From the depths of the drill

First post...am at work, and the construction is going on pretty heavily underneath my feet. I could almost apply the term "can't hear myself think" to the loud drilling noise that feels like it is drilling in the depths of my abdomen.But nonetheless I hammer away at the little laptop, pondering the NICU which is hovering and humming behind me. I have gotten into this habit of always flipping from my various websites (none of them illegal or distasteful in anway, except for the ween forum every once in a while) back to my tidy Excel study tracking system file whenever I hear the door open in front of my office. curious eyes in this hospital. anyway, through those doors is the door to the NICU and where little babies remain on life support, with short gut and hernias and cystic lung and tons and tons of heart problems. and then there are the curiousities, like the undefinable gender babies, and the ones with weird growths on their bodies. it's reeeeeeeally hard not to stare and feast your eyes on this, because deep down, or sometimes not very deep down, we have a fascination with the morbid and grotesque. some people might feel it as deep as that noisy drill feels to my body, others, I think, know that this fascination is perfectly natural, and everyone with a healthy sense of curiousity wants to see what an imperforate anus looks like (I have still not had the pleasure). but then there are the wackos who get into these things in a really unhealthy way, and that manifests in murdering and mutilation.
so what is the reasoning behind active mutilation of other people's bodies, or the fascination with this? I think part of it could be linked back to the mind-body connection: how much of your mind/soul remains if your body is beyond recognition? are you still the same person or someone completely different (besides the obvious life changes that would result from such a mutilation)? what stays intact psychically, what goes? can this be achieved without mutilation? Also, mutilation is something very tangible. emotional damage is not. that is seen in cutters, for example. they want to physically experience something that haunts them without having substance. maybe mutilation reminds us of how we feel inside sometimes, how things rip us apart. it also tests us when we see others in these states: how would I react if that were my body? I think it makes us realize that the body is really just a vessel, and that we are not necessarily our body, but our body is us and without consciousness is really not us.
Yikes, I am getting to some really heavy stuff here.
but I am being very tangental. seeing little babies sick is NOT COOL on any level, although it is educational. the experience has strengthened a certain amount of prescription to survival theory for me: if someone is not really suitable for life, should we be supporting them artificially? there are plenty of people in this world who could benefit from the level medical care that we are giving a baby born with a bad heart that we know is going to die in the first month of life anyway. a million dollars could be spent on one death.
what the fuck is wrong with that picture????
wow, what a cheery subject for my first blog.
selah