Our Body-- Off Campus

For my off campus event I went to the Our Body exhibit in Austin. There are many of these kinds of exhibits worldwide that seem to be popping up, in which real human bodies donated to science are plasticized and placed on display. This was a rather small one, housed within the UT football stadium, and so I went with David. The displays themselves were fascinating, with the rooms laid out according to the various bodily systems: skeletal, nervous, digestive, etcetera. Incredibly, they had dissected one individual by creating fifty or so inch long horizontal cross-sections all along the body. However, for me, the most fascinating aspect was my own experience of being incredibly aware of my own body as I was walking through the exhibit. It seemed like the real exhibit, the one most interesting, was of the individuals experience within the exhibit, not the exhibit itself. Indeed, my consciousness followed suit as I moved my body from room to room, with the most fascinating being the one depicting the respiratory system. Suddenly, I could not inhale without being fully aware of myself filling up my lungs. Reading the statistic on the wall: the average human takes twelve to fifteen breaths per minute. I smiled to myself. But did I just take less or more? Did my very reading affect such action? Continuing on more slowly now (this slowness too, I was aware of—do I speed up intentionally?), I was at a loss for words—lost in thought over my mechanical self that got me here—not here in the sense of the exhibit, (of course this too) but even in the course of my entire life. Of course I had thought about my body before, but this was something else entirely… At this point, perhaps you can imagine, I was in the ominous back room of embryos and fetuses. Being born rather early –at 26 weeks, I stared at the development chart for quite some time. However, I had to keep moving for the exhibit was closing soon. And so, the remainder of the visit went on in a similar fashion: moving from room to room, shifting consciousness—eventually even to consciousness itself—and seeming to have consciousness affect some element of my action. Leaving, I was struck with the notion of causality with regards to consciousness and its effects on action. I had just seen that I myself am an overwhelmingly mechanical being, with processes occurring which I have no power over. My limitations felt all too real, and I was aware of them more intensely than I had ever been before. However, what interested me most was whether or not such conscious thought an inevitability of mine? Did consciousness belong to such mechanization and was it in fact a necessity of mine, or rather, was I creating something new on my own volition? I still am not sure. I recommend the exhibit to anyone interested in the topic--it was so good, that it was a bit disorienting for the rest of the day.