Once I finish blabbing, I see, my skeleton looking at me aghast–as if betrayed, manipulated.
“So, are you saying…? I’m not real… I’M JUST A PUPPET FOR YOU!? WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST SAY IT, HUH!? HAVE THE COURAGE TO SAY WHAT YOU WERE FEELING UPFRONT WITHOUT USING ME!?” It marches, tossing off its hat, flings off its stethoscope as I sit on the track, watching. “NONE OF THESE WORDS WERE EVER MY OWN!?” The skeleton even kicks the cooler, breaking a toe… “owww… OR WAS I EVEN MEANT TO FEEL THAT!? Oh great writer.?” It ends sarcastically, until it whimpers “kid…” them rolls its eyes, or as much as those gaping ones can–I don’t care if this is my own imagining… they’re creepy.
“Well, yes, but no..I used you as a literary device, to explain to the reader in a way I couldn’t easily have done so without boring them too tears. And this was already long. Like really long. Otherwise, you have been used–but it doesn’t make you any less real, or so I’ve come to learn–or am still learning… Uhh..You just crept up from my subconscious.. besides, if I hadn’t used you, would you exist?”
“UNBELIEVABLE!” The skeleton exclaims, referring as much to my myth as to my response. “Bore them to tears? What–well what about MY tears?” It begins making sobbing sounds, yet its face is dry as a BONE. “WHO AM I TO YOU!? Who am I really then? Did I ever have free-will? Did I ever have… it’s all existential really… my purpose… I don’t know what it is..CAN I EVEN THINK?.OR IS IT ALL THROUGH YOU?” It points an accusatory, trembling finger, then lies on the floor, banging its skull which rolls off the neck, conveniently. ” AM I JUST A MERE EXTENSION OF YOU!? I thought I knew who I was.. what is my purpose? AM I EVEN AN I?”
I take the skeleton’s shrieking skull and regard it like Hamlet. Meanwhile, its arms and legs have slid off from its body onto the track. “I’m falling apart and can’t get up..” “I’m only who you want me to be… I’m not even a Self” It remains sobbing.
While the skeleton can serve as a metaphor for the parts of ourselves we’d rather ignore, like my current fear of not being understood and in turn not belonging—“the skeleton in the closet” it can also serve as a metaphor for the parts of ourselves we don’t easily see– not just our vulnerabilities.
My character is right in some way— it has no brain, no heart, everything it says, does, is imagined and conveyed through me: its indignation, the way it storms, how it flung off its hat and collapsed into my arms, even the strumming on its ribs that caused the heart in my chest to beat is my own imagining.
Yet, when I look into these gaping eyes of a sad skull on my lap, seeing pitch black, feeling the chill through the ribs that lie here the track, they seem to hold clues into something—both within and beyond me. Even the whistle streaming through the ribs sounds like it poses the age-old question of existence, warranting these bones as being ancient.
I didn’t consciously choose for the skeleton to appear in my mind as I mulled over how to write all this—it sorts of did on its own, like all other images that seem meaningless to us in our physical reality, making their way up past the veil of imagination–or the crypt from which the Skeleton came–carrying some imprint of life, such as those statutes in DC.
Perhaps this could also all be due to images my conscious mind may compiled over the course of my life that may have just made their way to my subconscious, (brought out into awareness through associated thoughts), but considering how this all feels exciting, animated and even purposeful, well, could the Skeleton have emerged from a mysterious psyche Carl Jung mentioned had a life of its own, that connects us to life itself–this veil of imagination or the crypt?
I reach for the stethoscope, bringing my hand over its heart and though it is empty, I feel the unsteady, uneven, unrhythmic beating of mine in its place.
“You know.. I empathize a lot with you.”
“Oh, do you? I suppose it’s because I am you? I can only feel, think and obtain a voice through you. Even if it’s a bad, an’ I mean bad an’ unbelievable New York accent”
“You have a life of your own you know, you need to give yourself more credit here. If you didn’t appear to me, I wouldn’t have had this beat..Plus… you need to give yourself more credit here… I’m not the only one you’re within, you know.”
“Oh, is that so? ”
“You’re the basis of the entire self representing its underlying skeleton—and the time honored archetype of life and death.” I continue,
“You’re the underlying bones of other characters, right here..spinning around us in orbit..”
In the scene are Amar, Pro, the Cap’n, Lon T. Ranger, all screaming in unison–
“Yoo.. hooooooooooo………Yee-hawwwwwwwwwww.”
“Helpppppppppppppppppppp”
“We all exist within each other.. and you, the skeleton, as a time honored archetype..comprise us all. You are the bones of the universe.”