The layer that separates the inside and outside is surprisingly thin. Our boundaries, our skin, our realities. At times, the two swirl together, inexorably mixed. No matter how we try to scoop it up, it simply runs through our fingers like water. Other times, it is like stepping on newly formed ice in a puddle. One slow creak and the ice breaks, the ends jagged and cold, driven up and away from the epicenter. Some pieces wind up submerged.
Sometimes it feels that the skin of our sleep is the same. At a single touch, reality could break across the entire galaxy, its calloused edges retreating, leaving only a milky black pool at the center. Churning, the pieces are carried out to sea. The tangible life so confidently known only moments before mingle with something stronger, creeping up from a deeper place; the two are no longer separate. Color and motion begin to take shape and their fluidity seems boundless; however, rational sense knows that a bottomless pit is impossible. But we let go anyway.
Sleep and vulnerability go hand-in-hand. Certainly there is the element of trusting your body to the external milieu, but more importantly, your mind adventures boundlessly. It is oblivious to the limits we place on it while we’re awake. We trust our subconscious to explore the deep recesses we cannot knowingly access and report back to us in the morning. Our dreams, whether narrative or formless, are the illustrations of our inner vulnerability.
Self Portrait II, From Hypnagogia, Kathryn Reichert, March 2019
Vulnerability is the recognition of this thin layer of protection; to damage it is to risk the sacrifice of the purest, most raw part of yourself. You lay out all of the splints and the fractures that you can find, dripping with whatever remnants previously lie underneath. Pieces are inevitably lost, but this is you, bare, emblazoned in your flaws. Those missing pieces are never the same from one person to the next. Imperfections are the only thing that can be wholly owned without reserve; they are each claimed for our own and that is where beauty comes from.