As in death, during sleep this skeletal frame is fairly
useless; this aging frame that holds me ramrod straight
back in grammar school, Circa 1962, Head Master
screaming, “shoulders back, chest forward!” now bends
under the fatigue of the day.
As in death, lying prone is a foretaste where the frame is
off duty, allowing other anatomical parts, like joints, to
ache and creak their way into awareness.
And lying supine as I did today, treating my knotted spine
to a massage, this frame is ignored as softer tissues
surface to consciousness as they are plied under the deft
compassionate hands.
In this posture my eyes are closed and I have asked the
muzik to be turned off, leaving only the sense of touch to
remain acutely aware and fearful of the next locust of pain.
Without visual cues reality takes on a different hue and I
lapse into a reverie, “when I’m not being kneaded, like a
lump of dough” and a little conscience about this selfpampering.
Above all I realize how rarely do I treat this body, care for
it, listen to its aches and pains, and venerate the 60 year old frame.
Mostly I am running, sitting for too long on airplanes and in
cars, and falling half conscious into bed when the day is
done. Even my exercise on the treadmill is frantic and
frenetic despite its aching hip in a close to abusive use of
this frame in the vane hope it will help lose those extra
pounds and thus reduce my blood sugar, despite my
powerlessness over those evening cravings.
Most of all I marvel at this unique mammalian axial frame
and the price we humans must pay for being homo erectus
as we slowly decline.
It even inspired kabbalists to use the frame as the sacred
metaphor to represent the divine /human image that we all
aspire to.
