Waiting for the mortal wound/This fascination with the moribund*
Have been giving a lot of thought to bodies.
Spurred by the sad death of Spalding Gray, then hearing this on the news:
The individuals were allegedly benefiting financially from anatomical donations made to the UCLA Willed Body Program, which makes human bodies available for medical education and research. Henry Reid, 54, director of the UCLA Willed Body Program, was arrested on March 6 for investigation of grand theft. Ernest Nelson, 46, a non-UCLA employee, was arrested on March 7 for investigation of receiving known stolen property.
It reminded me of Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan and Kristine Kupka, all of whom have been missing for years now and are presumed dead.
As it gets warmer out I start to wonder who will be "resurfacing." I was walking in Gantry Park on Sunday, looking out at the East River, peacefully scanning the water for bobbing bodies. Not because I *want* to find one (in fact, it seems odd that I would have been so close to where Spalding Gray was found--but I chose to leave Greenpoint that day to investigate my soon-to-be neighborhood) but because I expect to find one. Because in my mind, that's what's in rivers, you see. Bodies.
I think I first began to believe this when, in 1987, the Thruway Bridge collapsed, taking 8 motorists with it into the Schoharie River. They didn't find some of those people for months.
When I lived in the Low Country I would drive to work over the Dead Racist Memorial Bridge on (I think it was) Route 17. Route 17 wended for miles through low country swamp grass. Every day I would wonder how many dead bodies were hidden in the grass. Because swamps, like rivers, seem a natural repository for bodies. One hot afternoon, I witnessed the tractor trailer in front of me brake and swerve wildly and in the glinting, vaporous air I saw what appeared to be a dead body in the middle of the road. "The bodies are coming out of the swamp," I thought ridiculously, but when I got closer I saw that it was not the undead but a fair-sized gator who'd met his gatormaker while sunning himself.
I fear the humiliation of drowning, because there's a chance that you'll never turn up, and moreso because there's a good chance that if you *do* you'll be half-eaten and unrecognizable. I've committed far too many sins to hope that my body will remain incorrupt in my death (hell, it's disintegrating as I sit here right now), but for the love of God, after I'm gone I just don't want anyone to say of me, "Cats ate her face."
*Don't worry about me, ma. Just doing my late-winter danse macabre.
Posted by Dana at March 9, 2004 08:14 AM