Having never taken an anatomy class before, the whole human structure business is pretty new to me. I had dissected a rat in ninth grade, but the only thing I remember from the experience is disliking the smell of formaldehyde. I am not normally a squeamish person, but this week, as the professor explained the bones of the spine, her fingers stroking the connections of the cervical vertebrae on the model skeleton, I felt her touch tickle the cartilage inside my shoulders and elbows. Tiny ants raced along my tendons as she bent the skeleton this way and that. The thick plastic between the heavy lumbar vertebrae bent and stretched while my insides writhed. I am not sure why this was the reaction I had. Perhaps it was the realization that we are simply a bundle of flesh and bone. Perhaps I was too aware of my own body, so similar to the skeleton stretching its spine for us or to the unfortunate animals on the highway that were unable to avoid the crushing rubber. We are all just hair and skin and organs and muscle and bones.
Perhaps this is part of the beauty of life drawing. We are reconnected with the frailty and perfection that makes the human body. Whether you believe in God or evolution, the structure of living things is undeniably powerful. It is amazing the way the lumbar allows us to support our weight while standing upright. The Atlas allows us to agree while the Axis gives us the power of denial. We do these things unconscious of the puppeteers we are, tugging tendons and muscles. All this and we have only covered the spine! Imagine the pelvis! The shoulders! The muscles in between them all!
So here is the first sketch on my journey through the wonder of the human body.
