ponty would roll over in his grave. Foucault would.. also do the same, although with more pizzazz, and a pinkie in salute to his ideal world where vaginas fall in love and brains fucked each other.

Image source: https://drawingandillusion.blogspot.com/2015/04/visual-grammar-chapter-8-why-nature.html