On visiting smoggy China: “Leave your lungs at home and rent some when you get there” — reddit user tankfox.
The above painting was made by Danielle Morgan. She is followable on Facebook and Instagram.
During my brief college foray, I had a conversation with a fellow student named Jimmy, who told me there was no need to think of the body as ending where human skin stopped. For instance, you can consider the municipal plumbing system to be a vast expansion of your digestive tract. The poop is not gone — rather, it has entered a phase of the alimentary canal that you share with everyone else in the city (or whatever region is appropriate).
Jimmy also trounced me at chess a few times.
The connection with Danielle’s painting is that the subject’s lungs extend beyond where you’d expect them to end. (I suspect her consciousness does the same.) Similarly, a tourist using a respirator in Beijing has augmented their original physical capabilities. The self cannot be separated from its physical context. We are defined by the space we inhabit.
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