Sky Burial

Abstract

Sky Burial Mark Wunderlich (bio) Sky Burial On the Autobiographical Impulse Does it matter that I am homosexual, and therefore on the edgeof some larger portion of the human world? Does this matter?Does it matter that my name is German, and that Germans find my name amusing?Does it matter that my mother's family was poor?That her father beat my grandmother when he drank? Does it matter that he fled KansasDuring the Dust Bowl to ride the rails? Does it matter that his aunts and uncleswere herded into Siberia by the hand of Stalin, shot on the banks of the Black Sea?Does it matter that they believed in ghosts, ate lard and sugar sandwiches,went into the service, went to sea? Does it matter that I have family in Chile,in Argentina, Transylvania, Hungary? Does it matter that my parentsturned against me when I was nineteen? That I worked as a prostitute in Greece,groomed horses for a baron and let myself be fucked by weekend guestsin payment for my stay at the beach? Does it matter that I worked in a factory?Does it matter that I know how to hunt, field dress a deer, knit a sweater,make a basket, pollard willows, converse in three languages, read four?Does it matter that my nephew believed he was being watchedby the police, that aliens bedeviled his nights, that he loved mycologyand weapons of all sorts, that he tattooed the outline [End Page 53] of Minnesota on his chest, and that the noose he used to hang himselfwas put out that week in the trash?Does it matter that he lived, or that he died?How much of what we are is what is seen? Am I more tenderbecause I am penetrable? How many men have been inside my body?I lost count. Their ghosts would know. Does it matter that I light candlesin churches to burn away disbelief? Does it matter that I sitbehind a desk in a room lined with books, that people cometo hear me speak? Does it matter that my body repels mebut that I like my hair? Does vanity matter?Outside, the wind turns and the sun burns the grassas it has always done. I understandthe moon to be a cliché, yet it still lodges into the sky at night,and the moths search out the truth of the bedside lamp.Some will survive the night,others I will sweep from the bedside tablewhere they spent their last hours yearning toward the light. On Victimhood Once, I was made the victim of a man.He beat me the way a boxer might beat a bag of sawdust.That afternoon, my world became very small, centeredon the bruised surface of my face. I thought that day,as I shrank from his attentions,that I would die there, strangled on my bed, while outsidein the California fog, the lone palm below my window [End Page 54] rattled in the Pacific wind, indifferent to my plight.This too I survived, as the mangrew bored or scared, and simply put on his clothes and left.Having been a victim, I am not a victim.Despite what you think you knowyou know nothing of the words I have usedto empty myself of myself. This event means less to mewith each morning, and even when it occurred, it meant very little,the man not knowing who I was. Today I am seated at an ugly desk in a beautiful room.Large shutters open onto a medieval courtyard.The occasions of my life conspired to bring me hereon a September morning in Umbria. Jackdaws rustlein the olive trees. Workmen grind stone with a machine.The fog burnt off and is already forgottenexcept by the lines on this page.Behind us is a summer of violence, which moved around the globepopping up in corners, unexpected, always, but anticipatednonetheless. A man drove a truck through a crowd.A man was shot while face down on the ground,and a tyrant rose in the...