inner out-of-body experience

saturday was one of those brutally hot days where the sun beats down on you to burn away at your skin and bleach your very bones. it was the kind of day that makes you seek out air-conditioned refuge of any kind - whether it be the reliable room of a darkened movie theater, your grandma's dank mildewy basement, the meat locker of your neighborhood butcher shop, or similarly, the Body Worlds exhibit at the california science center in exposition park.

i had heard some positive things about the exhibit. and i must admit that it piqued my morbid curiosity. but it really doesn't seem like something you do as a "recreational activity."* all the same it was quite an experience.

i walked into the first room of the exhibit and thought it really did feel like some strange amalgamation of a meat shop and museum. there are cases of sliced meats like you would find in a deli. there were the thin-cut pieces of prosciutto, the ring of fat circling an amber stained-glass cross-section of someone's thigh or arm. blocks of breast peppered with tar deposits. slabs of ribs splayed like windows of wings. muscles dried out and flattened into the texture of jerky. there were innards and the edible vital organs like livers and hearts. and for the more exotic and adventurous - tongues and brains, spleens and kidneys could be culled and cured. indeed, it was a veritable cannibal smorgasbord.

but it was also a museum exhibit offering, literally, a different perspective on the human form. for several hundreds of years, we have been fascinated by the body. the beauty of its outside form, the curiosity of its deformity, the mystery of its inner sanctum. through a process called plastination we are able to see these things up close without the fear of contamination or the horror of death's stench. the bodies on display in the Body Worlds exhibit are sterile, odorless, and fixed in such a fashion that you can view the body beneath its multi-layers. you can inch under the skin and see how the veins and capillaries run through the entirety of the human form, the synapses a complex transportation system of thought and impulses. or else peer deep into the cavities of the body to see how the perfect proportion of heart and lungs allows one to draw breath and sigh. and if you've ever wondered how one's limbs and muscles can contort and contract in complicated movement to music, to the course of even the most mundane collection of gestures, you are likely to find understanding from the fixed and formed flesh statues in this extraordinary exhibit.

Body Worlds can be a disturbing display of death/not-death in stasis. so i was surprised at my ability to look at all of these specimens with a detached mind (and stomach). and maybe that should be more of a concern. but to gaze upon these dissected bodies, these carved up cadavers, didn't really gross me out. it may be that my moral judgment is on recess. or perhaps i saw the exhibit in broad perspective - as a valuable learning experience - and so then had little time to think that these plastinated persons used to walk around amongst us, breathed like i do, moved about as i do, had feelings as i do. it was something akin to having an inner out-of-body experience.





*apparently this is exactly the kind of recreational activity that marilyn manson enjoys. i saw him, his girlfriend, and some other friend at the museum. first i noticed his girlfriend who was dressed up for the occasion wearing a summery floral printed dress and neat green shoes (i wish i had her shoes). then i saw that she was accompanied by a tall fellow garbed completely in black. he was wearing a hat and light shades and tall creepers. he has a sinister looking profile. then after staring for a little bit i realized, "hey - that's marilyn manson!" so i surreptitiously followed them around through some of the first room. his girlfriend seemed to take an intellectual interest in the exhibit, while marilyn himself was content to fuck around with his friend, pretending to poke one (actually, he tired on a couple occasions) of the models in the rectum. heh. what a fucking idiot.


if you intend on going to the exhibit, please stop here.


otherwise, i will tell you more about some of the other displays.




last chance.




spoilers:
some of the other highlights included the "giant" on the bicycle, the real life madonna with child, and the horse riders.
there were also lots of diseased body parts. black lungs. clogged arteries. enlarged hearts and spleens. tumor-filled stomachs. lots of gross shit that should make you want to take better care of your health.