Sacred Garment

It started as a soft ache. As most anxieties do.

Twinges in my forearm. Reaching into my hand. Deep rumbles, a twisting, a dissatisfaction, something awry.

The first dissected forearm musculature i saw belonged to a cat, in a high school anatomy class. I didn't even want that class; the physics class was too full. And there were the glistening pearly forearms of some mangy stray cat, stripped of its fur, and skin. Some company had drained this creature, ran through its vessels colored latex in bright primary colors.

The class was easy. I had a good memory then. I made a cartoon illustration of the four classes of biological macromolecules. Biochemistry would seduce me later. First it was the forearms. Every crouching cat, its powerful pounce, lay in these muscles, dense, sinewy and...glistening. Beautiful. Something about the ligaments, the connective tissue, they were luminescent, like opal ropes. Maybe because you can see the motion, the potential in this dead and pickled flesh.

"There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening."

In the human anatomy lab, it was the hands that frightened us. The rest was unrecognizable, a tangle of burning smells and discolored meat. I brought a friend once, late night, to the lab. He was already well into his third year, he hadn't been in the lab in so long. He shuddered. "I felt the sudden urge to hold the motherfucker's hand." We solemnly stared at this human form, torso ripped open, ribs sawed, intestines lumped tiredly to the side, its leg sawed off above the knee. The heart was sitting in a pan nearby. It was once an old man and the cap of its head had been removed and there, an empty cavern behind a monstrous face, a joke of a face, a halloween mask that made no sense. The arm was dissected to the wrist, muscles peeled away and dangling. At the wrist the skin began again and there it was...a man's hand. Yellowed, but with fingernails, they lay at ease, like that of a fellow snoozing. A wife could recognize it. Did the man have grandchildren? Did he hold them? Was he a surgeon, a plumber, a trumpeteer? Did he use it to sign the consent form, to be there with us, with me, my scalpel still dripping formaldehyde?

The pain, my pain is soft and increasing. And the fear...how will I type? How will i play capoeira, open jars, write my notes, chop garlic, shake my fist angrily? Tens of thousands of dollars, spent on my education. I thought it all in my head, a good reason to wear a helmet, get insurance on the thing. And i see here, even in this world of ideas, my hands. I needs dem.

"The instrument by which life is lived"

Once, a great teacher, "one of dance's most beloved ogres" who was "aristocratic and fearsome, severe and blunt (but he was always right) taught this: "Without structure, you could have a million ideas, yet they wouldn't come to life. Become concerned with the making of rules and the breaking of rules...to be aware of space, time, energy, and shape."

"The body says what words cannot."

and. "Movement never lies."