Disembodied

Did you ever feel like you're having an out-of-body experience? I think I had something akin to that today, and it happened in the most unlikely of ways.

A friend of mine who I have not been able to see in person for fifty-eight days now sent a photo to me that someone took of her at a socially distant gathering where she lives. We talk every day, and Zoom or FaceTime multiple times during the week. This photo showed her from head-to-toe, and I gasped a little when I saw it, not because of what she was wearing (a tie-dyed shirt and a wide-brimmed hat) or what she was holding (a stuffed dog that plays Christmas music), but because I remembered that she had a body: a torso, arms, and legs.

I realized today that video chats create a kind of disembodiment, if that's even the right term for what I experienced. While I do see people walking and moving about their business in my neighborhood or at the dreaded grocery store in all their embodied God-given glory, the people who I talk to the most—friends and coworkers—remain floating heads on the screen with their lips never quite catching up to their voices. In photography or videography, if a piece of the image is off-camera, the mind can fill in the missing details. For example, if you photograph a cloud but don't get the whole thing, your brain knows that the rest of the cloud exists, even if you can't see it. Today, though, I discovered that my mind has stopped filling in the gaps, and it was jarring.

I guess I'm going to have to practice filling in those gaps a little more because if I ask people to stand up and show me their bodies, it could get a little weird, even in these weird times.