Friday, January 30, 2004
What dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil;
Must give us pause (Shakespeare)
Went to BodyWorlds with James n Syl yesterday. It's so fascinating how we actually have all those miles of veins, nerves, and goodness knows how much stuff in us. (Next time I know if I want to lose a kilo quick, I'll go for a lobotomy =P) It was a bit creepy, but I found the exhibition quite ok. Somehow, I found it very hard to believe these cadavers were real because they looked so plastic (explains why the preserving process was called plasticination), and their glass eyes weren't real enough to give me the wiggins. And I'm absolutely sure they're glass eyes, because there was an exhibit with the real eyeball still intact, and the eyeball had already degenerated into a black squishy-looking blob.
Some of the exhibits were pretty artistic really. There was one where the cadaver looked like something out of an impressionistic painting, with "drawers" cut out. And another (not in the Singapore exhibition, we just saw it in the book) where he held up his skin as if he was reaching to hang up his coat. Perhaps James is right, and it wasn't very nice to arrange all the dead bodies in weird poses and take scapel and saw to them, but I have to admit it was morbidly fascinating. Besides they did agree to donate their bodies to science, and I have to say I always felt that when someone dies, all is left is an empty shell. (And since I'm at this, let me make this absolutely clear that when I die, I want to have my ashes scattered in the sea and in the wind - no stupid grave or urn or whatever.)
But there was a series of exhibits that affected me a bit (which is why they had a warning sign for it). There was this series of dead foetuses, some deformed, some looking perfectly healthy yet had somehow not been able to open their eyes to this sucky and screwed-up world. And then the centrepiece - a woman who was 5 months pregnant - with her womb opened... and a blackened lung from smoking. Not that I wish to speak ill of the dead, but knowing that this bearer of life had maybe squandered not just hers, but that of her unborn child by smoking... Looking at that expression on her face that her glassy eyes seemed to give her - dazed surprise, as if she had suddenly realised that Death had come for her, and slit her belly open with his scythe while he was at it - and I just couldn't help feeling angry. And I kept swearing and calling her a bitch, which probably wasn't very nice of me (but since when have I been nice anyway?).
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:: Photo by National Geographic Society Copyright © 2002 ::