Today before waking, I pulled that moment between sleeping and waking over me just that little bit longer, reached out my eyelashes to feel it. I thought these words.
When I was a child, my face couldn’t fit my smile. It was wider than my cheeks, it would crease above my eyebrows. Life lasted forever, each moment lasted forever even and whatever happened in the present was my only truth. I wanted to touch everything, thing to myself of all the textures I had yet to feel, meaning I ran my hands over everything Weeding in the garden with my mother I’d put my hands into the compost pile and feel its heat. I’d look one way on the bus while walking past someone with a furry coat, so I could subtly run my hand over It the other way without notice. I was often to be found in a puddle, having stripped off all my clothes, laughing away at the fun of splashing around, and having discovered a swimming pool. What a delight! At 4 years old my father told me his body was changing, that this thing inside him that everyone had from when they were a baby in the womb grew. It wasn’t normal that it grew, and it was growing a lot in him. I can’t remember what he said after that, but I noticed stress, anger, tension and pain across my parents. His composite body changed its composition. Decomposing from one form and into another that had lots and lots of tumors and strange smells, liquids pouring out of places they shouldn’t, especially tears. Things went on composed as before but also not. The fun times didn’t feel like those infinity puddles, they seemed marked. The crying times seemed bizarre but were dwelled in a long time. Over the years these waves pushed on, I didn’t play in puddles anymore but still found things to have fun in, at measured times in the week. Circus school. Chess club. Cooking with Mom on weekends. What a life!
A few years on and there wasn’t time for that. My life was settled in its composition of school where thoughts were stifled, there was no whimsical fun to be had, or it was to be had in contained allotments. There was a heavy air around all the time and that was normal. I was a carer, helping my father to decompose most comfortably. That whole thing, his body his mind, as well as my mothers – well it was all falling apart. It didn’t feel weird, it felt kind of noble. I could empathize to an extent, seeing parched lips knowing to give water, lending an ear when I wanted to sleep. But I couldn’t understand the pain. It seems like this death was ripping him in half. Screaming all the time. It was a time of study for me. I remarked to myself that this body, my body it’s all flesh all the time. And this is the way of the flesh. Standing, walking, sitting or laying down; it’s one thing for a while, an ecosystem within the earth’s, and its that same thing as it pours out of itself, returning to it.
When beginning this practice-based research project, I had one wish. I wished to decompose. It was strong, like the fabric of a dream, encasing my whimsies. They rolled its circumferences, licking its landscapes. It took a while to fully get why, I’ll think of it for much longer than one project.
Today before waking, in dream space I was surrounded by earth and it felt nice. I wanted to return to the earth. I saw it’s been too many years and I miss it. I feel far away from this my mother. I wanted to be inside the earth again, pour this flesh into it, and play in the puddle. I wanted to smell the heat and share it with people walking by. So I woke up, and practiced.