Some of the Whole

Page 1 of 3

© 2005 R.C. Barajas

(Part 2 of “It’s in the Holiday Mail”: The Body Parts saga)

had been in California for the holidays, and when I returned, they were all waiting for me. Some were in large stiff photo mailers, some in plain envelopes. One was even stuffed in my suitcase, cradled in newspaper, shrouded in a bag. The Body Parts had arrived right on schedule.

I carefully opened the envelopes –all postmarked California - and spread their innards across my workspace. I eased the charcoals and oil pastels from between their waxed paper sheets. There was a pair of feet - with ankles intact, a woman’s thighs with partial pubic area, a posterior view of a trachea complete with thyroid cartilage ripped from a medical textbook, a self-portrait of Picasso, a pair of eyes, a whimsical sketch in ballpoint pen of what might have been a penis – or a section of esophagus or fallopian tube – or perhaps a finger...? There were two colorful pastels, similarly tube-like, and, oddly, thirteen female breasts – eleven in the mail and a pair that had arrived via e-mail.

The Parts lay on the table with the prose-wrapped, spike-holding mannequin hand, and the left hand of my Papier Maché man, which I’d salvaged at the last moment, wanting in the end, some small memento of him. For several days I left the Parts lying there, looking them over occasionally, moving them around, admiring them. I noted the range between the sensuous and the cooly clinical.

I admit my first thought was, wow, what a lot of breasts! That thought was followed by a quiet acknowledgement that these were some very talented people and that my man’s spindly papier maché hand looked cold and dead compared to the warmth of the yellow-blue torso next to it.

continued...