The Other Side of the World: anatomie

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

anatomie

Strange; that those membranes, clots of flesh and delicate filters - fibred and affixed themselves together while I dizzily wandered through gestation - through the bitter-iced winter and the sharp-sunned summer, the curdled damp winter and the amorphous humid-massed summer. Two continents - 9 months - go figure. So what shall I do with my placenta? No ancestral land (without the impossible human-remain import laws, anyway) in which to bury it . . . it remains solid, irreverently squeezed between the plentifully hoarded meat cuts of my mother's freezer. When spring - finally, that misplaced season - arrives . . . let it melt into dark-earthed oblivion, twisting veins collapsing into hard-wire tree roots? Which roots where? With which roots shall I share my blood, my viscous, jellied crimson-purple, careful child-holding, vital and disposable - my anatomy?

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey Mianh ... the place to bury the placenta is your daughters turangawaewae (home) ... the place where she stands as tangata whenua (local people) ... her place in the world ... maybe she will be like you - a travellor, with her feet grounded in many different worlds ... :-) ... so she needs it to be dried, crumbled to dust and blown to all four corners of the wind...
Love Sue

8:28 PM  
Blogger Louisa said...

Or, my dear, you could eat your baby's first angel.

http://misplacedmama.blogsome.com/2008/02/09/blood-magic-or-the-amazing-healing-properties-of-the-placenta-to-uplift-depression/

Increasingly popular in these parts.
I may even do it myself with my next.

I do love Sue's suggestion though.
:)
Xx

1:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hm.. while all those ideas are lovely (i'm leaning toward the first one).. I think you should start by putting it in your OWN DAMN FREEZER because I can't risk making pasta sauce out of that accidentally.
But if you wanted to eat it.. hell, why not just carve a nice piece of bicep out and eat that too.. cannibalism anyone?
.. 'angel'?

7:49 PM  
Blogger M said...

it's ok little brother - it's labelled "placenta"
. . boys. . seriously. . .

8:00 PM  

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