With bags broken open to the light and air of day, we take the morning to tour the contents of the abdomen, each rooted to the One via peritoneum that in one place we call the falciform ligament and in another the mesentery and in another the mesocolon and so on. It's in these places that the organs appear to be suspended in the living form, but it's arguable whether that suspension is even needed, as pressure differentials and fluid dynamics of the internal environment in vivo create a levity and buoyancy in which the guts slip and slide and float and play. Their true nature is free, and yet they're held, tenderly and snugly by the One that, to some eyes, appears to limit their freedom.
We all want freedom, and yet I'd venture to say we all want containment too. We want to fly in freefall, and yet we want to feel held and safe like it all began in the womb. We think that one precludes the other. And we couldn't be more mistaken.
Out of the six female cadavers in lab, all but one is without womb. Rose is in the majority, having had a complete hysterectomy. Her greater omentum--a meandering, adipose-rich, apron-like poultice that nurses infection and trauma in the gut--hangs from the transverse colon and stomach per standard issue, but it's migrated down into the pelvic cavity from whence her uterus was removed, and tenaciously rooted itself in the funnel with firm, fibrous adhesions. With the omentum traveled the transverse colon, found not to be so transverse at all, but prolapsed and "V"-shaped in its route until it climbs back superior toward the spleen. Why have most people never heard of the greater omentum? I have no idea. There's a lot of things we don't get told, that remain secret even to our most intimate self, even though they're there, plain as day.
I'm cooked. The viscera are doing a number on me, and exhaustion rolls in after the morning of running the bowels and an afternoon of noodling around the heart center and the biggest of its branches. I've been stoked the past two days about the guts, perhaps the most I've been in the entire three weeks, and I think my psyche is processing way more than I'm giving it credit for. I'm cradling hearts and unfurling intestines and cupping lungs with my bare hands as Peter inflates them through a tube plunged into the trachea, for Christ's sake. I'm freaked out by Rose's chunky thyroid and grossed out by the fluid spilling out of the pericardium. I'm feeling sensitive and exposed in my own throat, which I now cannot unsee as one with the heart and lung tree below. Gil points out how the wings of the thyroid hug the bottom edge of the voice box. "It cares what you have to say," he says, tugging on the butterfly-shaped gland. I nod. "It does," he reiterates.
It's interesting, finding a voice in this blog, especially since anyone can read it. That's part of the deal, about blogging, and any illusion of anonymity is just that, an illusion. I can't control who reads this and who doesn't, and that's edgy for me. It's exposing, to just speak to what's happening. It's amazing what I'm learning by simply watching how you respond, and how I respond to how you respond. It's like being plunged repeatedly into freefall, or just becoming repeatedly aware that freefall is already happening, and then freaking out about it, and then realizing it's totally safe. That there's still something holding, but nothing limiting.
I sleep for two hours after returning to the hotel, and I could sleep for twenty-two more.
