Meduse
She was hidden, that much I knew.
In the beginning, the institutions she lived in shone; gourmet meals and tiny clams you could shuck. Beaded lobster forks. She was encased in a rustle of cutlery. Shiny white tablecloths shaped like an hour; curved whale bones covered her flying sand; rosy cheeks and enamelled skin etc. She submitted to all this benevolence and it formed a mould around her, shell-like.
During dinner, under high ceilings, her digestive system and oesophagus were coated with the sensuality of an ancient animal, faintly shining and golden like knowledge. Hors d’oeuvres for the well-catered in a hotel named sanity: numbered room suitcases small wrapped hand soaps napkin rings.
A world measured out in the orderly spaces we call courtesy. Inner and bound.
Places wandered, rings expanded: envelopes meant intrigue. She misunderstood. She wrote on the outside. She was given a little finger and created a body.
Her brave visions became sculptures, large and municipal, and their permanence opened her. For the city, she moulded female flesh in materials that could withstand the rain. She asked what an edge was and opened her shell, letting the water flow in. Lobster forks on the ceiling, broken porcelain, loose beads. History was flooded and changed.
Terrified or punished, the institutions changed shape. Long corridors marked out the outer limits of the end of the world. They called her what they call all women who know. She was mad and her shell did not shine, it sank. What she had been given was chastity and doors, as if a room was enough to be a plug in a girl’s brain. But she had her own limits, our salty rebel: veins filled with molluscs, two eyes condensed into one, skin worried. She wanted to be a fellow sister and her thirty-two teeth were all she had to bargain with. She left the hotel in favour of the sea, emboldened by its depth.
In the depths of her outlaw thoughts, she turned her cage into armour; flooded her shell and spun it into bone. Mad was not a name she could live with. She wrote on the outside of envelopes. A life of misunderstood containers.
There she stayed. Underwater. Drawing in tongues from the deep. Shaken loose from her family history.
Hun var gemt, så meget vidste jeg.
I begyndelsen skinnede de institutioner, hun boede i; gourmetmåltider og bittesmå muslinger, man kunne afskalle. Perlebesatte hummergafler. Hun var indkapslet i en raslen af bestik. Skinnende hvide duge formet som en time; kurvede hvalknogler dækkede hendes flyvesand; rosa kinder og emaljeret hud etc. Hun føjede sig for al denne velvilje og det dannede en form om hende, skalagtig.
Under middagen, under høje lofter, blev hendes fordøjelsessystem og spiserør belagt med et ældgammelt dyrs sanselighed, svagt skinnende og gyldent som viden. Hors d’oeuvres for de velforvarede i et hotel ved navn fornuft: Nummererede rum kufferter små indpakkede håndsæber servietringe.
En verden udmålt i de ordnede mellemrum, vi kalder høflighed. Indre og bundne.
Stederne vandrede, ringe udvidede sig: konvolutter betød intrige. Hun misforstod. Hun skrev på ydersiden. Hun blev givet en lillefinger og skabte en krop.
Hendes modige syner blev til skulpturer, store og kommunale, og deres varighed åbnede hende. Til byen støbte hun kvindekød i materialer, som kunne tåle regnen. Hun spurgte til, hvad en kant var og åbnede sin skal, lod vandet flyde ind. Hummergafler i loftet, ituslået porcelæn, løsnede perler. Historien blev oversvømmet og forandredes.
Skrækslagne eller straffede skiftede institutionerne form. Lange gange optegnede de yderste grænser for Verdens Ende. De kaldte hende det man kalder alle kvinder som ved. Hun var gal og hendes skal skinnede ikke, den sank. Det, hun havde fået, var kyskhed og døre, som om et værelse rakte til at være en prop i pigehjernen. Men hun havde sine egne grænser, vores salte rebel: årerne fyldtes af bløddyr, to øjne kondenseredes til ét, huden bekymrede sig. Hun ville være medsøster og hendes toogtredive tænder var det eneste, hun havde at forhandle med. Hun forlod hotellet til fordel for havet, blev modig af dets dybde.
I hendes fredløse tankers dyb lavede hun sit bur om til en rustning; oversvømmede sin skal og spandt den til knogle. Gal var ikke et navn, hun kunne leve med. Hun skrev på ydersiden af konvolutter. Et liv af misforståede beholdere.
Der blev hun. Under vand. Tegnede i tunger fra dybet. Rystet løs fra sin familiehistorie.
Tekst af Hannah Regel
Oversat af Ida Holmegaard
