Interesting Peter Levine clip

A surge of protoplasm

In the end they traded their tired wings, for the resignation that living brings, and they traded love's bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge: in a moment they were swept before the deluge.

Jackson Browne - After the Deluge  

Life is the swelling and ebbing of our primordial fluid: a sudden surge of protoplasm. 

The bony endo-shell of vertebrates tends to hide this truth: it's clearer for amoebae.

A happy protozoan swims to and fro: in electrolytic bio-soup: by an osmotic wriggling of his waters:  toward a nutrifying chemical reward: fro-ward toxins.

O joyous microbe! Would we were so unconfused.

An acquaintance of mine, a medical doctor and psychiatrist to trade ( and therefore, one would think, somewhat knowledgable of matters human ), wants collagen implants in her tubercles. Her lips it seems are overly wee to her taste.

Now, one mustn't, as a well-known virgin once said, make windows into men's souls - nor indeed should we put padlocks on a soul's cravings for body modification: tattoos, piercings, scarification, gauging, and so on, are near universal modes of human cultural expression, and should be just as acceptable as clothes or makeup - but in this case I disagree with the basic premise.

The conversation went like this:

She: I'm going to get collagen lip enhancements.

I: But lips in their natural form are wonderful. Working on the same basic principles as the penis, they become engorged with  blood to signify positive, outgoing emotional states, and shrivel to display introversion, and the emotions of withdrawal.

She: No, it's not true. I don't believe you!

I:  It is so! Cheer yourself up by getting some good sex or even some regular exercise that you enjoy, and your lips will plump themselves up in no time.

She:  Nah! I'm gonna beat the system. Big lips will help me pull a hunk.

…

Now, what annoys me about this interaction is not so much that a professional head-med had never been introduced to such a basic tenet of anatomical hydraulics as labial motility, and such a clear sign of emotional condition, but that it's another example of how our culture ignores obvious aspects of our animal physicality.  I'm sorry that I even have to state this, in fact, to shout it:  WE SWELL WITH FORWARD, OUTWARD FEELINGS - WE SHRINK WITH BACKWARD INWARD ONES.

Consider a man in fear. He 'shrinks back'. The 'blood drains from his face', 'the hairs on the back of his neck stand up' (as the strong back muscles literally pull him away from the frightening stimulus). Even the most extreme symptoms of fear - 'he shits himself' - can be seen as a feature of the overall inward and backward movement.

The usual explanations given for this phenomenon are tenuous: either that defecating makes an animal lighter, the better to run away; or that the mess will make a predator believe it is diseased and not worth eating. The first is silly because losing the first seconds of a panicked escape in this way would be bad strategy, the second is unlikely because predators can invariably digest the gut contents of their prey. No, at least a significant factor in this behaviour is the mechanical pressure of a flow of blood away from the periphery and into the viscera. [...and, yes, Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory gives a more elaborate account of the neural signalling involved...]

Consider too the outward-going emotions of joy or anger: blood rushes to the face and hands: after a separation lovers meet and are pneumatically flung into an embrace: in rage, we surge forward faster than we possibly could (in a planned and considered action).

And in love, the lips swell. The same phenomenon occurs in bioenergetic therapy, with many patients reporting that their lips have grown after they begin to release the blocks formed by abuse, neglect and trauma.


But why do they swell: the mechanism is blood flow, but what is the purpose? The wonderful answer is that lips are for kissing. They're also for testing the temperature of food etcetera … but most of all, they're for kissing.

We are one of few species to give off such a symbol of affection, and interesting theories have been proposed to explain it. Desmond Morris saw much of human sexual characteristics as being the outcome of our upright stance. Other primates get swollen rumps when in oestrus, but we perform our mating dance face-to-face: lips have become visible analogues of genitals, and the large mammaries of women are proxies for the ancestral marker of fecundity - the buttocks.

So lips are the body's means of expressing emotion:  to stop them doing so by filling them with plastic  is an utter denial of the true self, in a sense it is the ultimate act of narcissism - irrevocably placing  image before integrity.

If Porges is right, and he is, and engagement of the myelinated mammalian vagus which controls facial expression is key to reducing stress and releasing the hormones of relaxation and trust - then by surgically modifying our faces we are cutting ourselves off from society, and from fulfillment... and possibly even increasing our risk of mental and bodily illness: definitely keeping our heartrates higher than they should be.


I'm nearly   done on lips, except to mention the remarkable fact that studies show that the bigger a woman's lips - particularly the middle tubercle of the top lip - the more likely she is to experience vaginal orgasms.

We are our bodies, and only by making peace with them do we make peace with ourselves and the rest of the world