With all due respect, sir, I get the impression you want me to lie.
- First impression. Tell me what you see.
- Well it’s so obvious, isn’t it? Something anatomical, anyway. The lungs?
- That’s fine. Now…
- I mean, if this is not the semblance of internal organs, the whole test is shot to shit.
Pause.
Abstract, maybe. See the lungs, the way they branch out near the heart. This is for the exchange of oxygen, of course. Now, I can’t quite pinpoint what they were getting at with the top portion. Spinal cord, fair, then we see it culminate in a grotesque representation of a pelvis then a brain. An inversion?
Silence.
How Freudian… An interesting beast—too interesting to be human. Notice the tunnel at the heart. Takes you to another void at both ends.
Pause.
Which is not to say, of course, that hearts and minds are void, that’d be a bit of a cliché, no? We couldn’t have that. Heh heh. But seriously, you’ve seen those coroner shows?
- I have.
- And you don’t find it repulsive how casually they hold the matter between their fingers? I’ve read they remove a limb here or there, before the viewing of the body. Imagine, family members gathered around their loved ones who are, in fact, dismembered. And they replace bones with pipes. Similar consistency, I suppose. Hollow. We are primarily empty space in which a soup of waste and energy collides…Alright, that was overkill. Score one for the shrink, eh? Heh heh.
- Where do they keep them?
- Beg your pardon, keep what?
- The bones.
- In their closets, like everyone else. I can’t decide what soul holds more, one among the living or one among the dead…Connects so perfectly, molded by the hand of God alone, in His image…beautiful…In order to attain a medical degree, students are forced to stay in a room of corpses. Not unlike hell, I’ve always thought. The trick is maintaining composure, recognizing the body for what it is: frail, mechanical, temporary. Playground for our eager intellects.
So you stand there, dick in your hands, so to speak. It’s a cold only Dante could relate to. They really take you through depths, those educated professionals. Your tools are in perfect order—everything is pristine but the stench of rotting flesh and its pitiful preservation. There you have it, in front of you, flat and old like a pile of shit! God damn…
And for the rest of your life, they show you images. It’s as if your ticket out of hell is a damnation to walk among representations; x-rays, diagrams, pictures, ink blots…Nothing comes close to the real thing.
- How does that feel?
- Not unlike maintaining your composure here, picking out meaning like meat off bones in these fucking sessions, when you want nothing more than to hold a beating heart in your hands and squeeze like God himself… Nothing compares to the pulsation… Nothing comes close… We are very privileged to understand this…
You know, I am very good with that terrain. The innards. Top of my class. There is a divine architecture to it. I know it. Canopies of arteries and veins, a roaring stillness, everything in its place. There are two types of powers capable of disrupting it: God and the doctor.
- Did you want to be a doctor as a kid?
- This has nothing to do with my childhood.
- All right. We can move on to the next slide.
- No. Let’s look harder, we’re missing something, we good doctors.
- What else is there?
- Maybe you’re right… maybe there’s nothing else.
Pause.
There is a figure at the top. He looks triumphant.
- Whom do you see?
- Either me or the devil.
- How’s that?
- God is in the atom splitting in two by the sword.
- At the lungs?
- Yes, the lungs. What the fuck else does it look like? Two pools of water, two surfaces, a crack in the two faces of God, a wound in His side, God, the sword and the killer, God, the perfect, the devil is in the details, the devil is in the heart of the matter, do you see him there, maintaining his composure, breathing over a lifeless lung!
Silence.
- Well our time is up for today. Same time next week?
Silence.
- Please tell me, doctor, it was the body, right? That was an image of the body?
- It was if you saw one.
- I have seen His bodies paper-thin, laid out for the carving. This does not compare, sir. There is nothing here.
