The Church of

I've never been much on religion. But there's this tribe in Africa whose ritual masks I saw in an art museum once, and I guess once a day they sacrifice a jaguar just so they can absorb its psychic death energies--that is really what the museum plaque said, by the way, "psychic death energies." Isn't that great? 

But where was I going with this. Jaguar sacrifice. I mean, I think there's something to that--not the animal cruelty part, really, or even the sacrifice part, but that reverence for death. The last time I watched a starving man play saxophone for change on the street, I kind of coughed in his general direction and hoped he would translate it into what I meant: I am sorry, I would tell you I had no money if you had asked, but really I do and I'm saving it to take this girl out. I saw my dog die once, too, and I'm still guilty about how little inner turmoil I felt over it. He just sort of yawned, but with his whole body, and eventually his soul just crawled out with the breath and that was that. 

I'm starting my worship tomorrow, in this church of Anonymous-African-Tribe. When I wake up, I'll go straight to the mirror and try to see it: the absent stab wounds and eventual IV scars, nostrils, mouths. I want to think on where my soul will escape, to plot out the places where I will pour out of myself. I want to be teeming with something, and if I'm not, I want to damn well know it. 

Photo is Denis Darzacq again, surprise!