I couldn’t sleep. I was lying there in my bed and I just couldn’t sleep so I propped myself up on my elbows and kind of cradled my head in my hands in mild frustration. As I was holding my head like that I began to think about the shape of my skull, and I thought about how I used to be an infant, a tiny little baby with a tiny skull. And I grew up, and I’ve turned out fairly decent, and really, in that way, I’m kind of proud of myself. I’m not an infant anymore, I’m an adult with adult intelligence and adult ideas and an adult skull. That skull…
I began to think about myself as a skeleton, which I am – a skeleton covered in muscles and flesh and so forth. Underneath all that I am just a skeleton which is actually really cool. I don’t mean like, “Hey, cool, isn’t the human body fascinating?” I mean more like, “Hey, skeletons are just COOL, like James Dean cool. Like skeletons are just leaning against the brick wall smoking a cig and they just don’t care.” Does that make any sense? Probably not. But when I pictured myself as just a skeleton I was cool, I was confident. When you strip away the fashion and the styles and the sarcasm and terrible charm we’re all equal, just a bunch of stupid, cool skeletons. Like we just don’t care. I know that I’m not explaining it right. But I AM a skeleton, under all of this.
Anyway, I kept thinking about skeletons and how skeleton-me was so cool but then I started to remember that skeletons aren’t all that cool*, they are actually super creepy, with their perpetual grinning jaws and their gaping eye holes and hollow noses and long bony fingers. I started thinking about those ridiculous Grateful Dead skeletons and I was picturing myself as one of those, sprawled out on my bed, and I started to want my muscles and skin and pajamas back.
I don’t know, I was sick of having such stupid thoughts when I probably should have been praying or meditating or, most of all, sleeping, so I got up and did the only thing a skeleton knows how to do. I logged on to my blog. And now I’m going back to bed.
*Of course skeletons are still cool, and always will be, in the biological, structural, life-enabling framework sense.
3 Comments
I love love LOVE this entry, B! The whole idea of being skeletons and being stupid cool and not caring what anybody thinks – is it because of the way their faces look? Like…is that your interpretation of their faces? “I’m a skeleton, I don’t give an eff!” They’re somewhat expressionless (due to the lack of a face, I guess), yet there’s so much emanating from their blank faces. But they’re kind of smiling all the time. That’s kind of how I see it…Anyhow, I love your description.
I had a similar night, but in a different way. I was wide awake and worried that I would never think of anything to write about ever again, but then I wrote this whole long blog from my bed. Blogs!
I hope you slept. xxoo!
I think your skeleton is as cool as you want it to be.
Also: i am glad you blog when you can’t sleep. then I get a pleasant surprise in the morning, when I wake up and there’s a new Breena blog to read.
well one time i had a bone scan and i had to lay real still on this table while a sensor went over me. This was for medical purposes. haha. anyway. I got to see my very own skeleton appear before me on the screen and let me tell you it was surreal. I have seen what i will look like when i am dead. when the archeologist digs me up and says “well she loved coffee and rainy days, as you can see by the tiny shard of bone here.”