Flights

FINAL TIMETABLE

Each of my pilgrimages aims at some other pilgrim; today I finally arrived. This other pilgrim was embedded in Plexiglass or, in the other rooms, plastinated. I had to wait my turn in line to see it, to drift along among these exhibits, beautifully lit, bilingually described. Arrayed before us, they resembled precious cargo brought from very far away, set out for the eye to feast on.

First I examined the carefully prepared specimens embedded in Plexiglass, little bits of the body, exhibits of screws and spans, cotter pins and soldered joints, of those often unappreciated smaller parts we don’t even remember exist. The method is sound – nothing can get in or out. If a war broke out, the mandible I had in front of me right now would most likely still survive, under the rubble, in the ashes. If a volcano erupted, if there was a deluge or a landslide, the archeologists of the future would rejoice in such a find.

But this is only the beginning. We pilgrims advanced in silence, in single file, those behind nudging those ahead. What do we have here, what’s next, what part of the body will we be shown now by these crafty plastinators, heirs of embalmers, of tanners, of anatomists and taxidermists.

A spine extracted from a body and stretched out in a glass case. Retaining its natural curvature, it looked like the Alien – a passenger travelling in a human body towards its destination, an enormous polypod. A Gregor Samsa assembled out of nerves and plexuses, fashioned from a rosary of little bones interwoven with blood vessels. We could say a prayer over it, at least, or lots of prayers, until someone finally took pity and permitted it to rest in peace.

Now there was a whole person – or better said, a corpse, halved lengthwise, revealing the fascinating structure of the internal organs. The kidney, in particular, distinguished itself with its remarkable allure, like a great, lovely bean, blessed grain of the goddess of the underworld.

Further on, in the next room – a man, a male body, slender, eyes that were slanted even though there were no eyelids, no skin at all so we pilgrims could see the starting and end points of the muscles. Did you know that muscles always start closer to the body’s central line, ending more peripherally, further out? And that dura mater is not the name of some sexy porn star, but rather a covering for the brain? And that muscles have starting points and end points? And that the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue?

Faced with this display made up exclusively of musculature, we pilgrims all involuntarily checked to see if what the description said was true, flexing our skeletal muscles, the muscles that obey our will. Unfortunately, there are also disobedient muscles, over which we hold no sway – there’s really nothing whatsoever we can make them do. They settled us in the distant past, and now they govern our reflexes.

Next we learned a lot about the work of the brain, and about how it’s actually the amygdala we owe the existence of fragrances to, as well as the expression of emotions, and the fight or flight impulse. To the hippocampus, meanwhile, that little seahorse, we owe our short-term memory.

The septal area is a tiny little structure in the amygdala that regulates the relationship between pleasure and addiction. This is something we should be aware of when it comes time to deal with our bad habits. We ought to know who we should be praying to for help and support.

The next specimen consisted of a brain and peripheral nerves perfectly arranged on a white surface. You could easily mistake that red design on its white background for a metro map – here’s the main station, and extending out from it, the main arterial route, and then the other lines that spread out off to the side. You had to admit – it was well planned.

These modern specimens were multi-coloured, bright; the blood vessels, veins, and arteries beautifully displayed in fluid so as to make their three-dimensional networks stand out. The solution in which they float peacefully is no doubt Kaiserling III – it turns out that’s what keeps the best.

Now we crowded around the Man Made of Blood Vessels. He looked like the anatomical version of a ghost. This was a ghost that haunted brightly lit, tiled places that fell somewhere between slaughterhouses and a cosmetics labs. We sighed: we would never have thought we had so many veins in us. It’s hardly a surprise we bleed at even a slight infringement on the integrity of our skin.

Seeing is knowing, we had no doubt about that. Most of all we enjoyed all the cross sections.

One such person-body lay before us now, cut up into slices. And this gave us access to altogether unexpected points of view.