When I look at a maze, it reminds me of the brain; and the brain reminds me of the crevices of intestines.  The intestines reminds me of how we all are made.  Inside the “Lab for Anatomical Enlightenment” I saw my first well-dissected highway of intestines pulled out by the end like scarves from a magic hat.  Endless – draining.  Being in human cadaver lab was something as unlikely for me as skydiving, and yet….

Later that same afternoon, I sat in a dark bar with others ordering hamburgers as if nothing happened because that’s how things continue.  We go through the motions of regularity with the living until we believe them again, or forget it was any other way.   Our brain is a magical thing.

I did not know the first time, that I’d have to go back to the lab – but I dreaded it less.  The smell, less intoxicating – the table with dissected appendages almost approachable.   This brain too develops scars, callousing over perceptions with a thin layer of tough, because that’s how things continue.

In 1945 after WWII, my grandmother was displaced from her home in Czechoslovakia – and transported to Germany with her family in a livestock train car.  At the intern camp, with hundreds of others they were stripped, deloused and fed blood sausages waiting for somewhere to live.  She tells me, ‘never look back.’  Because that’s how things continue.

Allison for the PGM