macabre jane i was told i look rather macabre today. i have no idea what she's talking about. 071221 ... ovenbird The bat was dead, my daughter told me. She saw its heart outside its body. She saw its insides. The kids all gathered ‘round its twisted remains. A boy tried to touch it but the other kids stopped him, screaming about rabies. A teacher told them to cover the body with leaves so they did, kicking red and gold over the broken wings, the exposed organs. Her eyes were wide when she told me what she saw and I could see two things happening at once: terror and awe. “Was it gross?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “Was it amazing?’ I asked. “Yes,” she said. Death is strange that way, so repulsive yet alluring, so hideous yet magnetic. She’ll remember the bat, how she peered into the cavity where its tiny lungs once filled with the cool night air. She'll remember its stillness, and she'll learn how there's hardly anything holding in the secret mechanisms of our bodies, how it only takes a second to be torn open. She'll know how pain doesn't end with death but moves into the empathetic hearts of the living and does its work there, forging connections, making us understand that we belong to each other. The image will burn itself into her mind: the leathery skin, the yawning wound, the fangs made pointless and inert. She’ll remember how the adult present did nothing to acknowledge the power gathering on the playground. He didn’t see the interplay of revulsion and fascination or the need to speak to death’s immediacy. He didn’t even think to properly assess the health threat posed by a dead animal that could carry a serious disease. All he thought to do was make it invisible because he was not prepared to address the gory reality with a group of nine year olds. He couldn’t admit that the shine in their eyes was not just fear but also a visceral and stirring amazement. The bat was dead and it was dangerous and it was beautiful…and my daughter saw it all. 251120 what's it to you? who go blather from