hanging,

bodily idling in order to free the mind — a human’s “temporary unbodying” via self-imposed immobility or repeated action: literally hanging in a treetop, hopping on stones across a creek in the woods, slowly coasting or flying a closed route, simply staring into a point. An opposite of intake, hanging implies a degree of sensory isolation (even though what started as an intake can, if overstretched, congeal into a hang). Physiologically, prolonged hanging is reminiscent of sleep but differences run deep: a hang may segue into sleep but just as often, hours or days of hanging culminate — as if a fuse blows — in a burst of emotional activity. ■    Change let humans conquer, for the first time ever, the “Brownian motion imperative” — one of evolution’s oldest behavioral patterns: one can now hang truly indefinitely, unbothered by hunger or other lower-body needs. Early incidents of runaway hanging sparked alarms, scares: how do you tell a profound meditation from a fainting fit? How — how soon — do you try to rescue a hanger, if at all? (What if a pandemic of lethargy spreads, deepens?) Now basic hanging safety is taught in childhood; with inner wake-up clocks and personalized exit training, hanging became a valuable if still slightly risky exercise, often part of the productive routine: e.g. the trance-like slowness and “unhuman patience” of serious arf sculpting are hard to achieve without a hanging experience.

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