It’s been six days since I accidentally peeled myself and my finger is healing quite nicely: a stubby little earthworm of a scab now sits on top of where a chunk of skin was once missing. The head of the worm is thick and hardened, but where its tail should be the flesh fades into pink and the skin is smoother/new and there are tiny white threads forming a parenthesis around its edges; this is where the scab has already begun to shed, the threads guarding the perimeter where it has flaked away. I am reminded of the time I found a shred of Ulrich’s knee scab on the floor of the bathroom a few weeks ago, an artifact from another injury from the recent past: the time he tripped and fell on old London cobblestone as we were rushing to catch the Tube to Heathrow.
A few weeks ago I Wikipedia’ed the composition of dust and was thrilled to confirm my suspicions: that up to 50% of dust inside homes is composed of dead skin cells. We think of dust as something to remove, an obstacle preventing our furniture and fixtures from being the paradigm of tidiness, but isn’t it refreshing to think that instead of removing a foreign invader when we dust, we are actually sweeping up the trash of our selves, our shells - surface-layer skin which we’ve outgrown, traces from old closed-over wounds and all that stuff which no longer serves us?
So as I skim my duster over the bookshelves today, flicking its feathers over undulating rows of hardcovers and paperbacks, some with fresh white pages, others which are yellowing into papery leather - I am meditating on the pieces of my recent self which are already disintegrating into a memory, and thanking my body for its ability to renew.
Yes