Situated in the lower quadrants of a human’s apical section, morphologically delineated from other segments of the human body by a rigid metal structure denoting the termination of the curved spatial plane of the aforementioned apical section, is a strange aperture. It is inexplicable that there is an opening from the external world unto its insides; I imagine that a human is a structure that naturally lends itself to being turned inside-out. The opening is surrounded by a fleshier component, a buffer region that smoothens the transition from hard atmospheric space to soft biographical space.
It must be particularly painful to have its guts exposed perpetually to the outside; this opening seems to invite a particular kind of intimate violation—the kind in which a body becomes a borderland. A borderland, a liminal structure whose anatomy configures the passing of one space (outside) into another (inside, which is hollow), is a terminally uncertain existence. Points at the boundaries of a Mandelbrot set exhibit chaotic behavior—small changes in initial conditions cause extreme changes in some natural structures. The human appears to be one such structure; both the space contained within and the space external to the shell-body of the human appear to be stable, but the peripheral component of this bounded physical mass tends toward chaotic, random behavior. Space will progress smoothly and regularly into and out of the human, through the intermittent openings and closings of the aperture, but the human itself carries its body in strange, unpredictable ways. But while a human can be theorized in similar mathematical terms to the Mandelbrot set, a difference appears in the impulse of the human towards opposing or rejecting its own liminal existence.
This denial of its own uncanny ontological state is a particularly fascinating characteristic of the human and is exemplified by its general commitment to the shutting of its apical aperture. The origin of this anxiety regarding the nature of its own body as a borderland is, perhaps, the uncertainty that this particular ontology denotes about its existence. To allow constant entry into a body’s interior is not an act that can be learned. That would be an ontological denial of a certain kind. A mixing of the atmosphere with the interior space of a body renders it nonexistent, naturally, because there are no allowances for discreteness when there is constant entry. The body will become only a peripheral intermediary of atmospheric passage in and out of the space contained within it; to allow this to be true of its existence, I believe, would necessitate that the human structure be in possession of an ecological understanding of existence rather than a discrete one.
But I have observed the human to be generally preoccupied with the maintenance of its discreteness. This, ostensibly, is why it keeps the aperture generally sealed by the pressing together of two halves of the buffer region. Its separateness from atmospheric particulate matter. The insistence with which the human closes its apical aperture is symptomatic of this extreme anxiety. Something about the human appears to be diametrically opposed to the possibility of ecological existence—it is undetermined whether such an opposition is innate or conditioned. But the existence of the human itself appears to be contingent upon its own understanding of itself as separate from others; I believe that should it ever question this self-realized discreteness, that it would cease to exist. Extinction of the particular anatomical structure of the human will happen if ever it should try to keep its apical aperture open. The human will pass out of existence if it keeps its guts bared—if it allows for the confusion of the atmospheric and the biographical.
The apical aperture of a human is also the site of a poignant dialectic: the human is constantly negotiating its need to un-become from its original state of being borderland with its apparent desire to alleviate the alienation that such an endeavor would require. The closing of the human apparatus to the outside atmosphere is, in one sense, a method of preserving its discreteness (which, as previously mentioned, appears pivotal to its continued existence), and, in another sense, an act that condemns the human to unresolvable alienation from external particulate matter—including other collections of particles in anatomical constellations, such as other humans. So, while the closure of the human apical aperture saves itself from a personal extinction, it also, tragically, necessitates self-alienation.
This dialectical tension plays out, fittingly, at the very site of its conception—the apical aperture. The aperture appears to radiate soundwaves at unpredictable intervals, which are intercepted by other humans in the vicinity and elicit a similar response. The emitting of such radiations—and the collision of them in the interaction of two or more human structures—is, beautifully, the functional sharing of internal spaces. It is a compromise to the obligation of a human to isolate its internal spaces to keep on living, and the sadness of perpetual self-exile of biographical space from atmospheric components, which includes other human beings.
It is in this way that the apical aperture appears to be metonymic of the human structure’s negotiation of its existence. This aperture is site to humanity’s greatest ontological concerns. The anatomical particulate constellation of the human therefore is anchored at this mouth.