Skeleton vs. The Ghost

I was thinking about skeletins skeletons. Mostly I was thinking about how creepy they are, which is weird considering everyone has one. I don't think hair or nails are creepy (though possibly icky in the wrong context), and if we're talking stuff under-the-skin, muscles and veins aren't really creepy either - that's just the stuff that horror movies make a mess of, which is gross, nauseating even, if you're really sensitive to the nastiness of violence. Yes, I prefer a good G-rated movie (G-rated life is too severe, though), where everything turns out okay and the characters retain all of their limbs, appendages, and heads. I'm probably old-fashioned, damn kids these days and their 'scene' and 'emo', when I was your age, I knew how to multiply. But I digress.

Skeletons are creepy. They jump out at you in haunted houses, and are usually always accompanied by some boogety-boo music, discordant piano notes tinkling in the high register, while low strings play slow chromatics. Characters often scream at the sight of them - even Buffy was weirded out by skeletons and she practically lived in a graveyard. Maybe they're creepy because they just look so damn happy. "I'm a skeleton, I know all your secrets! Let's play Blackjack!" Just think, right at this moment, there's a happy-as-pie skeleton sitting under your skin, smiling away at all the irony in life, laughing at all of your problems.

Smug skeleton, thinking you're so awesome because you hold it all together. Sure, being an indestructible foundation is an important role; you're like the drummer of a band (does that make drummers creepy too?) Without skeletons, we would be lumpy slugs, squishing on through an undefined world. Just like songs. Songs are water without a beat. Can't grasp it and it doesn't stick. No definition, no form. Skeletons are rhythm, primal, the foundation that muscles and skin rest on. And if the melodic rhythm of a song is muscle (think guitar), then bass would be the veins running through them. The melody, whatever instrument it is, would be the skin, encapsulating everything else, what others may see but only a part of the story.

Bones, bleached and dry, it's what we'll be. The Future of Flesh. While all else melts away and dissolves into dirt, bones remain, underground and everlasting, the only physical part of ourselves that we leave behind. Our skeleton will always be, our skeleton is ageless. So perhaps their inherent creepiness is just because they create a stark contrast against all that we are - impermanent. Temporary. Although I find it quite comforting to know I'm not so easy to erase. Not that it matters, it's only bones, it won't be me left behind.

-Allysia