Clara Joyce, An Applied Anatomy of Spirit
by Loqui Paatsch
From wet to dry to cream to powder, she had made herself opaque and impenetrable. She had once held worthy suspicions. She felt herself to be rightfully wary of the harmony achieved by correct application of additives, anti-clumping compounds and preservatives.
But now, with each successive layer, with each pass of sponge and brush, a steadiness that ordinarily escaped her came within reach. Not sweat, sleet, or rain could smear what she had applied to herself. The layers blended well, if not too comfortably; the quote marks were not evident, and she no longer felt any stirrings for the original, as the replica demanded much careful work.
Part of this program was relentless expansion, extending the usable surface from hairline to decolletage, always ready to engage with watery blue lines, a cratered finish on a limb, faint spots from warm light, an excess of fluid or of stress. She became orderly, efficient, precise. She was capable of peeling individual lashes from their setting and placing them to root above her own, graciously, joyfully waiting for time to pass. There were no longer any concerns about artifice. After all, there are no colours, she thought to herself, that do not occur in nature, there is everything under the sun. Oil and pigment collected in the feathered stretches at the corners of her eyes and she felt, with a foreign almost alien clarity– that the body is not a solitary thing.
Image: supplied by the artist.