Friday, September 14, 2007

Hallucination Story (#4)

As you are leaving the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, walking down the right side aisle, you pass by five chapels. They, like most churches, are easy to fly past; they are incidental, barely worthy of a glance. I didn’t look, I rarely do, and any notice of them was due to incidental head turning as I go forward. To the left, columns, to the right, frescos. Column, fresco, column, fresco, column, fresco, column, fresco
-skull-

There is a skull jutting from beneath a sculpture near the exit of the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. The gaping holes of eye sockets are lit from the sunlight through the open door, and you can see the crossed inscribed lines in the back of the eyes, Xs like a cartoon, only more so, because they looked carved in, as with a knife. The jaws have no front teeth, top or bottom. Do those fall out after you die, or do they need to be… removed when you’re still alive? The bone is smooth enough to glint. Is it real? Is it marble? I leaned forward unthinkingly.
When I get close, it’s no clearer, but the dips and ridges and minute topography of the thing is even clearer. The holes of the old nostrils, the hole of the jaw, the holes of the eyes all jump out at me. This thing is a collection of holes, of missing senses. How many inches am I away? I don’t know now, I might remember if I wasn’t so shocked when it moved. The corners of the wide jaw popped up and it smiled at me. I didn’t think for the first moment. I could feel my eyes widen. I didn’t smile back. It must have been an optical illusion, like when white space between two black masses seems grey in one’s peripheral vision. This is clear, because dead faces don’t smile. But skulls are always described as grinning, so this is what writers are always mentioning, the smiling skull.
I stood up straight again, and either because it held its pose without moving, or because it had been smiling the whole time, the grin stayed on, like a child told to be quiet but who can’t keep from smiling a bit anyway. I was annoyed, a bit embarrassed, and ready to go, so I turned around and took a step away.
-skull-
The column across from the piece of wall I’d been looking at is decorated with a skull. There is a skull looking at a skull in the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. At least, that is, when they’re not looking at me. Who the hell orients two skulls so that they stare at each other in a church? I turned around again to look at the first skull, but it wasn’t smiling anymore. I whipped around to look at the second skull, but it had turned to look slightly off to one side. If it had seen the other skull smiling, it probably would have smiled too, like two kids in the back of a car telling jokes and trying to keep quiet. I am tired of being the butt of two dead guys’ joke. At least I have all my teeth. Forget them. I left.
Stupid skulls.
Intellectually I know that those two skulls were not looking at me, and moreover I know that that skull was not smiling at me. That said, I can still see the corners of its skinless jaw whip up into a smile. And when I turned around, I could swear that they were looking at each other. Could they be built with the intent that they seemed that way? But why make it seem so? What’s the benefit? The church probably just wanted the viewer to think about and appreciate the death that we all have to face. I don’t know if a skull really does that, but I know that I was scared, even if momentarily. Maybe they want me frightened into prayer. That would make sense I suppose. My journal says, simply, that there are two skulls across from each other in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, but I don’t think of them in any way but smiling. Smiling.

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