Lying-in
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Herein lies the self-taught art, Comfort in Confinement: a full body cast, snug fit of emotional and physical posturing, not for the weak of brittle bread and bones or for the claustrophobic faint of heart. Swaddled in perplex: plaster of Paris’ burlap blanket maintains an incessant itch: a familiar womb-like warmth of pleasant-unpleasant darkness, as sleep floats to the scent of a salty melody: sodden soil, reminiscent of musk’s six feet under sweetness: solace, predictable and dependable. Within this box, numbing is welcome, pressure is measured by pounds per square inch, and decaying pockmarked pinpricks of awakenings hold hands in silence, joining in the good vibrations of deep contemplation while counting backwards from infinity — by primes.
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“…we can only hope that the evocative Welsh word hiraeth will be preserved. It means ‘distant pain’, and I know all about it…But, and this is important, it always refers to a near-umbilical attachment to a place, not just free-floating nostalgia or a droopy houndlike wistfulness of the longing we associate with human love. No, this is a word about the pain of loving a place.”
— Sally Mann, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
