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On attending a gross anatomy lecture.
1.
These dead open their bodies to the living
Like a door
2.
We shift restlessly on our feet, scenting
unfamiliar chemicals in the air,
sharp and unforgiving
blades of light reflecting mercilessly
from the hard edges of the stainless steel bier.
All her softness is undone, denuded.
She is muscle and bone.
Her chest is open like a book.
Lung lobes unfurled.
Her heart on display.
It is not heart-shaped,
but a fist of pure muscle
anchored to her body by cords
corridors for rushing tides of blood.
This is her heart, it is a piece of clockwork flesh.
This is not her heart, it is a piece of clockwork flesh.
That is is the miracle and the mud of it
That is the stellar and the chthonic of it
That is the comprehensible and the incomprehensible of it
Her heart, here and now in the cold blue light
a cherished locket
adrift in an evidence bag
3.
He lifts the layers of her
flesh like a veil, veins and nerves ribboning from her thinly muscled bones
Here, he says and here
he says, fingers nimble and gentle, plucking her like a harp
you see how it works
the body is a marionette with all its strings kept inside
her fingers, long and graceful
still
and beckoning
4.
We are put together like a puzzle. The complexity and the baroque sensitivity of how the parts harmonize and work together is breathtaking. Gazing down at the assemblage of meat and bone and sinew that was once a woman, my predominant feelings were of gratitude and awe. I've never worried too much about the nature or existence of the divine, personally. I have my experience of it, and that was good enough for me. But looking at this body, I found myself really wondering...
How can there not be something, some numinous systematizing force animating accidents of matter into becoming entities that build cathedrals, make muffins, kiss each other at dawn?
There must be.
5.
There is nothing left in these temples
Windows veiled with cobwebs
No voices, no whispers, no footsteps
These dead have not been tarted up to resemble the living. They have not been painted, clothed, or pinked. Whatever intensities of emotion or wishful thoughts that ripple the metaphysical surface of funerals and the process of dying are not to be found in this room. These dead cannot be animated by the force of memory, seen whole and breathing, imagined alive again. These dead are so empty that I look at them and know, for the first time, that there is such a thing as the soul.
I stand on the threshold of the empty temple, and I see it full of mysteries.
6.
There are good arguments that the body is evidence for lack of intelligent design in humans, too. I probably shouldn't leave those out, but I'm going to. There are also counter-arguments that intelligent design doesn't mean perfect design. I'm going to leave those out, too. There are no rules for being human and frankly, I'm more interested in lunch at this point.
Jessica and I are walking together, going downtown for a cup of coffee at Moonstruck.
I am acutely aware of my body, how the cold air meets the heat of my lungs, how they push out feathery plumes like clouds when I laugh into the wintry wind. And this is life, and I am so alive, and I will never be more alive than I am right now at this very moment, and Jessica is making me laugh out loud with one of her stories. She is wearing her glasses and a beaded headband and a black suede coat and her cheeks are pink, and we are going downtown for coffee and maybe soup and we are so alive. The leaves crunch under my boots, and I am alive. Blood under my skin warm and true, snow blowing into my eyes and catching like little diamonds on the lashes, prisms like this and I am so alive. That is the undercurrent of my conscious thoughts, which are occupied with conversation.
But under that, I am just so happy. And under that, under my relief and my happiness to be alive is a scream of horror and recognition: I am a meat puzzle made by an unknown god for an unknown reason. One day I will be dead and my flesh will look like chicken and the skin dull and my eyes empty and they will burn me to ashes, and that is unnerving. But that's ok. I can be grateful for what I've got. That day is hopefully not today, and now we're downtown and the soup of the day is mushroom with caraway, creamy and hot. So we have some, and we have some hot tea, and I am so grateful that we are both alive and laughing.
So grateful, just for that. I hope I can remember. I will try to remember.
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