ode to bones

 It's tempting to think of bones as rigid, white pillars that sit inactive inside of muscle and skin. They're at the core of form, building the framework of physical makeup, barely allowed to see sunlight, except for smiles. With shapes that are shared or vary from species to species, bones are the hard machinery required to synthesize and support the pulsating current of blood that animates the rest of the systems.  

 Bone is a dynamic tissue, never completely stagnant. Every day, little bits of our bones are released into our blood and what remains will then be fully reformed, as long as all goes as planned. Bones display the power and danger of hardening. Ossification is the word that describes the process of calcifying the materials that reform the bone. If this happens anywhere else in the body, the organ or other tissues are then rendered useless, a nuisance, lethal even. 

Nothing hardens as gracefully as bone. Nothing else solidifies so intensely within us that it can be excavated multiple millennia ahead. Nearly everything else becomes Earth. Bones firmly testify to our existence long after our soft tissues are churned into dirt.

In their less petrified form, when bathed in water and boiled for hours, bones exude a broth unrivaled by little else. It's a concoction beyond compare, a cultural cornerstone on almost every continent. Craved in sickness and celebrated in health, poured into a vessel to be sipped or slurped or scooped, broth from bones can shapeshift into every type of comfort needed and known. Humanity hasn’t been without a global spectrum of glistening broths since before 20,000 B.C. Countless generations of humans all have the the alchemical combination of bones, vegetables, aromatics, and water in common.

That’s a lot of fucking soup.

 When we talk about bones we can't go much deeper. To feel something to the bone is to know that every existing particle of our self is wholly dedicated to a thought, feeling, or instinct. Working to the bone implies utmost exhaustion. To cut something to the bone is to reduce it to naught more than the absolute minimum. When it comes down to it, bones can represent nothing even though they exist to keep everything in place. Embedded in our language, they continue to show off their dynamic nature.

Hard, sturdy, strong as they are, bones need to be covered and cushioned, separated and surrounded by softer tissues. Despite their structural strength, bone grinding on bone elicits unavoidable aches, sharp pains, further degenerating unless treated or replaced.


An older man once told me he’d give up a year of his life to be able to jump one more time.

Plenty gets in the way of appreciating our bones. How they’re covered, their size, their occasional fragility. But there’s no changing them, no avoiding them. We are bound to our bones from birth. And even if we go a lifetime without an ounce of gratitude, they’re in there, holding it down until eventually, no matter their carriers’ meals or morality, habits or status, they get scattered onto the Earth or folded into the dirt, rendering all vertebrates ever known into an ossified memory.

The fate we all share. Make no bones about it.