He's a fucking madman of the best possible kind.
Over 50 of us met in the hallway before entering the lab that had been prepped for 4 days prior. We'll work for 3 weeks in the same room he's been coming to for 15 years. After we finish, the lab is being closed, never to be used again. The building's been sold and will be turned into condos. We're literally going to shut it down.
Starting with circle before we meet the donors for the first time, we meet one another. And he speaks of layers, layers, layers that will be uncovered and mined to their depths while we're here, and it's clear the bodies are the least of what he's speaking of. You can count, he says, on at least 7 or 8 people in this room believing exactly the opposite of what you hold most dear and believe to be most true, and you can expect them to show up, and we're invited to let that happen.
"We're going to expose these bodies. And they're going to expose you." Exposing who we are, and who we think we are, and seeing clearly how far that extends. "I'm not a human. This [motioning to the whole of the circle] is a human. This is an organism. And you can't expect the eye to do the big toe thing."
I'm in the right place. We all are, he points out, because we're here. And we can think that exploring the magic and the spirituality and the who how why of it all is somehow different than the nitty gritty of looking at what we call anatomy, but it's not. I want to explore the mystery, "and I still want to know the depth of the skin...because I'm curious."
And eventually our curiosity disperses us around the room, and I find myself with 3 other participants at a table, with a form, which is still covered. These individuals never had a viewing, but they're about to get the Rolls Royce of viewings. It happens much more quickly than I thought, and soon I'm holding her hand and moving her arm and lifting her thigh to help fully expose her as she lay face up, eyes closed. I have the thought that the man across from me is handling her like he's a personal trainer--whatever that means. Turns out that's exactly what he does, but no matter. Judgements popping up, and then dissolving.
In most med school dissection labs, work is begun with the donor face down, or with the face entirely covered, sometimes until the second semester. But the task at hand here isn't to hide them, it's to meet them. We even stand three of them up, since that's how we would have met them in the living world, face to face, and it's so, so, so sweet. At this point thoughts are clearing out fast and everything that I'm hearing seeing touching is running straight through me.
We name our donors. Ours is Rose. Watching him demo the beginning of the creation of the skin from the superficial fascia on the abdomen and the thighs, and before I know it I'm wielding scalpel and hemostat and changing blades and nothing else exists. This is beyond surreal, and who the hell knows how much time I was actually working before we're cleaning up and the day is at an end.
Self care in this endeavor, we're advised, is going to involve giving our nervous systems different stimuli than what we've had for 8 hours at time. Being in nature, touching grass, trees, living flesh, so there's something else to rest with once our head hits the pillow tonight. I walk back to the hotel to grab my hoop, and then out to a park, to take off my shoes and spin and flow as the sun prepares to set.
So much. So full. Day one.
