Three Things: A Fetus, a Bomb, and an Exhibit on Witches from notes taken in Spring of 2003

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 By this time, I’ve seen all the outdated medical machinery that I ever imagine existed.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.