I've followed the progress of the injury carefully, from the first hot days of juicy swelling, through to the flaccid, moist, collapsed blister, hardening in a dark brown layer before peeling and fracturing over a pinky white new lamina, completely smooth in its perfection.
Yesterday, Nick and I passed the afternoon on his balcony, each taking turns as the story teller, weaving tales of past lives and sketching worlds for the future. We watched as this naked opening gradually took on the wrinkles of my old skin, pinkening in the sun, exposing itself for the first time to the raw elements.
Since this morning, deep ridges have appeared, parallel along the back, slicing down from the knuckles, then crisscrossing in folds as they grow out from my thumb joint, like cracks in breaking ice, or grooves, written in to a record.
I am literally watching myself age.
Most of the time I forget how old I am until I look at my hands. More and more scars, every year, skin drying up, wrinkles becoming deeper.
They tell such stories. Their arching lines follow the textures they've caressed, flicking as they dance and pressing strong as they support my weight. They reminisce on food they've fed me and feel the ripples of the seas they've swam. They radiate the warmth of the other hands they've held.
I often question the idea that we are all on one constant growth cycle, in one body with one lifetime. I wonder if all the souls in the world simply bubble up in different locations and times, flickering in and out on some other dimension and appearing in time and space in different bodies, like a badly-received tv signal, living a million lives in the span of one lifetime and a million lifetimes with just one life.
At other times I wonder if the real us remains hidden forever, showing itself in glimpses through papery layers, perpetually falling away. Like a wasp's nest, the perfectly constructed sum of everything around.
Either way, we morph, constantly. The events of my life are imprinted on my soul and in the big pink patch over the back of my hand, whispering from every wrinkle and marked with every scar.
Nick and I realise how fortuitous life must be for us to have met here again here - in mental and spiritual space as much as in physical - after nine years of wandering our somewhat directionless paths. As schoolchildren we moved in different circles. Whoever he was then never connected with whoever I was then.
Now, he resembles perfectly the child I went to school with, but he is so completely remade he could be anyone. We have flowed along our winding, separating channels and come out in this lake, only to find that, with all of our individual metamorphoses and layers shed, a new friendship lies waiting.
I turn twenty seven next month. The years line my face and I realise how much I must have changed as well, or rather how robustly that new self has grown out of the old, like ferns from a rotting log. I see that I will continue to grow and die, shedding skins and revealing the new.
In nine year's time, the Nick I see here might not recognise me. But he might recognise himself in my layers. Even now, he weaves himself into my story just as much as his words weave pictures in the air. As my skin grows, he, just like all the other characters in my expanding community, grows into it. Our shared space reveals a new corner of life on the lake.
In nine year's time, looking back, we might find it hard to place our thirty-six year-old selves in a twenty-seven year old's memory. But just like now, when I recall laughing at his poems in English class, he might remember a time when half of my hand was raw and newer than the day I was born.
There might be barely a scar to prove the vision, for the memories will have grown deep into my skin.
No comments:
Post a Comment