bring out yer dead
The first dead body I see doesn't have feet or a spine. Medical students removed them, none of us really know why. Its dried, mealy flesh spills out onto the table from deep slits cut in the armpits, like crumbled pieces of clay. The skin is slightly gray and has a blue translucent glow, magnified by the fluorescent lighting. I stand transfixed, staring at this corpse and trying to ignore the smell.
I understand why we're here for this assignment: to draw by seeing. I am watching my classmates. There are only three of us around this body. The genitals are concealed with a white sheet. My other classmates are peering at the jars of malformed babies and abnormal body parts. No one is approaching the row of bodies near the door, five in total, each covered with a white cloth. I ask the man in the white coat if we could draw them too and he becomes visibly disturbed. Just one is enough, he says, and
feels compelled to add that he can't understand why we'd want to draw them in the first place. Kind of an odd reaction, considering us ghoulish, coming from a man who works among the dead every day.
I still don't know if it's a man or a woman. Deb lifts up the sheet and declares it's a woman. I didn't want to look at first, but soon I'm studying her intensely as I draw. Her breasts have slid to her sides, her nipples lost in a landslide of sagging, lifeless flesh. Her nose is flat and deeply creased where it has collapsed back onto her forehead. I try to see her as an object but the odor is really getting to me. I must stay objective. I observe her as a subject, though part of me wants to see her as human, I fight that urge. I cannot picture her as a lady walking down the street, buying a muffin at a bake sale or sitting on a bus.
Deb thinks this is fascinating and decides she'll donate her body to science. I do a few drawings in my sketchbook and watch as the man in the white coat unscrews two jars and removes a pair of heads. Basketheads. Their skulls have been cut away on either side, leaving a long, curved strip on top. One skull still has some flesh and hair, a crew-cut. Both skulls are empty. The man in the white coat grabs the basketheads by their handles, places them on a tray for us to draw, rips off his gloves and leaves the room again.
I keep seeing the pieces of muscle and tissue spilling out of her armpits when I close my eyes, and realize it will take some time before I get these images out of my head. Even the smells linger, but all jumbled up, the pungent smell of formaldehyde and embalming fluids mixed with the perfumes and other scents from my classmates. The smell of the dead and the living together in one room. My memory of the smells make it difficult for me to eat.
I feel like I am looking at things differently now, more directly. The after-images and smells are disturbing. It has also given me a good lesson in seeing; no matter what your subject, look objectively and draw as if it is your first time.
Quite a first post there raison detre. Thank you for saving it for after lunch.
“I keep seeing the pieces of muscle and tissue spilling out of her armpits when I close my eyes, and realize it will take some time before I get these images out of my head.”
And now they’re in mine, thank you.
Comment on November 15, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
Very nice. I think this is a great story. The shell that remains — lampshades and rotten.com, preservation and putrefaction, shrunken heads and strings of teeth. The real.
If there is no soul, life is boring. Therefore I have made one.
What does the artist cow feel and see sketching the slaughterhouse? The pig shading in tones on a pad at the screaming line, where all the pigs (far more intelligent than dogs) suddenly know the end is coming for them? Don’t watch PETA videos if you like ham sandwiches. Bad vibes forever.
Probably easier to draw death than it is to draw the process of dying — far more frightening. Objectivity flying out the window — urges to flee — to stop it —
There is no objectivity, some say. Except for the insane — or the predator.
Comment on November 15, 2006 @ 3:15 pm
Bravo! Rather effective descriptive writing–similar to some of the essays of writer-physician Richard Seltzer, –or reminiscent of maybe some old Heavy Metal strips. Perhaps flesh out (no pun intended) with some of the medico’s jargon, subcutaneous incision, pectoralis major, scapula, and so forth.
Comment on November 15, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
“Probably easier to draw death than it is to draw the process of dying — far more frightening.”
I assume this is so though I’ve never experienced either and can only imagine. I’ve seen plenty of roadkill and it’s just spattered gory stuff on the road. Hard to grok it as a happy little critter just looking for a meal- let alone a lady “buying a muffin at a bake sale’.
The description, as grotesque and frightening as it is, makes me wish somehow that I could be exposed to it to better understand mortality and accept what I’ll eventually be. The ultimate goal, I figure, is to get a stronger appreciation of the miracle of life and stop taking it for granted as I piss and moan about the little things that irritate me day to day. Could be worse.
Comment on November 15, 2006 @ 10:42 pm
More — I want More!! C’mon, c’mon — this was such a great post! POST MORE!
I have become your #1 fan. Not in a threatening or obsessive way though, like in the movie with James Caan. In a nice way.
I just like the voice. WRITE! POST! Pleeeeezzzzzzz.
Comment on November 17, 2006 @ 12:47 pm
Wow. I knew you liked my writing, but #1 fan? Cool. Been workin’ on my style and I guess it shows.
Oh… damn. You said ‘post’ not ‘comment’… nevermind.
Comment on November 17, 2006 @ 1:14 pm
‘Admin’ writes everything around here, then? You’re everyone? Including me?
Yes, it’s true. I am.
I mean, you are.
Well, good to know. I thought Moriarty was a real person.
Nevermind.
Comment on November 17, 2006 @ 1:30 pm
i’m shy…
Comment on November 17, 2006 @ 2:07 pm
Well, I’m like the poster-child for shyness-overcompensation. From wallflower to front-man, that’s me. And — if you’ve got it, and you don’t use it, you lose it, and one other — whatever it is. And you’ve got it.
Sing Out! Or Shout Out, whichever.
Max is shy, too. And look at him — writing everyone’s parts, just like it’s real people.
Comment on November 17, 2006 @ 2:50 pm