they fit together neatly, like stacking chairs. We were impressed by the elegance of the design and we could distinguish different sections of the spine by the size of the wings, and whether they had dorsal fins. A few were missing. We found string and scissors and made the bones into a mobile, balancing pendant chains of vertebrae against a rusty railroad spike. We hung it up in our friendâs cabin, happy with the way the old bones swung in the sun.
None of the vertebrae are missing on the human skeleton that hangs from a hook in the yoga studio I go to. It looks so perfect, like it was made from a kit as a visual aid for a yoga class, that itâs easy to forget it used to walk around inside a particular person. I wonder who.
When you check âdonorâ on your driverâs license, it doesnât mean youâre donating your bones to a yoga studio. You would really be naked in public, then. Still, nobody would know it was you, unless there was a little brass plaque on the pelvis with your name. Nobody would recognize your skeleton, not even your best friend, not even someone who had made love to you for years.
Itâs odd that skeletons and skulls represent death, since,if youâre a living human being, you have your very own living skeleton inside you, and it holds you up your whole life long. Youâd be a puddle on the floor without it. I guess a skeleton means death because you canât
see
a skeleton until the person is dead and the flesh has fallen away.
At the celebration of the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, I saw skeletons dancing, skeletons working at their sewing machines and typewriters, skeletons cutting the hair of other skeletons in the barber shop. I brought home a little scene of a doctor skeleton delivering a baby skeleton from a mother skeleton while a nurse skeleton stands ready to assist.
You know youâre going to die, and you donât know whatâs going to happen to you after that. You also donât know whatâs going to happen to you before that, as a result of age, and you canât control it. A young friend of mine in medical school was told that the age of sixty is a kind of watershed, and that the average human body crosses a line about that time and begins to deteriorate in earnest. Of course doctors donât tell their patients this, and of course the age varies from one individual to another, but on the
average
, there is significant change at sixty.
For a sixtieth birthday present, my two sons promised to take me backpacking in the Sierra. I had taken them camping and backpacking often when they were children, and this time they would be my outfitters and guides. The promise alone was one of the best presents I ever received, and then there would be the trip itself on top of the promise. For a couple of months before the trip I worked out extra hard at the gym. I had several sessions with a personal trainer, who mercilessly made me climb stairs that fell away beneath my feet and step up and down on purple plastic boxes to strengthen my quads for hiking.
My sons plotted the route, got the permits, rented the tent, planned the menus, and bought the food. On the appointed day, Sandy and I drove together from the Bay Area and Noah drove from Los Angeles to our meeting point in the town of Bishop,on the east side of the Sierra. I was excited when we pulled into the parking lot of the ranger station and saw Noahâs blue Toyota, shimmering in the August heat. We found Noah inside the ranger station, where heâd arrived just fifteen minutes before, looking at flower books. We got our fire permit and rented the required bear-proof cylinder for our food, and at the last minute, before we set off for the trailhead, I followed Sandyâs suggestion and bought myself a pair of hiking poles. I also bought, on a sudden impulse, a tiny booklet on the U.S. Constitution that was placed prominently next to the cash register. This was during George W.
None of the vertebrae are missing on the human skeleton that hangs from a hook in the yoga studio I go to. It looks so perfect, like it was made from a kit as a visual aid for a yoga class, that itâs easy to forget it used to walk around inside a particular person. I wonder who.
When you check âdonorâ on your driverâs license, it doesnât mean youâre donating your bones to a yoga studio. You would really be naked in public, then. Still, nobody would know it was you, unless there was a little brass plaque on the pelvis with your name. Nobody would recognize your skeleton, not even your best friend, not even someone who had made love to you for years.
Itâs odd that skeletons and skulls represent death, since,if youâre a living human being, you have your very own living skeleton inside you, and it holds you up your whole life long. Youâd be a puddle on the floor without it. I guess a skeleton means death because you canât
see
a skeleton until the person is dead and the flesh has fallen away.
At the celebration of the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, I saw skeletons dancing, skeletons working at their sewing machines and typewriters, skeletons cutting the hair of other skeletons in the barber shop. I brought home a little scene of a doctor skeleton delivering a baby skeleton from a mother skeleton while a nurse skeleton stands ready to assist.
You know youâre going to die, and you donât know whatâs going to happen to you after that. You also donât know whatâs going to happen to you before that, as a result of age, and you canât control it. A young friend of mine in medical school was told that the age of sixty is a kind of watershed, and that the average human body crosses a line about that time and begins to deteriorate in earnest. Of course doctors donât tell their patients this, and of course the age varies from one individual to another, but on the
average
, there is significant change at sixty.
For a sixtieth birthday present, my two sons promised to take me backpacking in the Sierra. I had taken them camping and backpacking often when they were children, and this time they would be my outfitters and guides. The promise alone was one of the best presents I ever received, and then there would be the trip itself on top of the promise. For a couple of months before the trip I worked out extra hard at the gym. I had several sessions with a personal trainer, who mercilessly made me climb stairs that fell away beneath my feet and step up and down on purple plastic boxes to strengthen my quads for hiking.
My sons plotted the route, got the permits, rented the tent, planned the menus, and bought the food. On the appointed day, Sandy and I drove together from the Bay Area and Noah drove from Los Angeles to our meeting point in the town of Bishop,on the east side of the Sierra. I was excited when we pulled into the parking lot of the ranger station and saw Noahâs blue Toyota, shimmering in the August heat. We found Noah inside the ranger station, where heâd arrived just fifteen minutes before, looking at flower books. We got our fire permit and rented the required bear-proof cylinder for our food, and at the last minute, before we set off for the trailhead, I followed Sandyâs suggestion and bought myself a pair of hiking poles. I also bought, on a sudden impulse, a tiny booklet on the U.S. Constitution that was placed prominently next to the cash register. This was during George W.