Happy Halloween

It was with some surprise that I noticed it's been five years since I posted something on Halloween in this semi-dormant blog of mine. Tempus fugit, indeed. Well, maybe not to our cherished muse, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She irradiates such immortal beauty. Oh, Elvira, tempus fugit, forma manet. So here it is: Happy Halloween folks. 

I fell in love with Temperance Brennan…

…from the get go. Maybe it’s due to the contrast between her bright brains and her sinner’s body, or maybe it’s due to the nonchalant disdain for all things that our pop-bubblegum culture thrives on. Truth is, I love her dedication. Her utter obsession towards the task at hand. Towards solving the mystery.

Her selfless quest for truth and enlightenment almost erases her inner self. Piecing together the puzzle of a smashed skull, the looks straight into the abyss of death, and although the abyss looks back at her, her capacity for marveling with the hidden truths and the cold equations of the universe, smothers that frightful look, like vacuum killing a flame.

Working throughout the night she seems lonely, but one feels she’s never truly so, as if she’s carrying the ghosts of all her broken, twisted, charred skeletons within her, collecting experience – lived experience – through the martyrdom of the victims she reveals in every episode. 

In a way, it’s as if Bones (Brennan’s nickname, derived from her anthropological expertise) is meant to give life to the Cartesian duality of body and soul. Something the series – Bones (2005-2017) – hints at, but never quiet fully explores. Temperance, Dr, Brennan, or simply Bones (Emily Deschanel), is a focused mind lodged in a body she’s oblivious to, however a body that we’re all too aware of.

Although to say she’s oblivious to her body is not the most truthful assertion, as she keeps it honed as a lethal weapon through martial arts training. The more correct statement would be that she thinks of her body as an instrument to her mind, and so the attention she gives to it is the same we give our cars. It must be kept functional, and clean, and impressive, but it is not who we are.

Not having met her when I was kid, I didn’t fell head over heels for her, as I had for Wilma Deering, or Daisy Duke, or Triple A. But I fell in love nonetheless. How can you not, when such a sharp mind is housed in a body like hers?