scathedobsidian

We went to BodyWorlds yesterday, to see the plastinated, eviscerated remains of our fellow humans up on display. We saw flesh laid bare, preserved in perfect form, as if the polymers might fall away and give rise to new life. We saw cancers frozen in metastasis, tar-blackened lungs, knobby, arthritic bones, and hemmorages in static explosions, blossoming from health into fatality. Death was sterile but real, there; it was anonymous, posed, and almost-alive.

I have had several terrible nightmares each night for the last two and a half to three weeks. Where once I almost never remembered my dreams, and always had the same nightmare, the stones on the floor of my mind have been turned over to reveal new fears and insecurities, and the hiding places of old ones long thought satisfied, dead, or dispatched. I dream of things that happened years ago, and things that happened last week, of things that might happen tomorrow or might never happen, and sometimes, in the worst ways, their prophecies have been fulfilled.

Sleep is worthless. My body is rested but my mind is fatigued, strained in ways to which it is unused, and I have discovered a new dimension of hopeless exhaustion, but one that is the same in its effect.

I related to the exhibit last night. I have laid myself bare, stripped away my skin and signed myself away to others- loves, business, passion, dreams, and entrusted my care to them. Everything that I have, everything that I am, is vulnerable to the world - both the muscles that make me strong, that protect me, made malleable and distant, and the cancers that make me weak, eating away at me, waiting to be frozen and excised. I knew that, more than ever, looking at those serene, manipulated, beautiful meat-mannequins, and as I coiled my arms around two people whom I care about almost more than I care about myself, despite myself, despite the stares of scattered prudes in the room, and as I forced thoughts of business, of finance, of my neglected personal life, to the back of my mind, I was on the outside, looking in.

There is a calmness in it, in death. You can worry about death while you're alive, worry about how you'll meet it, worry about what you'll do before you'll meet it, how successful you'll be, how many friends and lovers you'll be able to satisfy, how much you'll be able to satisfy yourself, and what will happen when the inevitable comes, but when it comes, it is there. It is inexorable; it embraces you, lays you bare, makes you malleable, and forces you to do what so many of us never do - let go, and let nature take its course.


-----

"Brock Peters died today," I told my mother, later.

"He did?" she asked, surprised. "I knew him, once."

"You did?" I asked, just as surprised. "How?"

"Your godfather Bert, the photographer, introduced me to him just a few years before he died himself. We became friends, all of us." she mused distantly. "He was a wonderful man. A real gentleman. He never swore, was never obtuse, and not many people knew this about him, but he could sing wonderfully. He was never dishonest, never cold, and despite all his talent, he never really lost track of just being Brock."

"I knew him from To Kill A Mockingbird, and from Star Trek," I said. "I must have seen those performances alone a thousand times."

"It's a shame he's passed, especially since I haven't had a chance to speak to him in years," my mother said, yawning. "But he lived a good, long life. He did what he set out to do with it, and now he's moved on."

I paused a moment.

"Goodnight, Mom. I love you."

I could hear her smile.

"Goodnight, Billy," she said, and hung up the phone.