State of Nature

And the majority of people
Feel that it's in their heads
That civilisations in different periods of history
Have differed about this

Some people feel that they exist in the solar plexus
Other people feel that they exist about here
But in American culture today
Or in western culture in general
Most people think that they exist in here
And there is as it were a little man
Sitting inside the centre of the skull

So we say in popular speech
"I have a body"
Not "I am a body"
But "I have one"
Because I am the owner of the body
In the same way that I own an automobile
And I can take the automobile to the mechanic
And occasionally in the same way
I have to take my body to the mechanic
The surgeon, the dentist, the doctor
And have it repaired

But it belongs to me
It goes along with me, I'm in it
A child, for example, can ask it's mother
"Mom, who would I have been if my father had been someone else?"
That seems a perfectly simple and logical question
For a child to ask
Because of the presumption
That your parents gave you your body

I say, I think, I walk, I talk
I feel that my heart beating, my hair growing, my bones shaping
Is something that happens to me
And I don't know how it's done
But other things I do
And next I feel quite surely
That everything outside my body is most definitely not me