File under: Troubling Trends in Modern Society. www.shakeskin.com is the promoter of this behavior. 

Spring is almost here! 

What a State

I was going to write a diatribe on the whole dead-pope-mania, but I realized that would simply be contributing to what I was deriding. Suffice to say I just don't understand the attention this event gets. A religious dictator whose time was, very predictably, over. Way over. (And no, not a Saddam type dictator - more like a stern grandmother patriarch who is simply unwavering on her dogmatic path. Unfortunately, when this one dies...you just get another one.) (And yes, I understand the pope is one of the world leaders and that it is valid news, etc., etc., I just know we're going to hear every detail of this thing until the resurrection. Of a new pope, that is.)

I do want to query the concept of "lying in state." This is one of the strangest practices of the modern world.

The pope's public stasis right now is marginally understandable to me. The 'viewing' of bodies has a long tradition, and it's one in which I've participated. But it's a moment to say goodbye. To help you with closure. To concretize the facts. And then to let...go...

But there are other forms.

I was in China for a couple of months a long time ago. While in Beijing I was told about Chairman Mao's condition: still dead, having been so for years, but on a slab for people to see. This seemed to me at the time to be about the most ghoulish concept I'd ever heard of, and I was quite eager for the experience.

I went down to Tian An Men Square to the Great Hall and waited in line with many, many people to whom I had no resemblance. We made our way slowly up the steps of the Hall in a stiffling wet heat, then into the shade of the portico. Then into a very chilly room in which there was a glass sarcophagus on a marble plinth. Inside the box was a waxy, saggy former member of the human race, and he looked remarkably like the Chairman of the Horde.

The routine was to walk in on the left - within an arm's length of the body - and shuffle up toward the head, around that end, then down the other side and out the door. I made my slow way within the line, but stopped shuffling near the head, quite near his right ear in fact. I wanted to lean closer, I think to really examine him. I was promptly poked with the butt of a rifle. Soldiers watching over the Great Leader were there to keep the proletariat moving.

It was not a life changing experience, but it was damn fascinating. Not fascinating enough to wait in line for another half hour to do the 45 second ride again, but good value.

I don't know how many leaders are housed in this way, but I found another one in Russia a few years later. I was in Red Square, and I didn't even know Lenin was kept in a similar condition. But I learnt from some European mutt wandering around this near empty landmark that Lenin was "right...over...derr" as they singled out one of the harsh gray buildings amongst the many.

My entry to the Lenin-in-the-Box was quicker than Mao, and I was allowed to linger longer.

I don't know what you have to pump into a former dictator who died in 1924 of an agonizing syphilitic condition to keep him looking good, but they found it. Or something close. He didn't look bad.

I knew at the time that what I was doing was simply a voyeuristic thrill, not an act of respect. And though I suspect for the more serious people suffering life under a massive Communist thumb that they viewed these bodies differently than I did, I also believe that we're all humans. And they shared at least a twinge of the feeling I had.

Next week: my feeling on reliquaries.