The Seat of It All

The Seat of It All

You are at the end of a long commute home. You drank too much water during the drive and something you ate at lunch is causing your gut to grumble - the borborigmus threatens to drown out the sound of the engine. As you drive the last block before pulling into your driveway, the pressure in your bladder makes you very aware that you have little time to spare. Worse, you have the uncomfortable sense that your bowels are rebelling and may decide to move themselves – unbidden. Your body kicks into the two-minute defense - although this is not a life-threatening situation, it is dignity-threatening.

Most people beyond the age of two or three have pretty good control of their urethral sphincter which controls the release of urine from the bladder and the anal sphincter which controls release of feces from the lower intestines. And, although there are occasional mishaps during the years between toddler and old age, most of us are usually good to go (or not go, depending on the situation.)

But there are circumstances like the one described in the opening paragraph, where our attention becomes very focused and we need to be very conscious of those ring muscles that mostly operate without us giving them much thought. And we must attend not just to one sphincter but to two over which we have conscious control.

Here’s an exercise for the reader. Put yourself in the situation from the opening paragraph – everything is about to hit the fan – or at least your pants. Focus on the muscles that you need to put to work. First, clench that muscle (the urethral sphincter) that will prevent you from wetting your pants – you know the one, most of us got pretty familiar with it when we were in grade school. OK, have you tightened that one?

Next, deal with number two – the anal sphincter. The one that got us out of diapers for good (or at least for 70 years or so.) Tighten that muscle. Got it? Great! No shit.

Did I mention that I wanted you to do this exercise when you weren’t under any sort of sphinctral (just made that up) distress? I just wanted you to be able to identify the relevant sphincters and control both of them simultaneously. Still there? Everything clenched? But relax, breath. I don’t want you to get your knickers in a twist.

Good. Hallelujah! Or, more appropriately, Aum. Because what you have just done is to become aware of and activate the mula bandha. According to yoga teachings this is the sacred floor both spiritually and physically of your body and, indeed, of your very essence. The Sanskrit word bandha is usually translated as "lock," though, like most Sanskrit words, it has many nuanced meanings. It comes from the root bandh, which means to bind, to fix, or to stop. The bandhas are specific positions of the body and manipulations of the organs designed to prevent the flow of energy from escaping the body.

(Not to be too prosaic, but a simplistic view is that one could consider urine and feces as forms of 'energy'. Yes? And that the two sphincters involved therefore prevent the escape of these energies from the body just as the yogi said. Of course, these particular energies must escape at some point or you've got big problems.)

But I've really dumbed down - nay, insulted - the yoga teachings where the bandhas are mechanisms an accomplished yogi can use to direct the flow of the universal life-force energy. The mula bandha can take years of practice to cultivate and is thought to be essential for good concentration and more advanced yoga postures. And you thought I was just teaching a way to avoid soiling yourself. We'll come back to this.

But first, there’s more.

As often happens, modern science often discovers information that has been known for thousands of years by ancient schools of knowledge. Mula bandha? Sounds an awful lot like the Kegel exercises introduced by Arnold H. Kegel (1894–1981) a gynecologist who invented the eponymously named Kegel exercises. (He also invented the Kegel Perineometer used for measuring vaginal air pressure – this is not relevant to our current topic but illustrates the admirable focus that Dr Kegel had on this part of the anatomy.)

The Kegel exercises consist of squeezing the muscles of the pelvic floor and are described by no less an authority than the Mayo Clinic thusly:

You lift weights to tone your arms and do crunches to flatten your stomach. That's great, but don't forget your Kegel exercises, too. Kegel exercises strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, which support your uterus, bladder and bowel. If you do Kegel exercises regularly and keep your pelvic floor muscles toned, you may reduce your risk of incontinence and similar problems as you get older. Kegel exercises can also help you control urinary incontinence.

Here are some instructions for the Kegel exercises. First, identify the muscles used to stop the flow of urine midstream. Then engage the muscles your would use to prevent passing gas. Sound familiar? Yep, these are the same ones that mula banda focused on. Having identified these muscles (the sphincters), the description of Kegel exercises - or kegels as they called in the vernacular - quickly turn into a routine that sounds like what you might be told to do by your trainer at 24 hour fitness:

Quick pumps - do 15 reps of quick pumps, pause for 30 seconds and repeat. Start at 15 and work your way up to 100 reps two times a day.

Hold and release - contract the muscle slowly and hold or 5 seconds, release slowly. Work your way to at least 25 reps two times a day.

Elevator - slowly contract 1/3 of the way, pause, then 2/3 of the way, pause, then all the way. Do 10 reps two times a day.

Boy, is that inspiring! Just what I need - a sphincter coach.

I suspect this information is encouraging if you’re having troubles controlling your several relevant sphincters, but not exactly the road to nirvana. That is, unless you are in mind of the old Scottish tune – You take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I’ll be in Scotland (or heaven or … ) before you. So perhaps the low road really is the special, overlooked path. And these mundane, unnoticed muscles are more important than we moderns have suspected. Maybe the muscles Dr Kegel points at (not actually with his finger – although given his interest in vaginal air pressure – who knows) really are important to, at least, general and sexual health.

Sexual? That’s right. In addition to promoting the muscle tone essential to having good control over the elimination functions of urination and defecation, in women these exercises also tone the vaginal muscles, often producing a happy result for women and their male sex partners. A well-toned vagina is better at becoming engorged during stimulation. More engorgement leads to greater sensation and, usually, more pleasure. While there are myriad factors affecting pleasure and orgasm, starting with well toned muscles is a good place to begin.

But, let's return to mula bandha - where this technique was first developed long before Dr Kegel started wondering about vaginal air pressure. Sure, controlling the flow of essential universal energies sounds like a good thing to strive for but how do you measure your progress? And, if I don't buy into the all of the yogic concepts what's in it for me?

Well, how about this: exercising the muscles that operate around these base sphincters to develop good muscle tone will prolong the duration of lovemaking and make your climax much more intense! Some claim that men with healthy pelvic floor muscles can actually hang a towel over their erections and raise and lower their penises at will. (Some might want to test this using a hand cloth or handkerchief instead of a towel.)

OK. Maybe I've got the attention of some more readers. It should not be too surprising that learning how to do mula bandha has led us down the slippery slope to sexual satisfaction. After all, both yoga and the kama sutra arose from India – a culture that has long understood and appreciated the connections between the physical, spiritual and erotic worlds. Ecstasy leading towards enlightenment and all that. But I've also gotten in way over my head. We're now heading in the direction of the kama sutra, kundalini, ben waa balls, and so on. These topics are left as an exercise for the reader. Enjoy.

OK, wait. Just to save you a bit of time on Google - ben wa balls, also known as Burmese bells or gei sha balls are small, marble-sized metal balls, usually hollow and containing a small weight that rolls around—used for sexual stimulation (by insertion into the vagina or anus). They are used by inserting them into the vagina or anus and using muscles (yep, the same muscles we've been talking about) to hold them in, and movement to stimulate and vibrate. Once again, enjoy.

Oh dear – what a long way we’ve come from our late-day commute with a full bladder and rumbling bowels. And from spiritual yogic practices to Ben Wa balls. Or maybe not so far. After all, being completely in touch with all parts of your body – even those that we usually think of as operating below the level of our conscious attention – is surely part of totally being in “present moment, precious moment” a phrase and concept that the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh emphasizes in his teachings. And a side note: at the one talk by Thich Nhat Hanh that I attended about 10 years ago he spent quite some time talking about considering the huge mountain of fecal matter - ok, let's just call it shit, he did - that each of us excrete during our lifetime. His point? Be aware of our own bodily functions and the oneness of it all.

Attend to your sphincters! Attune to the universe.

test for sidebar

from me

Journal of Recreational Disfigurement

Press Release: San Francisco, CA. 14 February 2007. For immediate release.

Tattoos have come a long way since the day of drunken sailors getting “Mom” inked onto their biceps. And it’s a decade or two since it was considered outrageous for a man to have a small golden stud piercing one earlobe. Any stigmas once associated with body art and piercings are quickly fading. There is a large and vibrant community with a keen interest in body ornamentation. And now they have a magazine to call their own.

The inaugural issue of the Journal of Recreational Disfigurement will be on the newsstands on 1 March, 2007. Each issue will be packed with features that help connect, educate, and entertain the burgeoning body art community. Although there are a few niche magazines (such as Skin Ink, Body Play, Prick, and Branding) already serving parts of this sector, the Journal of Recreational Disfigurement (JRD) is the first to embrace the entire disfigured population. Our motto is: Numquam Plurima Perforata or, roughly, You Can Never Have Too Many Holes.

Here’s a sampling of some of the regular sections that will appear each month:

• Tramp Stamp Gallery: photos of the most interesting and alluring sacral or gluteal-crease tattoos and brief interviews with their owners.
• Tattoos of the Rich and Famous: the often surprising details. This issue you’ll learn that former Secretary of State George Schultz got a tattoo of the Princeton Tiger on his butt while an undergrad and current President George Bush got a tattoo on his shaved head while a member of the secret Skull and Bones Society at Yale. GW’s secret tattoo is now hidden under his hair – it’s a drawing of a brain.
• The Next Big Thing: trends and new directions; This month - white ink tattoos for African Americans, green ink for St Paddy’s day.
• Tools You Can Use: reviews of the latest hardware and techniques. The first product – Personal Jaws of Life, a must-have tool for the well-pierced couple who sometimes need help in disengaging or decoupling.
• Just for Fun: more quirky tricks and amusements. The first in the series – how to combine piercings, hardware and tattoos to create silly puppets – using your own genitalia.
• Do Try This at Home: a monthly how-to feature. The opening article details how to design and create new sphincters with easily-obtained micro plumbing hardware.
• Inside Out: how to turn your body art into a business. We start off this feature with “Face-mounted Neon Signs: Where to put the batteries.” A 21^st century update on sandwich-board advertising.

We hoped we’ve piqued your interest. For further information, call 666-6969 or go to www.disfigured.info. Get a subscription now and connect with all your pretty friends.

Am I Dead Yet?

Fads are mysterious. They seem to arise like rogue waves in the sea – unpredictable, inexplicable. Fads suddenly sweep through a culture, sometimes wreaking havoc, and just as suddenly disappear – leaving, if we are lucky, no lasting record of their passage.

Such a wave swept through the Western world in the 1800s. Suddenly, people became obsessed with the danger of being – Buried Alive!! This fear tapped into several primordial anxieties; the basic fear of death, the common claustrophobic apprehension of being enclosed in small spaces, and the special fear of knowing that you are dying slowly in your own buried coffin.

Fear of burial alive became widespread in the nineteenth century – although it is not clear if the fear was justified. Justified or not, hundreds of cases were reported – especially in the tabloids - in which doctors mistakenly pronounced people dead. Victorians even organized a Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive and equipped their coffins with emergency devices should they awaken after burial. Edgar Allen Poe added to this fad – more like a low-grade societal hysteria – by writing his short story The Premature Burial published, posthumously in 1850.

Poe’s short story didn’t start the fad/craze – rather, he capitalized on what had already become a widespread fear. Society at the time was entering the scientific age and the scientists of the time tried to apply technology to deal with what was essentially an unreasonable fear. Two primary approaches evolved for dealing with this horrifying prospect:

• verifying death before burial
• having an escape plan after burial.

The eacape-plan-after-burial approaches included some obvious, fairly low tech approaches such as:

• providing shouting tubes, that went from the corpse’s mouth through the coffin and up through the earth to the headstone.
• cords tied to the body’s fingers and connected to bells or other sorts of alarms above ground.

The methods of verifying death before burial were not always so obvious – and were often bizarre. One of the more interesting approaches was proposed by a physician named Antoine Louis. Doctor Louis suggested testing life, or perhaps stimulating the vital life spark in the apparently dead person, by administering an enema of tobacco smoke. He used a powerful bellows connected to a series of pipes. One of the pipes of this remarkable apparatus was thrust through the anal sphincter of the apparently dead person; the other was connected, by way of the bellows, to a large furnace full of tobacco. The theory was that the tobacco smoke would stimulate the internal organs and awaken the patient, unless, of course, the patient was truly dead. Then they were simply smoked.

These smoke enemas were regularly used well into the nineteenth century, particularly in Holland for some reason. Modern science has discerned no physiological rationale for their use, except that the pain and indignity of having a blunt instrument violently thrust up one’s rear passage must have had some restorative effect.

Happily, this test has been long abandoned in favor of such things as measuring brain wave activity, but there is still a common phrase that survives and which most literally translates to "trying to get a reaction" out of somebody – this old smoke enema test is the source of the phrase, he’s blowing smoke up your ass.

There was another life-death test used during the 19^th century that also involved bellows and sphincters but approached the problem from the opposite end. Some physicians of the day had observed that the sphincters of the intestinal tract relaxed upon death. They reasoned that this would open up a clear channel from top to bottom. So this life-death test consisted of inserting a nozzle into the throat of the patient/victim with the hose connected to a powerful air pump. Air would be forced down the throat and, if the patient/victim were dead, the air would pass through the several intervening sphincters and exit through the relaxed anal sphincter (along with any contents of the intestinal tract.) How would you like to be the coroner standing at the nether end verifying death when this technique was employed? Talk about your shitty jobs!

It is not clear if this method was ever or often used nor what was the expected reaction if the patient was not dead?

A Quick Tour of the Sphincters

One morning, as I was waking up from anxious dreams, I felt more physically relaxed than ever before. But was also aware of something dreadfully amiss. As I lay on my back and lifted my head up a little, I slowly opened my eyes. I looked towards my feet and was not confronted with a brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. Nor did I have numerous pitifully thin legs.

Thank God! I was not Kafka’s Gregor Samso who discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous dung beetle. But something was definitely wrong. I was no dung beetle but there was a powerful scent of dung in the air.

And though I had my normal two legs, they looked out of focus. As I became fully awake I noticed more distressing details. I had a strong burning sensation in my chest. Another separate sharp pain in my gut. My upper legs were cold and wet and there was that strong smell of feces in the air.

I roll gingerly onto my side and sit up on the edge of the bed. The pain in my chest and gut intensifies. The bright morning light streaming through the window is painful. It hurts. To see more clearly, I straighten and then look down between my legs and blurrily discern the source of the wetness and foul odor – I have completely wet myself and my pajama bottoms were also brown with fecal matter.

What’s happened to me? This was no dream.

Well, this isn’t a dream but, with apologies to the opening of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, it depicts what would happen if all my anatomical sphincters simultaneously stopped working. The sphincters, those small and usually ignored ring muscles, perform critical functions that shape vital aspects of our lives and culture.

The painful sensitivity to light and visual blurriness? If the iris sphincter muscles that control dilation of the pupils fail, your eyes cannot adapt to varying degrees ofight and you will be hypersensitive to fluctuations in light and have difficulty focusing.

That sharp pain in your upper chest? The cardio or lower esophageal sphincter is a one-way valve which prevents gastric juice in the stomach from flowing back into the esophagus. Mild forms of this failure of this sphincter produces heartburn. Total failure would destroy the esophagus. And kill you.

A burning sensation in your gut? Failure of the sphincter at the bottom of the stomach, the pyloric sphincter, which opens to allow the passage of small amounts of acid into the duodenum when the stomach has finished its work. If this sphincter failed, too much acid would get through and eat its way into the wall of the duodenum causing duodenal ulcers – and constant pain. This would be exacerbated by the opening of the Sphincter of Otti which controls the flow of bile from the gall bladder into the gut.

Wetting and fouling yourself? Now we’re getting to the better-known sphincters. The ones we can control voluntarily - the big kahunas of the sphincter family: the urethra that controls the flow of urine and the anal sphincter – of ‘your so anal’ fame. If these two ring muscles completely relax – you’ve got a mess.

As this quick tour of sphincters from top to bottom shows, complete failure of all sphincters would be disastrous and quickly prove fatal. But the story of how each of these amazing muscles perform – usually unbidden and beyond our control – to shape our lives and even our cultures, contains many surprises. And some amusing information as well. We’ll be digging a little deeper into each of these rings.

Big Kahuna - the Smart Sphincter

The eye is a wonderfully complicated mechanism and the ocular spinter is one of the more remarkable components of that machine; its autonomic control of the pupil in response to light helps us survive by giving us an optimal viewing lens under all conditions.

Its more subtle response to emotions interactions with others shapes – at what is usually at the subconscious level – our relationships, subliminally affecting our social successes and failures.

But I’ll suggest that there is another sphincter that performs equally important and sophisticated functions that also shape our culture and effect our relationships – the Big Kahuna of sphincters. The anal sphincter. While it is more well known than the ocular sphincter or the sphincter of Otti, most of us never give a thought to its importance and, yes, its innate intelligence.

All creatures that take sustenance from the environment process that input and, after extracting what they need from it, poop. Whether you are bacteria, a polar bear, or Queen Elizabeth the same rule holds; input, process, discard the residue as excrement. However, most life forms do the excretion part without giving it much thought. Some domesticated animals appear to have some awareness of the social implications of this process – your dog or cat usually knows when and where it should discharge its excrement and therefore has conscious control over its anal sphincter.

But somewhere in the distant past, humans elevated the intelligence of the anal sphincter to a level of sophistication unprecedented in the rest of the animal world. Once humans have reached the age of two or three years old, they know when and where it is appropriate to defecate. And that is the most minimal level of social sophistication – as we grow beyond infancy, the anal sphincter acquires the ability to distinguish between gaseous, liquid and solid discharges. And even to control gaseous discharges depending on social settings: it’s ok to fart in the locker room with the guys, but not ok to pass gas noisily in a formal setting with mixed company.

We’ll learn more about this major ring muscle later, including discovering the origin or ‘he’s just blowing smoke up your ass’.

Belladonna

The plant known as deadly nightshade has an unsavory history. The ancient Greeks drank it when the visited the Oracle of Delphi and added the juice of the plant to their famous wine of the Bacchanaals; despite its name, the plant is only mildly poisonous and, if handled carefully, is a lovely, natural hallucinogenic. Throughout human history, few could deny its pleasure. During the middle ages it was used primarily as a hallucinogenic but also as a tool of torture since it caused great mental confusion and inclined the subjects of torture to be more forthcoming – if not more reliable. Some problems never change.

Deadly nightshade in a concentrated form was the poison used to slay the troops of Marc Anthony during the Parthian wars and was in the liquor which Macbeth used to destroy an army of Danes during a truce. Witches of the Middle Ages used this plant as a main ingredient in their brews; its hallucinogenic properties let them experience the sensation of flying. More mundanely, but benignly, the juice of the plant is now used as a main component in many purple dies and to treat gout, rheumatism and angina. It is also used as a childbirth anesthesia, to treat inflammatory tumors, and in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. The people of Nepal still use it as a sedative, while the Morroccans consider it to be a memory stimulant and an aphrodisiac.

The plant is known by many names but, in the Western world, most commonly as belladonna – from the Italian words meaning beautiful woman. This is a reference to the Italian women in the 16^th century who used a liquid extract of the plant to dilate their pupils by placing a drop of belladonna in each eye. These women believed that large, dilated pupils made them more beautiful in the eyes of Italian men. That belief was surely an amusing primitive folk concept – why would having large pupils be something that would make you more attractive to the opposite sex? Why not bigger ears or noses. Or larger breasts or penises? (Oh, nevermind on those last two.) But still, big pupils? How does that figure?

Good of you to ask. It turns out that modern research completely validates the instincts of those 16^th century donna (or signora). We now know that dilation of the pupils, which is controlled by the ocular sphincter muscles, is an overt but involuntary indication of your sexual interest in a person. Your danged brainstem tells the ocular sphincter to gather more information about this interesting subject in its field of vision – open your eyes! Give me all the data you can gather. Is this a possible sexual partner?

But it gets more complicated. Surprisingly, not everything is about sex – maybe. Dilation of the pupils is also a good indicator of whether someone is telling the truth. This explains why your mom or a detective would look closely into your eyes to tell if you are lying. And why poker players often wear sunglasses in the middle of the night – your eyes, specifically your pupils, don’t – indeed, can’t – lie. Your eyes can’t bluff. You are betrayed by the involuntary responses of your ocular sphincters.

These responses may not be specifically about sex – the ocular sphincter responses may more generally be about winning; the brain telling the eyes to capture more information to help us survive and thrive. And maybe have more fun.

Fear and lust are not far removed.

Social Constraints

It began deep in my thorax and then surged up and out in a fast-moving wave. In the ocean, a wave is the result of the wind driving water across an open area. But this sonic wave, almost a sonic boom, originated in the closed spaces of my own body.

The belch surprised me as much as it did those around me – likely more. Because I had never belched or even burped before. Oh, perhaps I had burped as an infant; babies tend to take in a lot of air as they suckle to get the milk the need to survive and burping is the most immediate way to relieve that pressure. But Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Where did that noise come from within me?

I had always been belch-challenged. When my 12 year old peers in sixth grade were joyfully disgusting their female classmates, most adults and, they hoped, their parents, I was silent. I would not, actually, could not, burp – let alone belch. While my friend Pico Savala could emit a clamoring belch that would frighten the playground pigeons into manic flight, I could not create even an infantile burp that might warrant a raised eyebrow from Sister Mary Edwards in the classroom.

So I went the opposite direction: I decided that eructation - the release of gas from the digestive tract through the mouth - was gross and disgusting. Nevermind that I couldn’t – those that could, and did, belch were lesser beings. Also nevermind that belching has always been part of human social behavior –acceptable in most societies. Especially given the alternatives.

Here’s the dilemma. If you have excess pressure in the abdomen – that is, within the stomach and intestinal system – the body needs a path to relieve that pressure. The quickest path is from the stomach up through the cardia – the junction orifice of the stomach and the esophagus. (The sound of burping is caused by the vibration of the cardia as the gas passes through it.) The cardia is also called the cardiac sphincter - it’s the gateway for gas headed north. The slower, southbound outlet for pressure is just as common but often less socially condoned – flatulence, the release of gas via the that southernmost sphincter.

So, choose your weapon, that is, your sphincter: cardial or anal.

Me? I’m practicing belching, but meanwhile, keep your distance.

Ruggero Oddi

Ruggero Oddi was a curious fellow. He was curious about the workings of the human body. He also lived a strange and curious life. Both aspects of this curiosity put him outside of the mainstream of 19^th century Italy society and the scientific community.

As a 23 year old medical student in Florence in 1887, Oddi was dissecting a cadaver when his curiosity drew him towards a tiny circular ring muscle in the gut of the body. The muscle connected the gall bladder to the small intestine. This small muscle had actually been identified nearly 200 years earlier but no one could explain its purpose.

It was Oddi that recognized that this sphincter was the critical seam that maintained the proper chemical balance within the small intestine. This sphincter needs open only slightly to let the right amount of bile flow from the gall bladder, passing through the seams of the ring muscle. Oddi determined that the bile surged through the sphincter or valve as the seams hiss under the pressure of the critical flow of the highly acidic liquid. As a result of Oddi’s identification of the function of this muscle, it has been known ever since as Oddi’s sphincter.

Oddi continued to achieve precocious success. At the early age of 29 years, he was appointed as the director of the Physiological Institute at Genoa. He appeared poised for a long and prominent career in medicine. But then his life took some curious turns. First, he became curious about various drugs and began to use them himself. This led to failures as an administrator and fiscal improprieties. Ultimately, he was relieved of his eminent position in Italian Physiology at the age of 34. From there, he sought employment as a physician in the Belgian colonial medical service and briefly spent time in the Congo. But his continued use of nardcotics caused rapid deterioration of his physical and mental condition and led to the complete demise of his medical career. He returned to Italy and lived in obscurity for several years, occasionally resurfacing to publish papers in medical journals. Finally, he again returned to Africa where he died in Tunisia at the age of 46.

Oddi left no family and would be completely lost to history were it not for the sphincter named after him. But even the sphincter itself has been the subject of much study and controversy. Its very existence as a distinct anatomic entity has been disputed. It is possible that Oddi’s sphincter may eventually disappear, just as did its namesake.

Them There Eyes

Professional poker players know this. So do cops, especially those that interrogate suspects. Prison psychiatrists use this knowledge to evaluate whether pedophiles are still a danger to children. Many women of 15^th century Italy understood this at some level and tried to use it to attract men. And your mom may not have known this at a conscious level but surely used it when trying to figure out whether you were telling the truth.

Poker players often wear dark glasses – not just to look cool; they want to hide their eyes from the other players. They know that the eyes cannot bluff. They always tell the truth – if you know how to read them. This is same knowledge that good police interrogators use – forget about darting eyes and sweating. It is the change in pupil size that provides the key information about truth or lying.

Recently there has been extensive research on this subject. Dr Richard Sleeper of Rutgers University conducted a series of experiments to determine if measuring dilation of the pupils was an accurate indicator of truthfulness. Dr Sleeper asked subjects to respond to a series of simple questions and to randomly respond with false answers to some questions. Despite the fact that there was no penalty involved for being caught in a lie, six times out of seven, Sleeper’s prophesy regarding which responses were false was accurate. It seems not to matter whether the lying is connected to great emotion.

The eyes are also involved in expressing emotions, however – again, this response operates beyond conscious control. This fact is now being used by prison psychiatrists to determine whether pedophiles have been rehabililtated and are safe to return to society. The prisoners are shown a series of random pictures while the dilation of their pupils is monitored. Some of the pictures are pictures of children. If the prisoner’s pupils dilate when shown a picture of a child, it seems to be a strong indicator that this pedophile is still a threat.

It appears that the eyes are indeed the window to the soul. And that window is opened and closed by the ocular sphincters.

The Mouth - Orbicularis Oris

How does the mouth work? We don’t usually give it a thought. It’s right there in the middle of our face but unless something goes wrong it’s not on our radar. But when something does go wrong, oops – we’re suddenly reminded that few things are as important as a mouth that works. It goes from being invisible to taking its rightful place at the center of our being. The humble pie-hole is recognized as the gatekeeper of our life – not just a place to insert sweets. Our very life breath enters and exits through this hole. And the food that sustains us. Also in the mouth, there are assorted other useful things – like our teeth that help pre-process that food before passing it along to the internal organs.

And, egads, the mouth is situated just adjacent to the brain, eyes, nose and the sinus cavities which connect to auditory mechanisms – it is central to how we experience the world.

This rather non-descript, yet mysterious, hole in our face is also central to how we interact with the world. The mouth with its peripheral components of tongue, lips, and larynx, lets us communicate with those around us; it enables humans to create speech.

Even without speaking, the mouth helps us communicate with family, friends and foes by expressing our moods: smiling, grimacing, baring our teeth, pursing our lips.

A hidden hero in this mouth-as-center-of-our-being role is a surprising muscle - a muscle that also shapes social interactions. The orbicularis oris muscle surrounds the external opening of the mouth: draw a circle, actually, an oval, that encompasses the opening to the mouth and you’ve defined the orbicularis oris – the muscle that enables us to smile, purse our lips, pucker, and kiss.

The orbicularis oris makes up the bulk of the tissue of the lip and acts as the sphincter muscle to the oral aperture. The lips function as a sphincter for retaining oral contents during chewing.

It may seem odd to categorize this facial muscle with some of the other sphincter muscles – but it operates the same way - to such an extent that when drastic facial reconstructions of patients that have been severely injured require radical surgery, surgeons will use portions of the anal sphincter muscle to recompose the muscle that surrounds the mouth in order to restore the ability to smile.

Yes, friends, at the center of your face, at the very center of your being in many ways is – yet another ring muscle, the largest of our sphincters.

What's This About?

About a year ago I was reading a review of a book titled “At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past”. The reviewer began with these comments:

A man has written a book about the night. Well, why not? In the past decade or so, we’ve seen books on pencils, bookshelves, tobacco, cod, salt, spice, blood, bread, caffeine, crying, the penis, the breast, boredom, smiling, the hand, and masturbation.
...
If it seems that any noun in the dictionary can be tricked out as a book these days, it’s because the minutiae of daily life have acquired some intellectual capital. Good microhistories do brisk business because they see the big picture in the smallest details, offering the hope that everything under the sun has meaning.

And, I began to notice many such books. I'd actually read a couple of them already: Cod, The Chicken Book, Salt. And I thought two things: 1) All the good parts/nouns are being snatched up and 2) Might be some opportunity for parody here.

So: my tome - "Sphincters: The Ring Muscles that Shape Our Culture".