On Monday, I fell.
It was sudden. A small accident. A concussion. The body that I write about — the body as archive, the body as site of knowledge — hit the ground.
And suddenly theory became very physical. I am studying how embodied ritual practices carry cultural memory. I speak about breath, balance, thresholds, liminality. And then my own body enters a different threshold — dizziness, slowness, fog.
On Monday I also have to submit my first assignment for Oxford. And I ask myself:
What does it mean to write about embodiment when your head hurts?
What does it mean to speak of restored behaviour when your own movements feel unstable?
This week, research stopped being abstract. I realised that what I am designing — a qualitatively driven embedded mixed methods study — is not just structure. It is a way of holding complexity. Practice is my core. Movement labs, field visits, collaboration — they are not illustrations of ideas. They are thinking.
But now I see something more. The archive is fragile. Cultural memory moves through bodies — and bodies fall. They break. They heal. They forget and remember again.
My hybrid philosophy — critical realism and pragmatism — suddenly feels personal. Yes, ritual and performance are real forces shaping social life. But knowledge is always partial. Situated. Mediated through a vulnerable body.
This week my body reminds me: embodiment is not a metaphor. As I prepare my Oxford assignment, I feel the tension between structure and fragility. Between academic clarity and physical limitation. Between deadlines and recovery.
Perhaps this, too, is part of the research. Liminality is not only in temples and ceremonies.
It is in the space between stability and imbalance.
Between certainty and fog.
Between falling and rising again.
Maybe the archive is not only preserved through strength — but through care.
And so I move slowly. I write carefully. I listen more closely to my own body.
Because the body I am studying is the same body that fell.