Warning – The following is a portrait of an extremely shocking subject-human dissection. Something deep, deeper than the rational mind can easily wrap itself around, reacts to the picture of a human being, alive or dead, being dismembered. There is no easy or comfortable way to talk about it. Why, you might ask, would I want to chronicle a week long class in human dissection? I have no simple answer. The class profoundly moved me and most of the members. Maybe it was the way our leader kept us related to our human donors even as they deteriorated beneath our hands. We crossed into forbidden territory and broke ancient taboos which in earlier ages would have resulted in our own demise. Something very important, something beyond my ability to translate into language, took place when I delved below the surface of human skin. I haven’t written to shock but to illuminate something about death which we shy away from in our modern world. We don’t hunt and butcher our meat, hook and fillet our fish, wring and pluck our chickens. We got our hands dirty in this class and it actually brought us closer to our humanity. I have tried to be faithful to the tactile intensity of the class, to not tone it down too much for comfort. Nothing about the class was comfortable, quite the contrary. Nonetheless, for those who have ever had a desire to see the profound mystery which lies a millimeter below the surface of our human skin, this might prove interesting.