Dr. Merriweather Addresses His Anatomy Class, November 1st, 1908

Observe the body.

The head like a stone balloon, weighed down with every thought accumulated like storm debris in a pipe, the foreign displaces the native.

The throat like the trunk of a tree, solid, showing only the rings of each expression bitten back and stifled; behold the wooden-ness of silence.

The chest and the shifting molten fire within, a submerged unstable violence counterbalanced by the purpose and order of breath and beat.

The stomach is the repository of all that is taken in, the agreeable and nutritious, the vile and poisonous; all forced together in a confined space like relations at a holiday gathering.

The genitals are like phases of the moon, with tides always at cross purposes: desire, connection, invitation, betrayal and damage--the tide in and the tide out, endlessly.

The legs contain all that we believe, set in bone before we've realized it, holding us up and separating us within ourselves: we split down the middle trying to touch the earth with our one true self.

And the feet at the bottom, collectors of all that we hide and reject and drop into the depths; to stop dancing is to let it all gather like an embolism, rising like an avenging bird through gut, heart and brain, bringing darkness in its wake.

Or madness.

Systems working together largely beyond our will, we are riders in a physical cocoon; but we are not the husk, we are the dreamer in the dark, waiting for some incomprehensible hand to open the jar and let us fly out.

__________________________________