I move here in the summer while everything is still open and embracing. The routine, which gathers the days together in a uniform pattern, I bring with me. Crocheted loops that continue into the next and form soft chains, which only resemble chains in the absence of their order, tangled together and impossible to see through. That’s how the days take shape. I follow him, as if he had been here longer than me. His swaying rhythm between the gravestones (many die in December, I note) while I trail behind like the appendage I am. I don’t know it yet at this point, in the scorching heat and the drowsiness that follows it, as if there were a gas leak and that, one could call it intoxication, that has also numbed me from moving back here. But as the town will open itself to me, so will its inhabitants, and their openness will become insistent, overwhelming, and crawling beneath the skin like an anthill, day by day. He doesn’t notice them, even though it’s him who seems to act as a kind of magnet. He doesn’t know that our rhythm is being scratched at, torn apart by the swarming words and glances, steps drawing closer. Eyes that drill and stick like the flies that slowly rotted on garlands of flypaper, that twisted and danced in the sun in her house during the summer. They don’t know that he is me, that he is an extension of my skin. Can’t they see it? The peach-like sheen too shy to absorb the sun, the softness that surprises people when they touch it. In the beginning it was as if the water waited for permission to seep into his strands of hair when we washed him; his entire exterior was like a water-repellent shell. Then it was as if the elements began to understand each other, to speak the same language.

Little by little, the lapping of the sun becomes heartbeats felt in the throat. A loose spring between the stomach and the tonsils, right where it hurts a little when you pronounce words with r, libra.

I’ve begun conducting experiments on repellency in outer layers. Methodically building a system of how to manage my material skin in a way that would seem repellent. A number from 1-10 is given based on an item or a full silhouette’s performance over the course of a day (approximately 3 walks).

Thin transparent blouse in a nude colour with grey roses, which can be mistaken for tattoos when they come into contact with the skin on my arms. Combined with a kind of vest: 2
I found it in the attic. My sister must have left it there. My claiming it feels emblematic of the shameful transformation that has taken place, and this disarmed state seems to glimmer through when I walk with it among the tall fir trees. I was seen by my family’s GP in his old, cool office. It was that age when your parents’ gaze on your body is suddenly taken over by your own. A gaze handed down to you, something that you tremblingly receive and must learn to take responsibility for. One evening in my room, I discovered them scattered across my back, my stomach, my arms. He gave them a name that sounded like a flower (something with “rose”). His immediate conclusion made the sceptical younger version of me not truly believe he was telling me the truth, cause as a child you can never really be sure. He prescribed some kind of cream that was to be applied. Later in my room, I would speculate about the correlation and think of it as self-inflicted somehow. As if the words from my thoughts had escaped from the incubator of my mind and died upon reaching the epidermis. Dried out in the daylight, leaving their remains exposed for the representative of the rational world to decipher. They would live their own life, return when it was most inconvenient, open cracks in my composed self whispering my inner shortcomings to strangers, shadows cast by inner shame.

Neon green veil: 6
This is actually a piece of fabric, but after being quickly cut and put on, it has now become a real garment, and it shall never be anything else. Bacteria veil my mouth, a signal that I am mute, that to break this silence would unleash contamination. People are deterred by the possible danger of the unknown, by what resists deciphering.

Sunglasses with exposed lenses and a partial frame that coils around them like wet tree roots: 10
They close around the face and turn into a large windshield where insects choose their own fate, as they stare at themselves and their death in the reflection of the sky. The uniform surface of the lenses seals around me like a glass sarcophagus. A girl I met the other day told me that the roots of cemetery trees reach toward the buried bodies. Underground, they appear like entwined fingers, embracing. I’m told that I smile too much, that’s the problem. Not my mouth, but my entire outer layer. Maybe it’s not just the openness of my face, but my whole feminine openness. One I haven’t chosen and can’t shut off. I’m merely a host for its power, powerless to decide who is invited in.

Black scarf that I just found in a French vintage shop: 5
It’s promising with its spider-like open threads, dancing like naked branches in the autumn wind. I recently learned that tarantulas, as they grow, shed their entire outer selves. Their worn garments become hairy tapestries like those hung carefully on lines strung between buildings. Molted from the inner cells of the houses, the stiff exoskeletons were beaten clean by old grandmothers until the dust disappeared into the low afternoon sun, dissolving into the words exchanged between the blocks. We were not welcome here, my father and I. We had strayed into this place; suddenly the streets closed around us, and we could only observe the rhythm of days so distant from our own. The tarantula’s old exoskeleton splits carefully along the back, and the animal emerges gradually, delicate and vulnerable, its new body soft and pale, yet already rigid in shape. Its legs unfold one by one, splayed like fragile branches, and it pauses repeatedly as if testing its new skin against the world. Some people have uploaded videos to YouTube where the speed has been increased, so it looks as if the unveiling happens over just a few minutes. A very fast, mechanical dance that looks like a struggle between the inner selves. In reality, it’s a slow process that takes many hours. One might be tempted to think this piece would score high, but because of the transparency between its woven details, it acts more like an opening, like the tarantula in real time. Lying on its back, open and exposed.

New wool coat, long, dark, soft with gigantic shoulders: 10
When it arrives in the mail, I rip the label off so this compulsive act from my subconscious instantly becomes irreversible. One could almost excuse this erratic act as a form of self-care, preparation for the long dark hibernation waiting ahead. Feeling like a woman, looking like a man. The shoulders are domes, small habitats on an uninhabited planet. Inuit tribes would have made this out of reindeer hide, distorted scapulas like a great mythic beast, with dancing tassels, a domed hood and domed ankles where offspring and provisions could be hidden from enemies and simultaneously protected during migrations in blizzards. I want to hide him in the domes, make him small so his magnetic power is shielded and kept intact.