b o n e s

Recently, while browsing through photos of old work, I came across this beautiful specemin. (It was amazing as well to rediscover so many pieces from years past that I had completely fogtten about).

When I was in the second year of my Fine Arts Undergrad, my drawing class was given an assignment to create a piece of work using a bone as a reference. Cool. What made it even better, however, was that we each got to take (and keep!) our reference bone home with us for the two week duration of the project. Some of the bones, as my Prof. explained, were plaster replicas, and some of them were real human bones. While this freaked out a couple of my classmates, I was beyond excited.

(I realize that this makes me sound like a creep).

Overachiever that I am, I wanted to challenge myself and sought out something complicated; I ended up choosing an entire (real, human) foot, with all the little parts held together by wire. I wrapped it up in a scarf and carried it with me everywhere over the duration of the assignment. I couldn't get over the idea of having real bones in my purse; I was in heaven. 

I remember the weight and delicacy of that foot when I held it, studying its contours and design; I remember the incredible way that the parts moved together, tiny pieces of an amazing machine, identical to what was in my own body. It struck me, while I was studying them, how wow the concept of each of us having our own set of bones, hidden away inside, was. I tried to imagine the person who had possessed those bones before I did , what their life was like; it was surprisingly intimate, holding a piece of a stranger in my hand.

Skeletons are hardly secret, but I appreciated my own so much more after that experience. There's something terribly romantic about bones (in the old sense of the word); they belong to the individual, are vital for life and yet remain unseen. They're beautiful and vaguely frightening all at once; they are life and death. 

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Recently, I've been paying more attention to how my body works and trying to better care for it; I've started eating clean and focusing on nurturing muscle growth and optimal digestion. In the past when I've tried to "get healthy", I failed because I didn't understand the mechanics of what was going on inside me. The body is an amazing device and I marvel at how the systems work without explicit commands from "me".  Now I'm focusing on how I feel instead of how I look; I want to be strong and healthy -- not just pretty. 

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I'm a collection of bones and muscle and memories.