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Jun. 22nd, 2009 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI said something in here a long time ago (a long time, at least, in internet terms anyway) about needing to write up one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Somehow, I haven't quite managed to get to it. But, here I am, chilling out in the couch at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jimcyl and davqat's place as they take care of stuff outside the apartment, scanning through LJ and email; it seems like a good time.
Once upon a time ('Mukashi, mukashi' in Japanese),posicat, novawolf and myself were wandering about an abandoned high school in northeast Indiana. There were many and various treasures there, the echoes of whose beauty and strangeness still call to me from time to time. So many objects of antiquity left to the hands of time and entropy.
A handful of science labs remained, their contents partially intact. Boxes full of laboratory glassware, chromatic optical filters, dainty sets of standard brass weights in their own snug boxes of well-aged wood. In one room, along with the heavy old bell jars with their vacuum nozzles and wooden bases and the counter-top autoclave, looking for all the world like a vintage Amana Radarrange, was a piece of bone.
This bone was about the size of a saucer, and vaguely like one in shape as well. On my first trip out to this school, it had been in the same place, and my first thought was that this was part of a skull. I wondered if it could possibly be human; something about it made me think so. But this was a high school; certainly a high school wouldn't have a real human skull in it, would it?
As the three of us explored the rest of the school, my question was answered in the cafeteria. There, left by some other wanderer through the empty halls of education, was the rest of the deceased individual's cranium, the top of which I'd already seen in a science lab a few floor up. The rest of the skull was the crowning element on a pile of wadded up plastic bags, empty Gatorade bottles, and other refuse. Some other explorer, or scrapper, or just plain vandal, had picked the remains up in the lab, and dropped them off when he got bored. Or maybe he was trying to make some kind of post-modernist art statment; I don't know.
What I did know was that it felt really wrong to leave this where it was. This had been someone, once. That person deserved better than to have his or her skull decorating a garbage heap. I decided that I would have to get it back into the science room. I'd have to pick it up and bring it back there.
I hesitated. This was weird. Really weird. Disturbing even. I spent five or ten minutes getting in the right frame of mind to bend down, reach my hand out, and touch this piece of bone. I finally took a breath and cleared my mind. I reached out and mentally pushed on through putting my hand through the hole made by the missing top portion, thumb inside, fingers out, not putting any thought into the action. The bone was cool, firm, and heavy; smooth and dry against my fingertips.
Skull in hand, arm extended down toward my feet and out away from my legs, I walked. I stepped out into the cafeteria hallway and briskly toward the stairs I knew were ahead. It was then, as I walked, that I started to really think again about what I was doing. Carrying the most recognizable part, maybe some would say the most important, the spiritual center, of a dead person through the halls of an abandoned school.
I've written a little bit about how I feel about abandoned buildings. How seeing them in person, close up, has irrevocably changed the way I think about civilization; placed transience near the core of what that concept means to me. How seeing an abandoned building is, to me, seeing a ghost; an entity that's not quite alive without the humans that defined it to occupy and use it, but not quite dead, still held to this place by ties of structural steel and cracked concrete.
In the same way that intimate acquaintance with abandoned buildings changed my perspective on cities and society, seeing this rounded, whitened piece of bone, looking into its eye sockets, and feeling it hard and heavy in my hand, contributed a small, but enduring and undeniable, piece of the puzzle that makes up my conception of what it is to be a human being. We human beings are so many things, wonderful and terrible. But on top of all that defines our lives, there is mortality; the ultimate definition of what it means to be alive.
I can't help but think about that from time to time. It's one thing to know that your time, and that of your friends and loved ones, in this existence is limited; it's another to see it for yourself, right there, in your hand. It made me think, and continues to. About what's important in life.
I caught an interview on NPR a week or two ago; the subject of actors who had willed their skulls to theatre companies to be used in productions of Hamlet came up. The interviewer asked if it really made a difference, holding a real human skull on stage as opposed to a dummy or mock up. I know that, for me, the answer is an indisputable yes.
...
But to return to my narrative, I made my way up to the science lab in a trip that's a contender for the title of the most surreal thing I've ever done in my life. I placed the skull on the counter next to the top of the skull. Then I stepped back and considered. Just as it hadn't felt right to me to leave the skull in that pile of trash, it felt wrong too to leave it there in this room for the next careless band of people to lose, vandalize, or break. I decided I just couldn't leave it there in the school.
A search of a few rooms turned up a box and some bubble wrap. I carefully packed the two pieces up into the box and, as we continued exploring the rest of the school, carried it around with me. This continued to feel more than a little odd. And that's to say nothing of the drive home, spent alone in a car, in the dark, with human remains in the seat behind me. I'll admit it; I glanced behind me, at the box, a few times as I drove, without even being able to say why except for a feeling of slight unease at the nature of my cargo.
On the way I called my parents, looking, I suppose, for some validation of my actions. I felt like it was the right thing to do, but hearing it from others I trust would help. In retrospect, I guess it was a very strange sort of phone call to get out of the blue.... They did, my dad a little hesitantly, agree with my motivations and, mostly my actions.
When I got home, I put my passenger out in the garage; I'd be just a little too weirded out having it in the house, andmoiracoon was in agreement on that, at least. Settling in, I thought about what to do. I was hoping that there'd be a national database of body donors or something like that. Some organization that would help me get the skull to a group that would respect it and make use of it as was intended.
As it turns out, such a national group does not seem to exist. Instead, I found that the University of Indiana, Gary has a human cadaver prosection program for medical students. The next day, I contacted the head of that program to ask for information and advice.
Through a phone call or two and a few emails, I arranged to meet with the doctor in Gary one weekend and take a look at the skull with him. He also wanted to take a couple of campus security guards and see the high school; he expressed some concern that, if this wasn't a replica as he thought it might be, that perhaps someone had been the victim of foul play there in the high school. Though this was starting to involve too many authority figures for my comfort, I was willing to go along with it. After all, to get a phone call like that out of blue must have been pretty discomfiting. I can understand a little concern about the origins and nature of human remains when the person telling you about them is nobody you've ever heard of before.
But after that, I sent him a few high resolution pictures I took. After he looked at them, he emailed me back. It was definitely a real human skull, he said. One sectioned and pinned for teaching. That being the case, he decided he was no longer interested in seeing it. So much for trying to work with an existing group to get it to those who could treat it respectfully and put it back into use in Indiana where it was from. Instead, in an email that he copied the head of campus security and his department head on, he suggested that I turn it in to my local police station.
I responded to all of them, thanking him for his advice and saying that I would do just that. In reality, I had, and have, no intention of doing anything of the kind. I suspect that walking into a police station and saying "I just trespassed on city property and stole human remains. Wanna see?" would not go over very well.
Instead, I got in touch withvandringar, a really neat weasel who lives entirely too far away from me. Since he's an archaeologist, I thought there really couldn't be a better thing to do with my friend in the garage than to see that it makes it to someone like Van, who will treat the skull with respect and use it in the way it was intended, as a teaching aid. I'd just set it up in the garage and get some nice pictures first. I mean, when else am I ever going to have the chance to photograph a real human skull?
(Van, please accept my apologies for not having gotten the skull to you yet. Things come up and life is crazy sometimes. I'm very sorry for the delay. My intent is to finally get some pictures this weekend and get the skull in the mail to you on Saturday. Thanks for your patience with this dog!)
So, that's the story of one of the most surreal experiences of my life. It may sound weird to say it, but I'm really glad to have had the chance to handle human remains like this. I've had so many weird and wonderful experiences as a result of the urban exploration I've done. Living outside the mainstream, in one way or another, is really good for your sense of perspective. I'm so grateful for all the rare opportunities that the universe has presented to me via this strange hobby of mine. I suppose running around abandoned buildings may not be for everyone, but I really feel changed, positively, by the experiences I've had pursuing it.
jimcyl and davqat's place as they take care of stuff outside the apartment, scanning through LJ and email; it seems like a good time.Once upon a time ('Mukashi, mukashi' in Japanese),
posicat, novawolf and myself were wandering about an abandoned high school in northeast Indiana. There were many and various treasures there, the echoes of whose beauty and strangeness still call to me from time to time. So many objects of antiquity left to the hands of time and entropy.A handful of science labs remained, their contents partially intact. Boxes full of laboratory glassware, chromatic optical filters, dainty sets of standard brass weights in their own snug boxes of well-aged wood. In one room, along with the heavy old bell jars with their vacuum nozzles and wooden bases and the counter-top autoclave, looking for all the world like a vintage Amana Radarrange, was a piece of bone.
This bone was about the size of a saucer, and vaguely like one in shape as well. On my first trip out to this school, it had been in the same place, and my first thought was that this was part of a skull. I wondered if it could possibly be human; something about it made me think so. But this was a high school; certainly a high school wouldn't have a real human skull in it, would it?
As the three of us explored the rest of the school, my question was answered in the cafeteria. There, left by some other wanderer through the empty halls of education, was the rest of the deceased individual's cranium, the top of which I'd already seen in a science lab a few floor up. The rest of the skull was the crowning element on a pile of wadded up plastic bags, empty Gatorade bottles, and other refuse. Some other explorer, or scrapper, or just plain vandal, had picked the remains up in the lab, and dropped them off when he got bored. Or maybe he was trying to make some kind of post-modernist art statment; I don't know.
What I did know was that it felt really wrong to leave this where it was. This had been someone, once. That person deserved better than to have his or her skull decorating a garbage heap. I decided that I would have to get it back into the science room. I'd have to pick it up and bring it back there.
I hesitated. This was weird. Really weird. Disturbing even. I spent five or ten minutes getting in the right frame of mind to bend down, reach my hand out, and touch this piece of bone. I finally took a breath and cleared my mind. I reached out and mentally pushed on through putting my hand through the hole made by the missing top portion, thumb inside, fingers out, not putting any thought into the action. The bone was cool, firm, and heavy; smooth and dry against my fingertips.
Skull in hand, arm extended down toward my feet and out away from my legs, I walked. I stepped out into the cafeteria hallway and briskly toward the stairs I knew were ahead. It was then, as I walked, that I started to really think again about what I was doing. Carrying the most recognizable part, maybe some would say the most important, the spiritual center, of a dead person through the halls of an abandoned school.
I've written a little bit about how I feel about abandoned buildings. How seeing them in person, close up, has irrevocably changed the way I think about civilization; placed transience near the core of what that concept means to me. How seeing an abandoned building is, to me, seeing a ghost; an entity that's not quite alive without the humans that defined it to occupy and use it, but not quite dead, still held to this place by ties of structural steel and cracked concrete.
In the same way that intimate acquaintance with abandoned buildings changed my perspective on cities and society, seeing this rounded, whitened piece of bone, looking into its eye sockets, and feeling it hard and heavy in my hand, contributed a small, but enduring and undeniable, piece of the puzzle that makes up my conception of what it is to be a human being. We human beings are so many things, wonderful and terrible. But on top of all that defines our lives, there is mortality; the ultimate definition of what it means to be alive.
I can't help but think about that from time to time. It's one thing to know that your time, and that of your friends and loved ones, in this existence is limited; it's another to see it for yourself, right there, in your hand. It made me think, and continues to. About what's important in life.
I caught an interview on NPR a week or two ago; the subject of actors who had willed their skulls to theatre companies to be used in productions of Hamlet came up. The interviewer asked if it really made a difference, holding a real human skull on stage as opposed to a dummy or mock up. I know that, for me, the answer is an indisputable yes.
...
But to return to my narrative, I made my way up to the science lab in a trip that's a contender for the title of the most surreal thing I've ever done in my life. I placed the skull on the counter next to the top of the skull. Then I stepped back and considered. Just as it hadn't felt right to me to leave the skull in that pile of trash, it felt wrong too to leave it there in this room for the next careless band of people to lose, vandalize, or break. I decided I just couldn't leave it there in the school.
A search of a few rooms turned up a box and some bubble wrap. I carefully packed the two pieces up into the box and, as we continued exploring the rest of the school, carried it around with me. This continued to feel more than a little odd. And that's to say nothing of the drive home, spent alone in a car, in the dark, with human remains in the seat behind me. I'll admit it; I glanced behind me, at the box, a few times as I drove, without even being able to say why except for a feeling of slight unease at the nature of my cargo.
On the way I called my parents, looking, I suppose, for some validation of my actions. I felt like it was the right thing to do, but hearing it from others I trust would help. In retrospect, I guess it was a very strange sort of phone call to get out of the blue.... They did, my dad a little hesitantly, agree with my motivations and, mostly my actions.
When I got home, I put my passenger out in the garage; I'd be just a little too weirded out having it in the house, and
moiracoon was in agreement on that, at least. Settling in, I thought about what to do. I was hoping that there'd be a national database of body donors or something like that. Some organization that would help me get the skull to a group that would respect it and make use of it as was intended. As it turns out, such a national group does not seem to exist. Instead, I found that the University of Indiana, Gary has a human cadaver prosection program for medical students. The next day, I contacted the head of that program to ask for information and advice.
Through a phone call or two and a few emails, I arranged to meet with the doctor in Gary one weekend and take a look at the skull with him. He also wanted to take a couple of campus security guards and see the high school; he expressed some concern that, if this wasn't a replica as he thought it might be, that perhaps someone had been the victim of foul play there in the high school. Though this was starting to involve too many authority figures for my comfort, I was willing to go along with it. After all, to get a phone call like that out of blue must have been pretty discomfiting. I can understand a little concern about the origins and nature of human remains when the person telling you about them is nobody you've ever heard of before.
But after that, I sent him a few high resolution pictures I took. After he looked at them, he emailed me back. It was definitely a real human skull, he said. One sectioned and pinned for teaching. That being the case, he decided he was no longer interested in seeing it. So much for trying to work with an existing group to get it to those who could treat it respectfully and put it back into use in Indiana where it was from. Instead, in an email that he copied the head of campus security and his department head on, he suggested that I turn it in to my local police station.
I responded to all of them, thanking him for his advice and saying that I would do just that. In reality, I had, and have, no intention of doing anything of the kind. I suspect that walking into a police station and saying "I just trespassed on city property and stole human remains. Wanna see?" would not go over very well.
Instead, I got in touch with
vandringar, a really neat weasel who lives entirely too far away from me. Since he's an archaeologist, I thought there really couldn't be a better thing to do with my friend in the garage than to see that it makes it to someone like Van, who will treat the skull with respect and use it in the way it was intended, as a teaching aid. I'd just set it up in the garage and get some nice pictures first. I mean, when else am I ever going to have the chance to photograph a real human skull?(Van, please accept my apologies for not having gotten the skull to you yet. Things come up and life is crazy sometimes. I'm very sorry for the delay. My intent is to finally get some pictures this weekend and get the skull in the mail to you on Saturday. Thanks for your patience with this dog!)
So, that's the story of one of the most surreal experiences of my life. It may sound weird to say it, but I'm really glad to have had the chance to handle human remains like this. I've had so many weird and wonderful experiences as a result of the urban exploration I've done. Living outside the mainstream, in one way or another, is really good for your sense of perspective. I'm so grateful for all the rare opportunities that the universe has presented to me via this strange hobby of mine. I suppose running around abandoned buildings may not be for everyone, but I really feel changed, positively, by the experiences I've had pursuing it.
