Easter was my favorite holiday as a child. I liked the dogwoods of the spring and the ceremonial hype of Holy Week and the 3-hour vigil mass on Holy Saturday that began in the dark and ended with trumpets and hallelujahs and baptisms in a fully lit sanctuary. It was a breeze of hope gone as soon as it arrived, but I think it was enough to carry me a little further.
"We're writing an Easter poem here, folks. Welcome to the tomb," Gil says. Good Friday in the lab. It's a tomb if there ever was one, full of life waiting to walk forth. The irony isn't lost on the circle as Lazarus' drug pump sounds and the entire room takes the cue to stretch and breathe deep. These past two weeks have been a pushing away of the stone to see clearly that nothing has died. Except, perhaps, for beliefs about what was there to begin with.
It's a different day, evoking different energy than the one before, and the one before that. We're continuing to fluff, and beginning to reflect, or to peel back, the most superficial layers of muscle. Trapezius, when unleashed from the midline and flopped upward toward the head, forms wings that are completed when the lats are reflected laterally. Levator scapulae is a fancy spiral staircase twisting up the cervical spine. Gluteus maximus looks like a beef brisket, and I seriously have visions of putting it in a roasting pan, overlapped by a subtle, barely-formed thought of "what's the big deal about cannibalism?" I mean, if you have to.
The day whizzes by, but not without me finding time and means to secure a ticket to Rufus Wainwright at the Palace of Fine Arts for Saturday night. It's serendipity at its finest the way everything falls into place. And on this Easter vigil, entering the performance hall awaiting his haunting voice feels as holy as entering an incense-filled cathedral awaiting the coming of the Lord. It's. All. Holy. And therein lies the resurrection, I think. The seeing beyond the dream that those two things are any different. Or that there are even two things there at all. I listen to his sweet sister Lucy, and then to him, and feel like I'm the only one there. I close my eyes and feel his vibrato humming in my own throat, and there's nothing else I'm needing to feel complete.
I sleep.
And I awake to a sunny, warm Easter Sunday. There's one more week for me here. I wonder what remains to be unveiled.
