About Rituals Concerning the Skull
by Victoria Rego
It is said the obsession didn’t end after the late Natufian Period, some 12,000 years ago.
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Not that long ago, scientists measured intellect by the cranium’s circumference. Drew equations on clipboards. Their fingers felt around the scalp like pinchers. The patient closed their eyes, imagined heads rolling.
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Not that long ago, Hamlet raised a skull. His fingers formed a chalice which he asked the audience to drink from.
That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once.
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Once, in art class, brush in hand and amethyst paint on the back of my palms, what once was a turtle sat on the tabletop before me. I proclaimed: Of all the things, I love painting skulls the most.
I dipped my brush in the purple. Traced the line of a crack.
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I hardly need to tell you that these rituals survive, as all the most beautiful and base things do.
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Which is another way to say: I’d love to pull your hair back, see the skin beneath exposed around the follicles. How the flesh puckers there like the microscopic mouths of worms.
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Archeologists often find headless bodies buried under layers of sediment.
Archeologists often find heads. Sometimes plastered full of clay with seashells for eyes.
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I wonder, after all these uninhabited years, what creatures might have moved in to call these empty brain-cases home?
What could make a dwelling nestled against the occipital bone?
Maybe the eye sockets become two windows.
The brow ridge, an awning for a garden, under which you watch the rain fall.
What teeth are left become a gate.
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Earlier today, I laid down carelessly on my bed. My head dropped off the mattress, leaving my neck exposed.
My husband moved over me. He held my head up in his palm.
I felt his hand along the back like a cradle. A fingertip brushed my ear.
He moved to lick my breast, then distracted, let my head go. Sometimes you remember that the head is heavy. So heavy it’s a wonder a neck can lift it at all.
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I don’t think there’s anything so sexy as the skull. The curve, orbital and perfect, like the moon.
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It is a truth not often acknowledged that our hunter-gatherer ancestors worked too well. Their world was too full of fruits and seeds. Too much sex. Too many midsummer pregnancies. Too many good hunts. Too many new dawns.
In some way, we have them to blame for overpopulation.
For all these skulls bobbing around beneath pom-pommed hats and headscarves and headbands with just a glimpse of glitter. Too many skulls for this land to hold.
More human skulls now than all those that have ever been swallowed by the ground.
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Was it Hippocrates who said the seat of the intellect was the head, the brain? Aristotle believed the intellect resided in the heart.
Hippocrates never met my fingers, my tongue, my stomach bacteria. Aristotle never saw the magnetic bloom of color behind my eyelids when I stared down the sun. All these things are infinitely wiser than what sloshes between my ears.
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Scientists say the brain feels like jello. Doesn’t that sound like fun? The skull is a dessert bowl.
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Once our ancestors settled down, they planted skulls beneath the floorboards. Every house was a grave. A forever resting place. I wonder if they sent kisses to grandma, cuddled beneath the hearth. Our ancestors walked over the dead as a matter of routine.
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I wonder if I should be proud or ashamed of my ancestors. As no records exist, I will most likely never know how many skulls they crushed in order to live and live and live.
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I wonder how often Hippocrates had sex. I wonder this about most people. Once a week? Twice? Twice and a half? Every day? Every full moon? No archeologists can answer that.
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I understand it was once a perfectly common practice after victory to mount your enemy’s head on a pike.
Maybe outside of town so travelers would know not to fuck with you.
Maybe in front of your castle so women would want to fuck you.
I like to imagine that after the skin decomposed, after the eyes fell from their sockets and the tongue withered, local avian friends could give the head second life as a birdhouse. Could fly in by way of the open mouth.
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Once, under the floor of an archaic dwelling, archeologists found the body of a gazelle buried with a human skull. A new kind of anatomy.
The archeologists asked each other: What did they do with the other body? What did they do with the other skull?
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Our ancestors pack the house up. Do they take grandma’s skull for the journey? Rip up the floorboards, stain their toes with dirt? Does the father hand it to the oldest daughter, who bundles it up in blankets and carries it around like a crystal ball, a tambourine, a special dessert?
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I am tired of asking people about their astrological signs. If you really want to get to know someone, ask them what they plan to do with their skull.
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We don’t always bring our head with us when we go.
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This is my offering to you: use my skull as a chalice. Hold it with both hands. Pull the contents in like sweet syrup. Let it dribble down your chin. Drink to the last drop.
