Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” (Anthony Bourdain)

I’m having an offbeat week.  As if I’m somewhat out of body but not completely, like a door whose wood has swollen from humidity and remains slightly ajar.  My mind is running away with me, racing with bizarre concepts, all while sober and present.  It started this past Sunday.  I went to mass as it was Palm Sunday, and the crowd was as expected: Packed with individuals and family units ranging from infants to the aged, and fidgety children with a glazed look to their eyes.  I was one of those children.  I’m usually very deferential during mass, but on this day, my mind had other ideas.  

I became Leopold Bloom, operating in a stream of consciousness, all while remaining silent. I observed people and what they were wearing, uselessly critiquing items of clothing until I spotted a woman who was wearing the exact same slip-on sandals I had purchased at T.J. Maxx earlier in the week that are embellished with copious amounts of rhinestones.  She did me a solid. I now know I risk being mistaken for a remaining member of Liberace’s entourage as I lounge by my pool this summer.  

At one point after the homily, the presiding priest, who has a very pronounced Nigerian accent, reprimanded the congregants for the few bad apples who leave mass early, slinking out immediately after taking communion.  I’m one of those bad apples, and in a moment that blurred between whether what was in my head actually expelled through my lips, I may have murmured, “well, if you’d speed it up a bit perhaps our gas tanks wouldn’t be on empty after alternating between standing, sitting and kneeling.”  With the different commands a mass ordains, it can feel as though you’re a 1970’s housewife doing calisthenics with Jack LaLanne instructing in the background.     

This morning as I was going about my routine, waiting for the coffee to brew before rifling through my inbox, I suddenly began to focus on how utterly bizarre the human form is from a physical standpoint.  Eyes … ears … noses, the split dividing our legs and the weird rhino skin on our elbows.  It may have been spurred by a recent social media post I had scrolled past concerning Anthony Scaramucci, President Trump’s former Communications Director and now one of his biggest detractors, who bears an incredible resemblance to “Mr. Limpet,” from the 1960’s movie of the same name starring Don Knotts, as a human who turns into a fish.  Scaramucci is bombastic and aquatic looking for a diminutive man, with a perfectly pointed lip bow that could suck fish food flakes with one nibble.  

I think it was something else though.  It may have to do with a microcosm of a larger weirdness that is currently blanketing the earth. Everything seems off kilter and lopsided, as if humanity is wearing a giant pair of prescription eyeglasses with a very outdated lens.  People are becoming increasingly unhinged with each passing day, as evidenced by a million Tik Tok videos, so why wouldn’t I question the encasement?   

What’s the deal with eyes?  Why did God decide to place two gelatinous balls of goo that come in different colors, side by side inside of a hollow cavity?  And the more pronounced body parts.  This is a respectable blog so I’ll spare specifics, but who thought of the strange concept that body parts should go into each other, like a carnal game of Legos?  On the 6^th day of Creation, did God have the engineers who would go on to design the AMC Gremlin brainstorming around the table?  … “Make sure the backside is malleable so it has room to grow ….”   

Human beings are very odd.  The next time you’re preparing to take a shower, fixate on yourself in the bathroom mirror.  Whether you consider yourself beautiful or not is not an issue, we all look as if we could sprout gills and it wouldn’t make a difference.  Stare at your toes and tell me I’m wrong.

Embrace your peculiarity.