5. Art (part I)

Journal Entry: 

Drishti: 

Open the aperture and light floods in. Blurring edges. Softening perspective. Disorienting in the most perfect way. Expanding the connection between heart, vision, and the nonsense of reality… Drishti is a gazing technique used in yoga. Its purpose is to direct attention inward without symbolically shutting the world out by closing the eyes. 

The idea of drishti is to remain present yet unaffected by the insignificant details of the environment around you. It is, after all, our inner environment that propels our actions. Allowing outer influence to fall away helps to heal the shortcomings of the mind. 

The more I look, the more insatiable my appetite becomes. I can easily lose track of time with my hands on or in a body. It’s so similar to my obsession with photography. It feels like I have been doing it forever—chasing after images that encapsulate a story I have been propelled to tell. 

It’s a story that has been nestled inside my cells that begins to stir with inspiration brought forth by the sight of a pleasing light, shape, or texture. I guess I have always been expressing my inner environment through creativity, but I am waking up to the fact that my art—be it photography, yoga, writing, or dissection—is revealing the true story of my life. I have translated the stories artfully for the comprehension of others, but now I am seeing that the true revelation has been intended for me. 

When I was young, my dad shot black-and-white film that he processed in a darkroom he built in our basement. My brothers and I were often his subjects, but I took a deeper interest, wanting to spend time together in the cramped darkroom as fresh images emerged from the developing baths. We would sit side by side on the couch, eyes closed, simulating the pitch-black of a darkroom, practicing how to blindly thread an old film onto a developing spool, a task I have since done for real countless times. 

I would eventually inherit his cameras, darkroom equipment, and passion for images.  

In the darkroom, light is used creatively to expose, manipulate, combine, and edit the mood of an image. The negative is an objective template, and the light that passes through is subjective. It is the light that reveals the image and also has the capacity to cloud or focus on finer detail.  

I love all photographs. I am interested in what the person holding the camera wants to share. I want to know the story behind the light, the angle, the composition. I love how photographs document the passage of time, and the mysteries they hold. I believe that a body also holds the documentation and mystery of time, and I exit the lab just as I do the darkroom—with an inspiration that will soon launch me toward the next inquiry. 

In the dissection lab, I was skilled with a scalpel from day one. The precision required to expose hidden detail satisfied the artist in me. Like the light in the darkroom, the scalpel is the tool used to illuminate what lies beneath. Despite the analogies of light and exposure, my first few hundred hours in the lab were all about the physical body. There were subtle hints that I was cutting into structures of energy and emotion, but all that was immediately overshadowed by the thrill of linking matter to function. 

Venus-Mary lived into her ninth decade and died a week before I arrived in the lab for my first gross anatomy experience. Her family wanted to hold a memorial service with her cremains present. Her body came to be with us because the coroner knew that our group would make quick work of her in our six-day course. 

As we gathered around, preparing to begin the task of dissection, I wondered what compelled a person to want to donate their body. Had she discussed it with her family, or did they make the decision after she was gone? My dad was so young when he died, and he and my mother had not talked at length about their death wishes, but it was understood that he wanted to be cremated. With no evidence, I had a feeling at the time that this was a point of conflict between my mother and his. His cremains were buried beside his father in their hometown, a day’s travel by car from ours, which to this day, I do not understand. His dad was laid to rest embalmed, but otherwise unaltered in a shiny wooden casket, and the only time I was ever taken to their grave was by my grandmother. She wanted to make sure I didn’t step on top of my grandfather, so I had to guess at how much space his body inhabited beneath the earth beside my father’s small box of ashes. As I navigated the invisible border of the grave at my grandmother’s request, I silently wondered why Dad wasn’t buried closer to our home, with a plot for my mom when the time came. 

I am very curious about Venus-Mary and her family. How exactly did she come to be with us? Was the decision of body donation something her family respected and carried out on her behalf or did they make the choice independent of her wishes? My questioning really stems from a lack of information on the conditions that led to my father’s burial being so far from us, his family. I learn that it doesn’t really matter what a person’s wishes are—the living have the final say about a loved one’s remains. 

I note immediately how having a full, untouched body to work with is terrifying in a different way than seeing those first picked-over cadavers from the lab in Colorado. 

Although she is bloated and very dead-looking, I see Venus-Mary as a representation of a family matriarch. She is soft while her shape symbolizes the power of a wise woman. Her skin is pale and flawless. Her curves are smooth and perfectly proportioned, like the women in Rembrandt’s paintings. There are four of us dissecting and we don’t know how to cut into her flesh, despite Gil’s detailed instruction. We want to preserve the moment but are also eager to take Venus-Mary to the next stage of her existence on earth. There is a lot of pressure as the blade approaches the skin for the first time. None of us want to make a mistake and at this stage, we don’t even know what that might look like. It’s only a moment before someone is brave enough to step forward and gently score her skin with their blade. We’re all involved now, pulling at the borders of the cut to determine if more depth is required. There is no blood, only a subtle shift in color and texture as a deeper layer is exposed. Collectively we have now passed through the sentiment of preservation and are looking at form and function in new and engaging ways. 

Our first task is to remove the top layer of skin to expose the fat layer beneath. The fat, also known as adipose, superficial fascia, and the deepest layer of the dermis, is congruous with the skin layer it is adhered to. Once the blade makes the separation, there is an obvious difference between the tissue of the skin and that of the fat, but anatomically this subcutaneous fat is identified as being the deepest aspect of the dermis, or skin. 

Almost right away, I am struck by the amount of tissue below the skin. My perspective is altered and suddenly I am aware of how misplaced my interpretation of my first cadaver sighting was. We were not privy to how much of them had already been dissected away to reveal their structural skeletons. I’m almost positive I would not have been capable of displaying such forced grace if we had been invited to look upon the layer directly beneath the skin, which is both really gross and totally fascinating. 

Venus-Mary, below the skin, is not like the bodies seen in books. To uncover the images so artfully presented in anatomical texts, we would have to weed through a lot of extra stuff. The gunk beneath the skin doesn’t interest us at all. In fact, it’s pretty disgusting. The bright yellow wrapping of fat reflects a lot of light, which is exhausting to be exposed to for hours on end. In places we find splashes of red, brown, and even green. Regardless of the color of our skin, we are all a mash-up of yellow, green, and pink underneath. It’s more color than I expect to see after my one time in the lab, where we looked upon mostly gray and brown hues of muscle and bone. I would later come to marvel at the variety of color and texture of this layer, but for my first time, I find it overwhelming to work with: weeding through slippery lobules of fat, with vessels that once carried blood and lymph woven throughout. Nerves and flimsy fascia, which is a bit like snot, and all the unidentifiable slimy bits are quite gross. 

Gripping the adipose tissue with a hemostat is not always easy. It’s slippery yet strong, and as novices, we accidentally flick bits of it across the table onto the skin of our colleagues. The first time it happens, the mishap is received with cries of disgust, but we are quickly reminded that the tissue is sterile and “cleaner than your boyfriend.” Gil possesses great skill in calming the erratic energy of our nerves. 

Venus-Mary, like all uncut donors, has been well bathed in embalming fluid, making the textures full of moisture and shine. Compared to dissections that have been lying around for a while, there is a significant difference in tissue appearance. Old cadavers that are fully or partially dissected dehydrate from exposure to dry lab air and the heat of both overhead and concentrated lamplight. When we are not working, they are wrapped in moist cloth to maintain tissue hydration for as long as possible. My only exposures prior to this were old dissections and images that were void of fluid and resembled the clean lines and texture of jerky. To be honest, I’m in the lab to see muscle. Muscle is what I’ve been studying, and to me, it’s all that anatomy is made up of. All this other stuff is really getting in the way. This sentiment, shared by many who come to the lab, is the gateway to a great conversation. 

It was 2005, and the “fascia” we were looking at was not the big buzz it is now. There are whole communities in science currently studying fascia, putting on international seminars where dissectors and bodyworkers from all over Europe and North America come to share their discoveries. At the time we stood over Venus-Mary, we were being guided into uncharted space, and despite our ignorance over the grandness of the task, Gil suspected that Venus-Mary would reveal the complexity and expanse of the fat layer as one continuous organ. Skin had long ago taken the title of a human’s largest organ, but adipose had been slowly emerging as scientifically significant anatomy—more than just fat. Gil believed Venus-Mary could be coaxed by our scalpels to reveal the full matrix of the superficial fascia in one uninterrupted, human-sized duvet, and she did. In fact images of Venus-Mary are present today in print, and online, where the discussion of adipose is gaining popularity. 

Exposing the subcutaneous fat is painstaking, especially so because we are also familiarizing ourselves with the tools of dissection, and with one another. The fat looks a lot like the pulp cells of citrus, and varies in size and density from body to body. 

After her skin is removed, and we have acclimatized to the sight, Venus-Mary exposes her full fatty fleece of yellow, orange, green, and pink. We look upon the layer that shaped her into a woman. Full of curves that were held tight by her skin, she is now just as solid without it, but softer in appearance. 

After just one night of sleep, this layer too will be cut away. 

Removal of the superficial fascia takes up an entire day, and in each lab I attend, the richness of the dialogue surrounding this layer evolves: society’s opinion of it, how it is built to blanket emotion, what parts of the body are sexy or not because of it, and how different cultures view it. Fat is a much more interesting topic of conversation than skin or even muscle. Everyone has an opinion on the presence or lack of fat on a body, and in the lab we go a bit further to debate its energetic quality. 

As new anatomists, we view the skin—which includes adipose—as an obstacle to the anatomy we are anxious to uncover. Our ignorance disregards the important contribution of fat to our immune system and hormonal makeup. I suspect it’s why many donor programs will not accept obese bodies: there is more tissue to navigate, and time could be better spent with the more obvious aspects of anatomy. I question Gil about this and am relieved when he explains that often the reasoning is purely practical. A technician may not have assistance or a mechanical lift for moving an embalmed body from storage to table, or shelving space is limited and a body exceeding a certain weight creates additional safety risk for some labs. Other rejections, such as blood disease, autopsy, or organ donation, are more obvious. We are told that most dissections discard the skin and fat as one layer, unexamined, missing the magic of the body as a whole. Venus-Mary introduces me to adipose in much the same way I learned about the greater omentum, except rather than meeting a new structure, I am rethinking the concepts of a familiar one and unlearning what society taught me to feel about fat. As we work meticulously to cut away this fabulous fleece, we are given the opportunity to observe all that it contains and how integral it is to the entire system. 

Having then successfully separated the curves of her adipose all in one piece, we lay Venus-Mary’s coat of fat beside the underlying scaffold of her muscle and bone structure and continue the conversation. Here we have the sensual being all in one layer, and it speaks nothing of the muscle and bone beneath it. The curves of her hips and breasts are completely void from her skeleton, and suddenly the sensuality of this maternal figure is inarguably housed in the soft solidity of adipose. The glands that produce nutrition for a babe and the fat humps that allow her to rest on Momma’s hip or nestle into the pillow of the breast for comfort, fat was the sanctuary we all sought as children, and from this perspective there is no argument over the energy it contains. (visit this link and scroll down to view the dissection images of Venus-Mary)

Clients often ask me if it is more or less difficult to work on a person with more fat. I would say it’s the same as working with any other body. There are those who are tightly wrapped (thin or thick), and penetrating the superficial fascia layer is difficult because it has little flexibility or give. There are others whose superficial fascia is soft and mushy and easy to palpate through. Again, it doesn’t matter how thick it is. It either lets me in or it doesn’t. I might even argue that its absence may cause my touch to feel pokey without the cushion of fat to soften the sharpness of my finger tips in massage. 

Fat describes the lipidus pods of this layer, but it is important not to discount the fascial scaffold that houses the fat cells. Its integrity is a credit to the matrix that holds the fat in place. Collagenous fibers make up the fabric of the fat layer, giving it the strength and flexibility that holds our shape. I contemplate whether the quality of texture I feel is due to the fat cells themselves or the fascial web holding them. Anatomy is taking on a greater complexity for me as I journey deeper. 

Following the Venus-Mary dissection, I visited the traveling BodyWorlds exhibit for the first time and was surprised to find that my fascination was not so much with the dynamic display of the forms, but instead with the art of dissection. Having myself taken scalpel to flesh, I could see just how much work went into the preservation and chiseling of these forms. All of the adipose had been removed, taking a great deal of fascia along with it, revealing mostly muscle, organ, and bone, missing all the anatomy I now know to be instrumental to the human form. What’s more exciting is that with the emerging awareness of all that gunk beneath the skin, fascia is now receiving a lot of press and scientific attention. Some of my dissection colleagues are currently working with the BodyWorlds labs, mapping and preserving human fascia so that outside of the dissection lab, we will all have a glimpse into the fascinating web beneath the skin. 

My quest for a grounding in anatomy as a way to escape the challenges my yoga practice had previously stirred up is working. I am fully rooted in an exhilarating cerebral inquiry. There is a buzz of awakening beneath my skin as I discover my academic interests—maybe I am not as dull as I had once been led to believe. 

The days of cutting away the layers of skin are full of changing blades that dull quickly and gazing at the bright yellow of the adipose. According to cognitive psychology theories, yellow is the color most fatiguing to the eye due to the high amount of light it reflects. It can also create feelings of frustration and anger. While yellow is considered cheerful, people are more likely to lose their tempers and babies tend to cry more in yellow rooms. If we do not edit this color or image from our consciousness, it will return in the realm of sleep. 

Just as, on a bright day, an object can remain in view after closing one’s eyes, as if it were burned onto the retina, this is what happens with images from the lab. I go about a normal evening, and as soon as I close my eyes to sleep, the images of the day appear as vibrant and real as they were hours earlier. Like a film on the underside of the eyelids, they can quickly rob me of the restful sleep my brain and body so desperately need in preparation for the following day. After a few labs, this burning of images has faded, the event isn’t so jarring, and my brain can let go much easier.  

Sleep for me during lab weeks is decorated with dreams. I want to say the dissection does not enter my dream imagery, but that’s not entirely true. Although there is an absence of body parts, tissue, and scalpels, my dreams contain a nonsensical, nonlinear hodgepodge of the gunk beneath my emotional, if not physical, surface. Which, I suppose, reflects perfectly the day’s work. 

Vaguely aware that I have been led to the lab as a way of avoiding the internal churning of emotion, I find that the long hours spent with Venus-Mary guide me back to movement and breath. By the end of day two, I feel the need to seek refuge in my practice. My body aches from hours of standing in one spot. My head is electric with the introduction of the mysterious tissues beneath the skin, and my dreams are alive with that energy. All of what I am seeing is new to me, and the effort to cleanse my brain of her presence at the end of each day is not enough to keep the dissection out of my sleep. 

It has been raining for days. The mornings are cold and wet, and a fine mist hangs in the air. Professionals in business attire, coffee in hand, have abandoned their leisurely social exchanges as they hurry along the walkways that cross through the park toward their destinations. Greetings are muffled beneath a canopy of umbrellas, and I can stand in the wet grass outside the lab unnoticed as I ground in my body and breath. Practice is having the opposite effect to what it did previously. Yoga had been breaking me down and shining light on my frailty, which I resisted. But here in the park, I experience the practice as a tool to tap into the strength that had been masking the fragility. I’m slowly waking up to the fact that both exist simultaneously within, and I can choose to access either one.