Saturday, March 15, 2008

Dissection

I just had my yearly performance review, got my raise, quit my job, and agreed to precipitously move to the deep south to make toys. My performance evaluation, with its arbitrary drop-downs suggesting that I'm a good at branding or spanking or branking or whatever nonsensical corporate jingo is du jour, these half full boxes crowding the wood floor, filling again with inane toys and one horse skull, they dissect this year neatly for me.

In seventh grade at Blessed Sacrament we dissected frogs, and I remember wincing as I sliced open the membrane of the eye. Some enterprising classmate quickly discovered that the tough eyeballs bounced, and the lab was soon full of the little yellow orbs, ricocheting in quantity from floor to ceiling, wall to window.

In my senior year of high school at the Academy of the Holy Cross we dissected fetal pigs for a few weeks. The AC went out for the last of these, and I remember vividly the stink of the old formaldehyde and curdled flesh, the sticky pink pieces of organs spattering on the metal table tops. We all named our pigs, and took them home with us to continue in our macabre explorations. Mine was named Fyodor after Dostoevsky, a few classmates ghoulishly named theirs for ex boyfriends. I remember Fyodor's perfect little heart, and how it made me feel sad to clumsily hack it out of his chest.

It's been a long, hard Chicago winter. There's been loss, illness, sadness and snow - snow for five months straight, days and nights filled with so much snow that on the first day above freezing the parks and sidewalks turned into slimy brown waterfalls, feculent with urban detritus.
This will be our 6th move in 4 years. This time, I really am going to throw some of this crap away.

Gather the stars if you wish it so.
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women.
Gather for keeping years and years.

And then …
Loosen your hands, let go and say good-by.
Let the stars and songs go.
Let the faces and years go.
Loosen your hands and say good-by.
- Carl Sandburg, “Stars, Songs, Faces.”


Goodbye, Chicago.