skin

Last year we went to the British Art Museum to develop "observational skills." Even as someone who likes art, I didn't think this experience would be particularly fulfilling of its purpose but it was. We formed groups of four and were each assigned a painting. We were given something like twenty minutes to study the painting and plan how to describe it as objectively as possible to the rest of the group. And they were serious about "objective." You couldn't make any assumptions about what things were or what people were doing; you can say a person is smiling but you can't say a person is happy. People who knew me and my over-contextualization and over-feeling thought it'd be near impossible for me to avoid subjectivity. But most of those things arise from intrinsic details, and the only way to contextualize is to see those things first. That said, from day to day we have very little space to focus on just those. And while it might seem limiting to only see the very basics, it can actually be pretty expansive. You're forced to pay attention to every shade of color, the size and placement of objects, and relate things in the painting only to each other and nothing outside of it and so you find much more in that square. It makes you search for how things are defined in the first place. Someone was burned for calling a church a church; he had to reach far for something like "building with raised column." Anyway, it was really nice to sit and just look for some time.

Afterwards we examined photographs of skin lesions and went around the room describing them, similar to the paintings. It was more difficult, because rashes and irregular shapes aren't as situated in a larger picture. Since then I haven't been exposed to any dermatology until reading the skin chapter today. While in general I was a little bored by the fact that there isn't as much of a "system" as with say, the lungs or kidney, after awhile all the skin problems don't actually look alike. As nerdy as it is, there's certain satisfaction in finding the distinguishing details in shade, texture and quality. The terminology became less annoying, when used to encompass certain descriptions in a word. A vesicle is a fluid-filled blister, but a pustule is a fluid-filled blister with inflammatory cells. I like when language is invented and manipulated for accuracy and nuance.

But--and the reason I began to write at all--why does the term "violaceous" exist? The skin...is...just...purple.