During our train stopover in Montreal, Natasha and I stumbled into an opportunity to check out the insanely cool “Bodies: The Exhibition” event taking place at the Eaton Centre. I’d read about it in magazines – a german scientist (Gunther von Hagens) came up with a plastination method that treats cadavers so that all of the original texture and colour of the organs are preserved and can be opened up for peeking inside.

The display is incredible, amazing, spectacular. Once you get over the initial heebie-jeebies of looking at dead people, there’s so much to learn. Organs are so small and neatly packed into your torso. The circulatory system is incredibly intricate. Muscles and bones all fit together so perfectly.

No photos were allowed in the exhibit (the one above’s been stolen from the interwebs) but one image will stay with me forever – they had somehow managed to extract someone’s entire nervous system, in one piece, and lay it out on a table. A little brain and eyes looking up, connected by the base to the spinal cord, a taproot of little yellow nerves that branched all the way down into finer and finer hairs. That was  it – all of your thinking parts (the you part of you) laid out like a pound and a half of corn silk. It blew my mind!

Do you remember the Chemical Brothers “Hey Boy, Hey Girl” video where the girl sees the skeleton and then breaks her arm – and everyone she sees later looks like skeletons? Totally the same effect when you come out – all weekend I couldn’t shake the thought that I was talking to people made of meat.