the bodies exhibition
south street seaport
it's a cold afternoon in january.
I have been in bed and off from work, i don't know how long.
I have to get out the house, if only for a few hours. do something, go somehwere.
I have wanted to go see, "The Bodies." exhibition down in south street seaport after seeing ads for it in the subways and on the phone booths in the streets...
I figured it would be a good commentary piece for "jack tv."
I stroll the mall area of south street seaport mall that sits on the water and gaze from the atrium windows that over look the east river.
the warmth inside belies that bitter cold outside that glazes and coats and dances upon the water accenting the minute sky line of brooklyn. making it crisp and sharp.
I'am fatigued. i know that a man in his fourties whoose been in bed for a week or two should not be so tired...
but i'am. i feel ready to pass out. lightheaded. as if the giant windows in the atrium will open up and pull me out into the cold, away from the lonely almost empty public space.
I guess it is a monday. the space feels overwhelming.
the light of noon: high and crisp refelcts off the windows and metal from across the river; burning through the large panes of glass on the other side.
a random rolling pain shifts through me...my eyes and forhead.
i now know for sure the pain in my body - sitting in this space alone, away from the comforts of my bed and personal space, is definetly "life threatning."
i consider the three years of scalding lower back pain, sciatica, that kept me from work in 1992 until 1994.
by comaprison the aches and dis-jointed quality of what i'am experiencing now i can see that back then i only thought i knew what pain was...
another level. psychic pain. emotional pain. alienation from everything around me seems to congeal and manifest as a giant silver, white light above me, grazing the panes of glass somewhere in the distance near the ceiling: trying to escape, like a firefly thrown into a jar...knocking against a barrier it can not understand nor see. it seems to emmanate from my throat area...
i close my eyes.
and wait.
random thought:
the father and son are burned into one another through their hatred and mutual admiration of each other.
the son will always carry around parts of his father : burned into his psyche: either by aquiessence and accpetance of the male figure or rejection of it...
the father will always be connected to the son because part of his lifeforce was given to create him...
my father then departed enters my thoughts.
i sense that he is near: either protecting me or now released from his body, hovering somewhere "near" he watches and waits.
my chest and throat area burn with the white heat of fever.
a highly specifc chemical heat, a burn that i remember when he went through the chemo treatments...nearly 5000 miles away, in california, absent in body, i felt his presence come to me. i was privy to the mental images by psychic connection.
mourning my hero, reduced to suffering an iv of of chemical poison coursing into his blood.
he sits. alone. waiting.
he leaves his body. his giant blue eyes appear to my mind barely visible by the light emmanating from his aura...
the pain is truly incredible. i experience every drop of his chemo treatment with him. share the pain, the light. the dis-connection from time and space: all the while back in new york city working my saturday night bar shift; trying to shake it off, be cordial to the customers and maintain some composure.
as if my skin could peel right away from my body at any moment I feel that i'am going to pass out and then suddenly the connection is lost.
he is gone and our tie has been severed somehow. thankful and sad. coming back to a stasis and realizing that I was talking to a manager about the emotional strain of my father's cancer; it lifts.
the manager gives me an odd look and then says: "I think i understand..."
that particulair "exo-skeleton" of energy now shed and roaming around and hovering close seems to want to connect to me again on this afternoon...
i had forgotten it's intensity.
>>>my fearis that I'am going to pass out sitting at the cool metal table in front of me. i throw back my head trying to breath, checking to make sure i have my wallet on me and identification that would allow a stranger to search my vacated body and find a number to call...
the pulse continues. i'am dying. converting. i know and realize that after today i will have turned a corner. forever diffferent and changed. i let it happen. allow it unfettered restriction through my body. it's movement is furious and intentional as if a giant door of light is being pryed open.
it shoots out from my solar plexes, my heart, into my throat and then collecting there as a "block" and collecting power
finally - as if my mouth opens for the first time, arid and parched - i grab my chest and cry out: "oh god..."
the "big bang" of a million stars. sparkling and free; it releases and i break into a cold sweat...
i hunch over from the trapped light escaping; the psychic water rushing and forcing smells, feelings, emotions and thoughts unprocessed out of me in a parade of rage - guilt and love - releasing with fury...as the pressure is bled off.
exhausted i mutter..."it is done."
>>>>I rise. knees shaking my body re-arranged now forever, and begin to walk down the stairs
to the ground floor to go to
the entrance of "The Bodies" exhibition...
