Last night, just before I fell asleep, I experienced for a long while two tiny, precisely located and very sharp points of pain, one on top of my skull and one on the big toe of my right foot, as if the spike of a running shoe was pressing down hard. Isn’t it strange, these were pains at the far ends of my body, and yet they felt identical, not just simultaneous: twin points, connected as if in a purpose- and meaningful way. Sometimes I have pains that are strictly symmetrical in shape and strength and location. The nervous system is a thing of wonder, mapping bodies along invisible lines, and yesterday, when I couldn’t sleep, I imagined a tiny people’s explorers pushing their flagpoles down at my north and south poles.
Here is my newest crochet piece, finished last month: LR’s child, ‘sibling’ to LR’s girl and LR’s boy (number four is in work). There has been a progressive carving away at these outfits’s shapes, towards abstraction of a kind, or geometry – of affect maybe. The interesting thing with crochet is that though there is a sense of cutting away/of lack it is deceptively without violence. A liminal loss of limbs. Grown. It makes me think of a child believing the way its family operates is normal, no matter how dysfunctional to others. Fragmentation segmentation reduction regression curtailing condensing shedding losing letting go diminished relinquished – and yet for a moment a sense of wholeness, intactness prevails.
LR’s child (2013)
Materials: crocheted from hand-me-down wool/polyester mixture
Dimensions: 22 cm x 26.5 cm
