The line-ups were incredible. Tickets were sold to people for 15 minute intervals and we had to buy our tickets for late into the day as the earlier ones were sold out. At $26 a pop I figured there had better be something darn good in there for all the hype!
Well, there was.
I was not expected to be so moved. To contemplate death so fully and to admire the human body so. To revel in the fact that we are all mortal, as much as we walk the streets imagining that the routines and tasks we set about ourselves each day will allow us to live a long life, that possibly we may never have to face our own death. There grew a feeling inside me of something far different and less sad than the likes of a funeral where you must see death on someone you love. It was rather something settling, like a truth that has unveiled itself to be not good or evil but something that has been there all along, waiting for me to look it in the eye. I've never felt so bonded to life and the living things around me and although I've studied art and the human body I've never seen truly how beautiful we are. How the human head, stripped of bones and flesh; left only with veins, becomes an intricate plant, a rich red coral under the sea, so delicate and beautiful I wanted to reach out and touch. I felt honored for the first time in my life that I was made a woman (vs a man) when I saw the body of a pregnant woman with beautiful poor sweet baby in womb, tucked into her belly so perfectly.
Also to learn so much about dissection in art (and my favorite fact of the show: that our beloved Leonardo DiVinci was a grave robber!) and to learn about our bodies processes in laid out so plainly. To see for one's own eyes diseases, including a grossly blackened smokers lung and a non-smoker with the dotted stains of second hand smoke like a speckled egg. To see an obese man with fat surrounding every intestine and inner muscle (besides the obvious outer fat) and for once imagining how restrictive that must feel and how very trapped he must have been by his own body.
Beautiful bodies posed in athletic postures to small samples of different organs the Body Worlds is not just something to behold. It's an experience that I dare anyone to undertake, even if that means flying across the world to view it. In a world where death is muffled and is hardly whispered about I am so grateful I got over my fear and went to the exhibit. I promise to go again before it leaves this October with a sketchbook so I may pass along some of my interpretation of the show.
For those of you in the Edmonton Area, the Telus World of Science is hosting the exhibit until this October.
And for those not in Edmonton, here is a weird sketch I did this morning in order to give me an excuse to blog (I sometimes feel I can't blog until I have an image to show)
