Calendar of Regrets

July

January February March April May June July August September October November December   & & 256 b &  L A N C E O L S E N ' a p p e n d i x As a rule, this five inch-long blind-ended tube the color of Thousand Islands dressing branches off from the intestinal pouch called the cecum. In this case, though, it was discovered and extracted in 1639 from the cranium of a deceased mermaid washed up on the pebbly Dorset shore during a fierce storm. The mermaid measured eighteen-and-threefourths inches in length, possessed the face and tail of a fish, the teeth of a small lizard, and several wisps of long gray human hair atop its otherwise bald head. Its eyes were a Scandinavian blue. Soon after its discovery, this appendage was sold as an oddity in the Weymouth market. &  c a l e n d e r o f r e g r e t s ' b 257 The owners, a line of barbers and dentists, passed it down from generation to generation. Our acquisitions experts were alerted to its presence in 1933, the year it surfaced in Vienna. They purchased it immediately. Such a structure has a twofold purpose for the man with borrowed organs. First, it helps define the notion of uncertainty for him; thus by many it is considered the most philosophical organ. Second, it lets him know that whatever he does, however much he accomplishes in the course of his life, wherever he might travel, whomever he might meet, whatever distinctions by the outside world he might shrug on, he will always have been less important than in his least confident moments he believes. 258 b &  L A N C E O L S E N ' h ea rt The very presence of the lungs and skin dictates the necessity for &  c a l e n d e r o f r e g r e t s ' b 259 an organ that produces emptiness, and, hence, Ladies and Gentlemen, the heart. 260 b & LANCE OLSEN ' (whose name unfortunately, has since been lost to history) at the Miguel Cané branch of the Buenos Aires Municipal Library in 1939 on the very day, on the other side of the ocean, the Luftwaffe invaded Poland. Once showcased on a plush pad of red velvet in an elaborate goldtopped glass container reminiscent of a philatory, these testicles are where stories are created. & calender of regrets ' b 261 These glands were removed from the body of a dreamingAmauta,or Incan wise man, hunted down and rendered unconscious in the barren highlands of Peru by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1533 at the advice of his trusted chroniclers,and passed along from mysterious hand to mysterious hand until coming to our attention by means of the first assistant T E S T I C L E S 262 b & LANCE OLSEN ' You see, Ladies and Gentlemen, it was quilted between the years 1837 to 1842 from the hides of thirty-three newborn albino females by an eighty-year-old woman living in a cave in what is now northern Cambodia, and is so thin you can actually see the other organs of the body functioning beneath it, as in some species of transparent fish. Stunningly diaphanous as this slightly too small for the Regrettably, its size or engage in The skin & calender of regrets ' b 263 s k i n You may have heard skin is our largest organ. For the average adult, it boasts a surface area of two square meters and accounts for fifteen percent of our body weight. An inch of it generally contains six-hundred-and-fifty sweat glands, twenty blood vessels, sixty-thousand pigment-producing melanocytes, and more than a thousand nerve endings. None of these facts, however, holds true for this specimen. extraordinary suit is, it remains the manwith borrowed organs. makes it impossible for him to bend his arms or legs, such common activities as sitting, bowing, or genuflecting. suit thereby edifies him on a continuous basis about how each of us is imprisoned within himself while at the same time open to public scrutiny of the most severe kind. 264 b &  L A N C E O L S E...