amorpheus

Death isn't the end of the world.

It is common knowledge that when dirt napping, little things eat your body. Sometimes big things eat parts of it first. The mask that you have made of flesh and skin is washed away revealing your true face underneath.

Naturally, that is silly.

Why is the skeleton true? The skin is every bit as real as the bone. No, it does not last as long, but that is only because it is always put in the way of danger. Nothing lasts long when it is always exposed to a harsh world. For the time is lasts, though, it is perfectly real. The skin cannot lie. It is not even capable of rational thought. The brain hides beneath the skin, beneath even the bone. The skin does not know how to lie. Still, the world, harsh as it is, has forced me to put up defenses inside and outside of my skin. I have become a skeptic and a cynic. I doubt and I question. I know that the skin is hiding something under the surface - something it does not want me to know - and the truth will only be revealed when the skin is dead and gone. It takes some considering to realize that the skin is the way it is and needs no further explanation. If you want the skin's truth, you have to question the skin. The bone will tell you nothing.

Many romantic notions of life and death are not exactly true.

They say that underneath our flesh, we all look the same. This is a blatant lie. Anyone who has been to The Mtter Museum could tell you that skeletons can look quite different from one another. It is queer that it takes such an extreme example for me to notice how untrue the idea of skeletal homogeneity is, when the fact is that all skeletons look different. Why had I not noticed? Maybe it is the same as it is with dolphins.

When I see Kat, wrapped as she is in muscle and fat and skin and hair and cloth, I immediately recognize that she is Kat. I do not think, "That is a person," or "That is a woman," or even "That is my mortal enemy," I know it is just "Kat." Yet, when I see a dolphin, I only recognize it as a dolphin. I have seen dozens of dolphins in my life, but not a single one is identified in my mind with a name. They are all "dolphin." If I saw the same dolphin again, I would have no way of knowing that it was the same one. Perhaps this is because I have to memorize people's features to recognize them, but if there was a person with the face of a dolphin, that would be so unusual that I would not need to remember anything more about him than "dolphin" to recognize him.

While it is peculiar to see a person with a dolphin's face, a dolphin with a dolphin's face is nothing unusual, so you would think that you would need to remember more than "dolphin" to recognize one. Still, the human mind demands that every face it sees be human. It anthropomorphizes animals and shapes swirls and patterns into eyes and mouths. It is an adaptation created for convenience that seems like vanity. It helps us focus our attention on what details we deem important to better cope with narrow, selfish human affairs. That is where we get such misnomers as the tursiops truncatus' familiar identification as a "bottlenose dolphin." Of course, the bottle-shaped part of its face is not a nose - dolphins' noses are on top of their heads. Still, human mouths are relatively flat compared to our noses, so when we see a protrusion in the middle of a face, we think, "nose," even when is splits apart to reveal teeth.

If I saw an X-Ray of Kat's head, I would not recognize it as Kat, no matter how many times I looked at it. It is a part of Kat - it is her face, though not her face as I am unsed to seeing it. I do not even recognize it as a part of Kat or what gives Kat's face its shape. It is simply "skull." Skulls do not have names in the human mind. Though a skull is a human face, it is too far removed from what we usually see to merit recognition.

When I see Kat's face, I think that it is Kat, even though that is not really true. It is only a face, not a person. When I see Kat's breast, I do not think of it as Kat, but as a breast. The breast is every bit as real as the face, though, and is just as valid a part of a body. The breast is taboo because it is known to be alluring, but people seem to be in such denial over how alluring the face is. I find that the right glasses can be as sexy as a low-cut top - often moreso - but I can stare right into a woman's eyes when I am talking to her and not be seen as shallow for it. It is absolutely incredible.

Though beauty is fleeting, it is perfectly real. We become so attached to our beautiful flesh. It is all we have ever known, so we think that it will be there forever. In death, the flesh is revealed for what it really is, and in doing so, we forfeit the right to be seen as human.