sighted; part 4 of 6

her abdomen proceeds her as she makes her way down the sidewalk, stepping carefully past cracks and shoots of green. from a distance, though you can tell she is a large woman, the bowl of her belly does not conform to ideas of obesity. instead, to the eye of an interested amateur (my eye, see), it looks as though perhaps she's suffering from malnutrion, from kwashiorkor. you've seen them, the children with the swollen bellies, a skinny little boy looking like nothing more than pregnant in the circle of sally struthers' arms.

this protrusion is given many explanations, among them swollen liver due to cirrhosis or simple fluid retention for any number of nasty reasons. i can't help but wonder if it's not about more than anatomy, more than disease.

the bones that form the pelvic girdle are thick and strong, fitted perfectly to form a cup with wings that extend up the back. they shifted and swayed this way and that as we stood upright. their mass is intended for strength, to stand up under the impossible responsibility of cradling human organs. the muscles that attach them, too, are thick and broad - muscles that will not easily tear. some mornings, surely, you've stopped to consider what keeps you upright with no thought to physiology, the miracle that is your body.

i don't question this anymore, because i know the bones and their perfection. i know what works with what, and why each movement is a choreographed ballet of sinew and socket. i could fall to my knees before such perfect machinery, fall to worship at the altar of human flesh. this is nothing about love, romantic love or sex, nothing about desire.

it is about abstractions and waking up every morning knowing this: i have two feet, and a heart that beats.

i would only be able to express my feeling for a perfectly created machine in a language normally reserved for words on god. how easy it is to take for granted existence and how easy to abuse what is given you, how the assurance of youth is to be immortal.

i have heard theorized that man's machines are a sort of proof of god, of a flawless designer whose time is best spent building blueprints - hiding them subtly - so that man could reproduce them in plastic, in machines. i see no such connection.

the click of a shutter. the blink of an eye. the perfect designs of our bodies reflected as it should be in the material world. the existence of a camera does not give me faith in anything but that maybe once existed someone else who felt as i do. humanness is a gift not bestowed benign among the bushes of a humble beginning, but a gift of discovery, something we gave ourselves in a triumphant emergence from the forest.

congratulations men. you see blue sky and the ripple of muscle.

the ilium, the ischium, the pubis. a holy trinity i can get behind.

and i wonder if this distension of abdomen isn't about giving up. maybe the muscles of her stomach could no longer handle the strain of being upright. maybe they let go the strain of holding themselves together. maybe getting out of bed will soon no longer be worth the trouble.

it is a day of perfections. the woman walks with a white stick, tapping tapping her way down washington street. she smiles, and i smile at the grandeur of my assumed knowledge. normally my first instinct would be sadness, that she would not see the distinction of vivid blue sky and vibrant green grass, black asphalt and white cloud, the greens and oranges of corroded buildings, all the beautiful things of this world we made.

but i among all people should know that something does not cease to be beautiful when you close your eyes, nor does it begin to be beautiful only because they're open. the wind blows softly down johnson avenue, and her belly proceeds her as she makes her way down the sidewalk, feeling on her face the light of perfect day.