An undoing of time
Grasping at time–we are always trying to grasp at time by marking it in seconds, minutes, hours, half-hours, and milliseconds. It ticks away. It slips through fingers. It passes through the hourglass. My madness is caused by the undoing of the knowing of time. The unknowing of knowing time. How do we know time? Shadows and light? Wrinkles and gray hairs? Memory loss? Language loss? A curving of the back? A humping of the shoulders?
I lay in the water like Ophelia. I lay in the water like Ophelia, surrounded by flowers. I lay in the water like Ophelia, surrounded by water, drowning in madness.
First my clothes start to break down. Armpits dissolve on a hot day. And during uncomfortable situations. After I have wiped my nose on my sleeve enough times. Drying my eyes, I am left with a record of every time I cried.
The undoing is the recording.
To combat the undoing, I start accumulating. Beads upon beads upon beads. Sequins. Knots. Stitches and stitches. I add and add, creating anemones– manifestations of this feeling of slippage, the undoing, the unknowing, unforming, unshaping.
The body unembodies
The mind is unthinking
I cover the garments with the beaded amulets of anemones. Instead of protecting, they dissolve as well. I am left with remnants–beads on strings. The body becomes more vulnerable. Windows open into the garments, revealing folds of skin, curves, bulges. Meeting points. Dark corners. Hair and moles and scars.
I lay in the water like Ophelia. I lay in the water like Ophelia, surrounded by flowers. I lay in the water like Ophelia, surrounded by water, drowning in madness.
I begin to collect words that start with un.
Unlearning. Unmaking. Unforgetting. Unembraining. Unthreading. Unraveling. Unspooling.
The collection grows.
Unwording. Ungrowing. Unfurling. Uncurling. Unopening. Unclosing. Unclotting. Unhanding. Ungrabbing. Unstitching. Untaking. Undressing. Undepressing. Unhealing. Unheating.
Unpicking.
I cover my body with the words. I bead them on my garments. I write them on the walls. I need the act of ‘un-ning’. The ‘un-ning’ will relieve the madness. The maddening and the un-ning interweave. Over-under-over-under. Under-over-under-over. The ‘un-ning’ was supposed to quiet the mind. But instead the mind races with the ‘un-ning’. The worlds begin to fall apart. Little by little the letters dissolve away. The beads are caught in the cover of my dresses. My dresses collect the remnants of language, falling apart.
I lay in the water like Ophelia. I lay in the water like Ophelia, surrounded by flowers. I lay in the water like Ophelia, surrounded by water, drowning in madness.
The words are falling apart like I am falling apart. My clothes are falling apart like I am falling apart. Clothing is so often referred to as the second skin. My second skin is responding to my first skin. A person can come undone by their emotional state and my garments reflect and record that undoing. Undoing as in coming apart. At the seams. Emotionally. Dissolving.
