muffled shouts

there's a hymn. it talks about unseen wounds, and how to heal them.

wound.

unless you're talking about clocks or stress or something, the word means an injury or a casualty. some bodily harm or figurative inner pain. to hurt. to bruise. all its synonyms feel so sharp in your mouth--incision, laceration, abrasion...

how could a person be wounded and not know it? pain is one of those really hard-to-ignore sensations. it's meant to be noticed and demands to be fixed. but I suppose the hymn is talking about spiritual wounds. the kind that aren't so hard to ignore, perhaps.

but even physically, there are a billion things inside our bodies that we can hardly imagine. the inner workings of cells and blood vessels. neurons and segments of DNA. there may be wounds on such levels that are impossible to notice.

I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake a few weeks ago. it was a very easily devoured slice of literature, but it had a weirdness to it. I'll let you go read about the weirdness for yourself, if you want, while I sit here and tell you nothing much more than you could read on the back cover about the story. it's about a girl who can taste the emotions (or lack thereof) of the people (or factories) who produced the food she eats. and it's usually the emotions people aren't completely aware of. the depression or guilt they've buried far, far beneath their normal lives. or the anger or love or neediness that's screaming silently, deep in their souls.

why do we hide things from ourselves like that? is it out of self-preservation, or something? denial, or self-delusion? do we imagine that the things we refuse to acknowledge really don't exist? or at least that they won't effect us if we can manage to ignore them?

or is it so willful at all? what if we honestly don't notice these wounds we carry? what if these missing pieces in our hearts really are impossible to detect? what if it is not my fault?