Cover Her Head

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Agnes’s tiny jacket is packed away in a box in the archives of the Heidelberg museum, much like Agnes was packed away into the psychiatric system. Her box probably has a number, I didn’t think to ask. Agnes certainly had a number 583. She embroidered it repeatedly on her clothes to make sure they came back to her from the laundry. I could see the reason for her anxiety as there were 2 Agnes Richter;
‘s in the asylum. I wondered about the other Agnes, she presumably didn’t stitch, she didn’t leave her mark. Making a mark. Stitching is a way of MAKING A MARK. Making marks is was we do when we paint, draw, MAKE anything. We interact with the time space continuum and when we move on our mark is still there.
Words can leave a mark without making a mark. Sticks and stones is wrong, words can hurt. I am clinging to the wreckage of this thought to steer it round to women need/use armour to protect themselves.
Agnes made armour from her clothes, she stitched on the inside I discovered, so the outside of the body part is indecipherable, but the sleeves are stitched on the outside, the 583 is in red.Red for danger, give me back my armour, I need it, it is mine, it is me.

Tomorrow we are off to Heidelberg to see Agnes Richter’s jacket at the University. They have agreed to get it out of the archives for me. The thought of being there with her jacket is very emotive. She was committed to an asylum in the 19th century, unable apparently to run her own life. She was a seamstress, she used her skills to stitch Gothic text inside and outside her clothes, I like the fact that she also redesigned her jacket to make it more fashionable in her eyes. A form of armour? to ward off others, to talk to herself about…….very little of it can be read, some has worn though, her sweat has rotted the wools in some places. She talks of cherries and prison guards.She died there. Her number was 583……{I am not a number I am a free man….The Prisoner…….} I will be a prisoner of my language skills, I speak no German.