All this fuss about a bit of flesh the size of a button.
In the School of Medicine in Mexico City, biological samples illustrate the stages of a human fetus’ development. They are displayed in hermetically sealed Plexiglas cases. The once living tissue is preserved – for posterity— in solution. As time accrues within the development cycle, the pale mass of flesh of each specimen begins to take definition. Hovering eternally, they float in solution, like ghostly fish. The final stage—the almost born infant—squeezes his eyes shut. On his head lay limp strands of dark brown hair.
In the next room, a woman’s pelvis (and only a woman’s pelvis) stands hovering over an infant’s skull (and only the infant’s skull). The plates of its cranium are open and pliable. If it weren’t for the eye sockets and nasal cavity, one could imagine she’d dropped a stone.
Today I learn that back in the United States, the MOAB or “Mother of all bombs” was tested and detonated off the coast of Florida.
I’m a little nauseous, and a little tired. By this time, I’ve seen all the outdated medical machinery that I ever imagine existed. The portraits of the hospital directors long dead, look down on me. I’m fascinated and repulsed by all this fuss about a piece of flesh the size of a button. I don’t believe abortion is wrong. Period. Not at all. And especially now that I see the fetus at the end of the first trimester. Let it go, if its not right for any reason. It’s OK. As the planet groans under the weight of our exploding population, as our climate evolves in direction response to our environmental brutalities – preventing a woman from aborting a fetus should NOT be a part of a global- political agenda. It’s a waste of time. NOT a priority.
But I came to see the witches’ show. An exhibition on display culled from within the school’s permanent collection is called “Insolitos Objectos y Fantasticas Criaturas de la Brujera” The title of the exhibition translates, “The unusual objects and fantastic creatures of the witches.”
Outside it is hot but just inside the courtyard of this colonial structure it is cool and pleasant. The thick stone insulates against the heat. There has been an effort to restore the decorative frescoes in some of the rooms. There is a garden off the atrium where the Dominicans must have grown medicinal herbs. It sits beside a trickle of water, that I think must be a spring. I can see the moss covered wall or well, stone, grey, that could predate the school itself. I remember that the City center is built on Aztec ruins that had running water, and were much cleaner than the palaces and churches their conquerors erected.
I buy my ticket and pass through a dark curtain. A long wide hallway is lined on either side with the display cases and cabinets. There doesn’t seem to be rhyme or reason to the types of objects on display. There are taxidermy specimens of what I’m not quite sure, tomes that must be hundreds of years old, bottles of herbs, and reproductions of illustrations depicting Pan in lascivious acts with the half- clad women brewing goats’ heads in big black cauldrons. From this evidence I also gather that the devil has an enormous cock.
I don’t see any dates on the placards and I can’t understand Spanish enough to decipher the purpose of some article or the type of creature archived for so long under the Dominicans’ care. Reptilian tails merge with birds’ wings, beneath a shrunken or modeled human head. Frog’s legs are attached to a cow’s (or some other large animal’s) dried vulva- come-mouth- which squats beneath bulbous glass eyes. A large bird’s beak has been replaced by some creature’s penis. This one stands on cloven hooves.
In these rooms I see the corpse of a mermaid, and a decapitated blackened head of a lady vampire. There is an infant dead hundreds of years that has been embroidered with swans’ wings to match his white robes. There are all kinds of taxidermy monsters with peni and vulvas for noses and mouths. There are examples of human vaginas, embedded with teeth: “Vagina dentanta.”
The inquisitors tools stand beside illumined placards that my “poquito espanol” can barely fathom.
In one case, I see a small wooden bench darkened with age, and covered with a fluffy new sheepskin seat cushion. Protruding from the white fleece is a wooden phallus, sticking up maybe a foot. Trying to discover its workings I notice the crank mechanism beside it whose pole descends beneath the bench connecting to another arm of the contraption. This piece joins the phallus piece a good two feet beneath the seat. It dawns on me that lawful, pious hands would have turned the crank to impale the wretch who sat atop it. The raw wool cushion must have soaked up her blood.
Godly people made these monsters, stitched with half truths that once wriggled in terror to escape the coarse hands that molded their new forms. Who were these vicious midwives that brought to life such lies? What weird malicious craftsmanship is here displayed that must have justified the atrocities against the women and men whose only crimes could have been scarce, save maybe a knowledge of herbs, an outspoken remark, and zero contempt for their own genitalia?
I believe that they are the grandfathers of our own propagandists who work daily to personify Evil...to justify the burning, the incineration of untold masses with the “MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS’ AS IF, such a thing would be born between a woman’s legs.
I remember learning that the inquisitors divided the plunder of a witch’s estate not unlike how before the bombs even drop the US government has divided the rights to develop a- -yet-to-be-ransacked country. Then we use these indulgences to bribe less powerful nations to join the fray... what God do you serve, Mr. Bush?
How am I to explain my country of which I am so ashamed? How do I say proudly without apology, that our despot sits poised to spew fire on a country of children, and that ironically his supporters believe in the sanctity of life to such an extent, that they’d persecute women who would abort a fetus in the first trimester. How do I defend this country, all the while I fear for my own civil rights, my choice to do as I please with my own reproductive organs, my own buttons of flesh? Then, it feels frivolous to think of the fish in Florida, but I can’t help it. They didn’t deserve that either.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Three Things: One Mouse, Another Mouse, and a Third Mouse
3/5/09 – 2am
There was more than one mouse. Tonight I came back to my cabin to find that the trap had taken its second victim. This one was smaller than the first. I think these guys might have been wet, because their feces were smeared on the cabinet bottom beneath the sink next to the trash can. It’s so gross. Despite the threat of my new trap’s fierce bite – a THIRD one was rustling in the trash can. I quickly closed the door. What do they eat when the cabins are empty? What do they eat in the wild and why don’t they do that right now? Like some aggravated cartoon character I quickly opened the cabinet door –placed a large salad bowl on top of the can – put three plates on top of the bowl, took the whole oversized mouse cage outside in the snow storm, and put two more logs on top of that. I expect by tomorrow mouse number three will be dead.
It is quite horrifying, really. I think these are the first mammals I’ve ever killed myself. I’ve eaten plenty, of course. Not mice! But the typical white and dark meats appropriate to our culture. I wonder exactly how many pigs and cows I’ve eaten by age 36? I’ve had rabbit before too. (Not more than once.) Also, some deer meat, buffalo, maybe kangaroo – but only at that weird meat bbq that my friends used to have. (There I ate alligator and beetles.) Weird.
I find it disturbing to observe that “the mouse annoyed me, so I killed it.” Now of course, the critters do carry diseases. And they are eating my food, well – I have the food safely tucked away, really they are only eating my trash—but STILL. I don’t want them crawling over the kitchen and shitting where I prepare my food. Or horror upon horrors, crawling over my face when I sleep. I’m not down with that.
It’s awful to see their feet stick out from the trap – the straight hairless tails– the trap’s plastic jaws clenched at the top of their spines - their dull grey eyes all buggy and bulging. How limp they drop into the creek where the current takes them away. It’s really quite awful to think that these little creatures were once scurrying about – enjoying a bit of olive, of avocado, inside a warm cabin in the otherwise desolate forests of eastern Oregon, and then I come along, and kill them. Who am I to do that? And when does it stop? Am I treading some fine line? Is this a gateway killing?
A part of me wishes we all grew up slaughtering our own food – that way this wouldn’t be quite so jarring. And I don’t mean, I want to go out and take up hunting. More like – if you want chicken – you ring its neck and pluck it yourself. Then this mouse-moment wouldn’t be much of a moment – just a par for the course – “I just say NO to the plague thankyouverymuch” – done with it. I wonder if Mr. Three is experiencing hypothermia yet? The trap is much kinder. I’d give it a benevolent quick death if I only knew how to do that without letting it go. Some would say I should capture then release it somewhere. Except that I’ve heard 2 or 3 miles is nothing to a mouse – and I don’t have a car here.
This is really stressing me out. I’m lying awake noting every creak and grown of the cabin – is that one? Is it scuttling? Is it close? When I stop obsessing on that I try to figure out the significance of the mouse motif in my spiritual-emotional world, and surprisingly – I’ve ACTUALLY come up with something. This is probably more a testament to the human species’ innate ability to create connections regardless of whether they exist or not, based on some neurological principal I have no intention of researching right now. But anyway, moving backward, these three mice are coming at a time when all these annoying thoughts are eking into my otherwise happy mind – residual anger left over from a bad relationship with a - I’m not even going to call him a boyfriend, shall we say psychic vampire? I am nigh on seven months out of it and am over the biggest shockers – but boy, am I still mad. And so the mice show up. Stick with me…
I’m also about twelve weeks out of a job that was a serious struggle from the get-go. I did good there, and I made some great friends – learned a LOT – and can sincerely say that the experience was very valuable. But it was a BEAST of a job that I kept trying to make work for me. The org had weak leadership; was completely disorganized (in the two years I was there I think they restructured the org chart like 3 times). There were mandatory week-long staff retreats - UGH – which featured naked co-workers, interpretative performances of our issue areas complete with cardboard Caribou antlers, and sharing circles. This job included some BIZZARE-even-on-office-sitcoms-would-this neuroticness -not-make-any-sense behavior; and basically it stressed me out like no other job has ever stressed me out. That said – I was also undergoing aforementioned relationship stress – and the two together proved a toxic combo that PLEASE GOD help me, I hope to never to create in my life again. So – what does this have to do with the mice? Well, to add insult to injury, the office was infested with the fu#@$ers, and mice feces on my desktop and key board welcomed me home from the holiday break. Once working late, in the office alone, the brazen bastard literally crawled over my feet. It made me livid.
The mice became a symbol of all the little annoying sh$#t I could not manage at that place, that never-the-less impacted my performance / success there. And the word in the office was that we needed to use HUMANE traps, out of respect for the vegans we worked with. I was GLEEFUL when HR not only contracted the exterminator on the sly, but when he actually took a few out. The schadenfreude was a bit more than one should feel, I think– the emotional reaction was not in proportion to the actual event.
Anyway – the third and final mouse encounter happened ten years ago, and that was also a major moment in my life. In my twenties – a man I’d fallen head over heels for turned out to NOT be the artist-in-residence at a cancer retreat center like he said he was, and subsequently proceeded to empty my bank account on a drug-induced bender that was allegedly to end in suicide. This catapulted me into a crisis of sorts (go figure) and I left both my job and apartment to stay with my family for a few months.
Once back in the saddle, still dealing with the residual anger and trauma to a certain extent, I went to get my boxes out of storage where a FAMILY of mice had nested and given birth in a box of my clothes. They’d chewed through some highly coveted art books, shoes etc. I literally had to shake out the little pink goblin-like-alien-babies from a lovely silk skirt. I sobbed hysterically. The mother-fuc#$#r in jail upon hearing this story (I’d visit him from time to time to glare, let him have it, and cry) told me not to blame the mice – they were only doing what came naturally. Apparently that was some analogy for him as well.
I’ve had nice boyfriends in case you were wondering –and GREAT jobs. But there are no mice even remotely connected to them. So, really mice have only appeared in my life –totem animals that they might be – in the relatively angriest of times. So how do I make my peace with the vermin? What do the mice have to teach me? Are they some indication that I’m gnawing on the debris of my life in a way that I shouldn’t? Are they teaching me how to dump someone in a body of water and not worry so much about it? I sure don’t know yet– but for now, I know what I’ve got for them – another glob of peanut butter and a snapped neck. Die, motherf*&$!!rs Die! Die!
There was more than one mouse. Tonight I came back to my cabin to find that the trap had taken its second victim. This one was smaller than the first. I think these guys might have been wet, because their feces were smeared on the cabinet bottom beneath the sink next to the trash can. It’s so gross. Despite the threat of my new trap’s fierce bite – a THIRD one was rustling in the trash can. I quickly closed the door. What do they eat when the cabins are empty? What do they eat in the wild and why don’t they do that right now? Like some aggravated cartoon character I quickly opened the cabinet door –placed a large salad bowl on top of the can – put three plates on top of the bowl, took the whole oversized mouse cage outside in the snow storm, and put two more logs on top of that. I expect by tomorrow mouse number three will be dead.
It is quite horrifying, really. I think these are the first mammals I’ve ever killed myself. I’ve eaten plenty, of course. Not mice! But the typical white and dark meats appropriate to our culture. I wonder exactly how many pigs and cows I’ve eaten by age 36? I’ve had rabbit before too. (Not more than once.) Also, some deer meat, buffalo, maybe kangaroo – but only at that weird meat bbq that my friends used to have. (There I ate alligator and beetles.) Weird.
I find it disturbing to observe that “the mouse annoyed me, so I killed it.” Now of course, the critters do carry diseases. And they are eating my food, well – I have the food safely tucked away, really they are only eating my trash—but STILL. I don’t want them crawling over the kitchen and shitting where I prepare my food. Or horror upon horrors, crawling over my face when I sleep. I’m not down with that.
It’s awful to see their feet stick out from the trap – the straight hairless tails– the trap’s plastic jaws clenched at the top of their spines - their dull grey eyes all buggy and bulging. How limp they drop into the creek where the current takes them away. It’s really quite awful to think that these little creatures were once scurrying about – enjoying a bit of olive, of avocado, inside a warm cabin in the otherwise desolate forests of eastern Oregon, and then I come along, and kill them. Who am I to do that? And when does it stop? Am I treading some fine line? Is this a gateway killing?
A part of me wishes we all grew up slaughtering our own food – that way this wouldn’t be quite so jarring. And I don’t mean, I want to go out and take up hunting. More like – if you want chicken – you ring its neck and pluck it yourself. Then this mouse-moment wouldn’t be much of a moment – just a par for the course – “I just say NO to the plague thankyouverymuch” – done with it. I wonder if Mr. Three is experiencing hypothermia yet? The trap is much kinder. I’d give it a benevolent quick death if I only knew how to do that without letting it go. Some would say I should capture then release it somewhere. Except that I’ve heard 2 or 3 miles is nothing to a mouse – and I don’t have a car here.
This is really stressing me out. I’m lying awake noting every creak and grown of the cabin – is that one? Is it scuttling? Is it close? When I stop obsessing on that I try to figure out the significance of the mouse motif in my spiritual-emotional world, and surprisingly – I’ve ACTUALLY come up with something. This is probably more a testament to the human species’ innate ability to create connections regardless of whether they exist or not, based on some neurological principal I have no intention of researching right now. But anyway, moving backward, these three mice are coming at a time when all these annoying thoughts are eking into my otherwise happy mind – residual anger left over from a bad relationship with a - I’m not even going to call him a boyfriend, shall we say psychic vampire? I am nigh on seven months out of it and am over the biggest shockers – but boy, am I still mad. And so the mice show up. Stick with me…
I’m also about twelve weeks out of a job that was a serious struggle from the get-go. I did good there, and I made some great friends – learned a LOT – and can sincerely say that the experience was very valuable. But it was a BEAST of a job that I kept trying to make work for me. The org had weak leadership; was completely disorganized (in the two years I was there I think they restructured the org chart like 3 times). There were mandatory week-long staff retreats - UGH – which featured naked co-workers, interpretative performances of our issue areas complete with cardboard Caribou antlers, and sharing circles. This job included some BIZZARE-even-on-office-sitcoms-would-this neuroticness -not-make-any-sense behavior; and basically it stressed me out like no other job has ever stressed me out. That said – I was also undergoing aforementioned relationship stress – and the two together proved a toxic combo that PLEASE GOD help me, I hope to never to create in my life again. So – what does this have to do with the mice? Well, to add insult to injury, the office was infested with the fu#@$ers, and mice feces on my desktop and key board welcomed me home from the holiday break. Once working late, in the office alone, the brazen bastard literally crawled over my feet. It made me livid.
The mice became a symbol of all the little annoying sh$#t I could not manage at that place, that never-the-less impacted my performance / success there. And the word in the office was that we needed to use HUMANE traps, out of respect for the vegans we worked with. I was GLEEFUL when HR not only contracted the exterminator on the sly, but when he actually took a few out. The schadenfreude was a bit more than one should feel, I think– the emotional reaction was not in proportion to the actual event.
Anyway – the third and final mouse encounter happened ten years ago, and that was also a major moment in my life. In my twenties – a man I’d fallen head over heels for turned out to NOT be the artist-in-residence at a cancer retreat center like he said he was, and subsequently proceeded to empty my bank account on a drug-induced bender that was allegedly to end in suicide. This catapulted me into a crisis of sorts (go figure) and I left both my job and apartment to stay with my family for a few months.
Once back in the saddle, still dealing with the residual anger and trauma to a certain extent, I went to get my boxes out of storage where a FAMILY of mice had nested and given birth in a box of my clothes. They’d chewed through some highly coveted art books, shoes etc. I literally had to shake out the little pink goblin-like-alien-babies from a lovely silk skirt. I sobbed hysterically. The mother-fuc#$#r in jail upon hearing this story (I’d visit him from time to time to glare, let him have it, and cry) told me not to blame the mice – they were only doing what came naturally. Apparently that was some analogy for him as well.
I’ve had nice boyfriends in case you were wondering –and GREAT jobs. But there are no mice even remotely connected to them. So, really mice have only appeared in my life –totem animals that they might be – in the relatively angriest of times. So how do I make my peace with the vermin? What do the mice have to teach me? Are they some indication that I’m gnawing on the debris of my life in a way that I shouldn’t? Are they teaching me how to dump someone in a body of water and not worry so much about it? I sure don’t know yet– but for now, I know what I’ve got for them – another glob of peanut butter and a snapped neck. Die, motherf*&$!!rs Die! Die!
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