As is often the case with women like me, suitors come out of the shadows and into the wake of my last relationship to present their claims for my affection. After I ended my college relationship, my friend declared himself to our circle, making his intentions clear and well-known before attempting to secure my hand. It was all very romantic and brave, which temporarily won me over, though not for long. My friend always suffered from the vagaries of addiction, but because of the depth of his talents and charm, he could reasonably patch them over for a time to present a vision of life that could be worth living.
He and I could be free and creative and I grew up around people with severe problems. Perhaps I could make this manageable? These are the trade-offs women from Generation X must make: do I choose an attractive man with promise or do I just marry the fiscally viable man who is crushingly boring, repressed and miserable, yet reliable? I took a chance and rolled the dice, but not without a lot soul searching. I consulted with other friends who grew up with alcoholic family. One of my girlfriends assured me that I could never be secure, given his emotional state. Did I realize how much work I was getting into with this deal? He would always be a dependent. Well, I was used to that. I supported the burdens that my family brought down upon my head regularly. But, what did I get out of it? Alcoholics dip, dive, revive, then plateau: lather, rinse, repeat. Is this what I wanted for a lifetime?
No, of course not. But you try finding an emotionally healthy and intellectually gifted artist of incredible physical beauty. Know of any off hand? No? Neither do I. I had no support growing up, and I already survived a few near-death experiences at my parents' hands during the brief time I was in their care. How bad could this really be? I didn't really know, and he had that working in his favor. I'd been providing for myself from a very young age for so long, how different could this be? The clock was ticking. A decision had to be made.
We married, and all of it was not of my choosing, forming a compromised version of a someone else's wedding that I had never really dreamed about, thought about, or contemplated, so it was like some horrid out-of-body experience. Would you think of Barbie dreams with my kind of my brain and my kind of life? Given the strength my mind has for details, the lack of clarity I have about those past events points to the absurdity of that actuality. It remains one of the worst experiences of my life. Again, that didn't even register much. I have always suffered at the hands of others. This was no different. Women took the occasion to demean my looks to my face out of envy: standard. My father tried using his money with his fake power ploys by withholding funds in another pathetically ineffectual attempt to control events: standard. Our crowd maxed out the open bar tab by afternoon, way before the window closed: also standard.
It was horrible, but when has my happiness been tended to by others outside of myself? Never. This was yet another life event to be endured and moved past. So. After my wedding weekend, I was back at work Monday morning, providing and caring for myself just like I always have. Not much had changed. We planned an Italian trip in September for our honeymoon, a gift from his parents, because the weather would be wonderful and the cities less congested with tourists. Years later when I had to divorce him, I would mirror our matrimonial beginning with an similar ending: I left over a weekend and I was back at work (fully functioning and productive) on Monday morning, same as always. Not much changed.
We made the standard tour of the three top Italian cities: Rome, Florence, and Venice. At the time I worked for an Italian-American woman who told me about an old monastery that was way off the beaten path. Perfect. Not only was it hard to find, it was morbid, so there would be less of the pale, plaid-shorted ugly American crowd. Excellent. She told me the routine, like something out of a Seinfeld skit: you go up to a window, you hand over the fee to a monk under a vow of silence, so I shouldn't expect a response. Well heck, color me prepared. I flourish depsite neglect, so bring it. I prefer self-guided journeys anyway.
The monk would then point out the way out to you, leading you through a dark winding underground catacomb created entirely from the bones of the dead monks and their parishioners. Hundreds of years prior, the monastery had to move to smaller quarters and that meant the contents of the graveyard came with it. The brothers, in an act of devotion, dug them up and spent many years filling the new small crypt in creative ways. As Catholics, we honor the dead through the preservation of human remains. It symbolizes our recognition of the importance of human consciousness above all others on our miracle of a planet.
We believe we are blessed with abilities far beyond any other life form on the planet because we have been chosen from the animal kingdom to evolve into an advanced intelligence that allows us to eventually merge back into the God consciousness from which the building blocks of all life sprang from, the biggest bang of all time. The strictest interpretations of that recognition come in the form of The Rapture myth: at the end of the world, the remains of our physical selves reanimate with life through the Holy Spirit (which is a ghost), allowing us to ascend bodily into heaven like our Savior Jesus Christ, so that we may sit at the right hand of The Father, Our Creator. It's a place where we can finally fulfill our destinies as advanced beings by escaping the chains of mortal life, bouncing through the cosmos as pure energy filled with infinite knowledge, freed from the cares of the body and its physical confines.
Isn't that great?! Catholics have the best fables, as passionate and dramatic as life itself. They are very old, as ancient as mankind, derived from the pagan traditions of worship that existed prior. The extremity of the mythic aspect to this fable comes with art to match. What better reminder of the temporal quality of life on this planet than a daily reminder of death? It's morbid, but given the typical American diet of self-denial combined with an utter lack of self-awareness, it's refreshing to see such truths revelead. Here is the truth at last, writ universal so that even a child can understand it: we are all born, we all die. Confront it, and motherfucking deal. We are not pansies about death, and our intense rituals are designed to attest to that fact.
From a young age, our burial ceremonies prop up our dead bodies for public viewing for the sake of mourning, perusal, contemplation, and grief. The underlying message is always the same: we are temporary. Life is short, brutal, and brief, so what are you doing today? What the fuck are you waiting for exactly?! You may not be here tomorrow for God's sake, so fucking do something. It's harsh but real, because we hit upon another one of life's great motivators and catalysts for change: fear about death and dying. Here is a dead body. Look at it. And it's true, here it is. Truths are revealed to you like no other process. This dead body is not my grandmother. The life that animated her is not present. This body is a mere shell of the electrical currents that ran through her, animated her, and made her special, and now it is not present any more. She is no longer here. She will never be here again. This is permanent. This is final. She is gone. Forever. I was eight at the time.
Since we do not pretend that death does not exist and life is fair, it requires a certain sense of maturity and decorum to contemplate these concepts well. Man, I was psyched! As we walked the narrow streets to the monastery, I was on Cloud fucking Nine. Oh boy, oh boy, here we go. I was a bit bummed to see some fat, pale Americans in poorly fitted clothing entering the gates ahead of us, but since I could see they were made of poor stuff, their reactions would simply add to my afternoon's entertainment.
Sure enough, it was rough stuff and I loved all of it. A monk in a long black cloak with a small black skullcap on the back of his bald pate waited at the top of the stairs. Tours are timed, so he was expecting us. He turned on his heels, went through a wooden door, and shortly afterwards opened a small, previously gated window that had an opening for money in the worn wooden trough beneath it. He pointed at a sign for the lira amount, and pointed at the trough. You give me money. Easy to pantomime. Money is a universal language! I was over the moon. After everyone in the group in the courtyard paid the small fee, we stood around waiting. The window closed, and he again appeared at the end of a corridor, motioning us to follow him with his hand, which I eagerly did. As he waited, he put his chin down and folded his hands into the arms of his robe, glowering silently at us.
My new husband lacked the vigor for my adventures and it began to show rather quickly. He had never been overseas and he does not use languages well. He revealed himself to be of rather generic suburban American tastes. Ho hum. C'est la vie. But I was here, I may not ever be here again, and I was making the most of this time, regardless of obstacles and despite the obstructions, like I always do. With his lack of imagination about the events and his rather poor temperament, I pushed my way through Italy because I had read about these famous artworks all my life. I would not miss out on any opportunities as they presented themselves to me and if he couldn't keep up, oh well. He looked a little pale and shaky as the trip progressed.
The crypts were dark and dank and musty. Ah, heavy with atmosphere! For those of you expecting superficial Halloween thrills, you will be disappointed when I tell you that rather than horror, I found this kind of ministering to the members of the abbey beautiful and moving. Such devotion to something many people would cast off, desperate to separate themselves, like it was a disease that's catching, such is the delusional quality of our society and popular culture. Have you ever touched human remains? Yeah, that's how intimate you have to get with a human body to make a lamp that's comprised entirely of finger bones. Think about what you learn as as you make such a thing. Nothing ordinary, that's for sure.
As I expected, the average tourists started complaining about the closeness of the quarters. One pale, sun-burned man in a floppy sun hat said in English to his wife, "Yeah, I don't feel so good either. Let's get out of here" but you can't actually leave or do what you want, like a Disney ride. Oh. I'm over-joyed! Forced to confront reality, watching them cave. It so much like my life that I relish the opportunity to see it in real life and in a real setting. It's the same dynamics I talk and write about made present, acted out for me in real life. Do you know how rare that is to see the concepts you know actualize themselves in reality? Fully present for all to see, here in this confined environment manifesting themselves right in front of me with witnesses. Wondrous.
Because, dear readers, here is the truth about a visit to this abbey. There is only one small narrow tight path that winds through the bones and it can only fit one person at a time. You cannot back up. You cannot turn around. You cannot leave. You must follow the path through it until the end, because you have no choice. For the time period that you are there in the crypt, you feel like you are buried alive. The suffocating dank closes in on you and every surface your eyes look at is covered in human bone: dead children dancing around clocks; empty, hollow eye sockets peering at you through the dimy lit gloom, from every angle and at every side. Even for someone of my fiber, the musty air gave me a little headache. It was that thick and close. It. Was. Awesome.
As we breached the light, blinking and breathing in the air of day, I turned around to get another good look at the monk who had served as our guide. I will not return in this form, in this life, ever. I wanted to drink in every last detail of it. He strode across the cobblestone courtyard hurriedly to another part of the abbey, looking busy and productive as men of the cloth who tend to a big parish typically are. Just as before he seemed like a darkly silent Gothic character, now he appeared like a brisk man of vigor. WOW!!! What a great show! He looked pointedly at me as he strode quickly past the small tourist crowd, stretching the hem of his habit with his long stride. He gave me a brief little smile that animated the spark of bright blue eyes that stood out in direct contrast to the brightness of his white goatee and his lightly tanned Mediterranean skin. I immediately smiled back.
Happy Halloween.
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_della_Concezione_dei_Cappuccini |
