‘And at night they come searching for me
Sentinels of the deep
Pushing my head back under
Behind the wall of sleep’
Last year, I saw myself only through selfies. They were shot as a result of some pathological tic, maybe a futile effort to delay the ageing process. I never made them public. I wanted them hidden.
Of course, selfies can be sculpted. Carve the angle and therefore the face. The ideal structure can be fixed. In order to eliminate the ‘weak neck’ or ‘turkey neck’, celebs are told to pose for the camera as if a peach is tucked under the chin. I don’t need a mnemonic. For a terminal narcissist such as myself, manipulation is hard-wired.
In the songs ‘Seen and Not Seen’ by Talking Heads and ‘Hall of Mirrors’ by Kraftwerk, the doomed protagonists scry mirrors, summoning idealised reflections of themselves through strange occult rituals.
Substitute the iPhone’s front camera for the demonic mirror, and those lyrics are a fair summation of what my subconscious was trying to do.
Last year, I became unhealthy. My weight ballooned and my attitude was grim. The mood is captured in my newsletter episodes from that time. A particular psychic terrain was relentlessly ploughed.
When I stood on the scales at the start of this year, I was horrified. Still, I reasoned, at least my face looked alright.
A second shock came when I was filmed by a friend for a project that never happened.
The camera caught my face at an unforgiving side angle, a position studiously avoided by the face-on discipline of the selfie. When I watched it back, I could see exactly what the scales were telling me.
My condition was worse than I thought.
My iPhone reflection was a clone let loose in the world. It tricked me into accepting its reality. Although the scales told me that I was doing physical damage, in my lizard brain I imagined, through the clone’s sleight of hand, that I’d retained a semblance of my old self (or even a new, ‘mature’ self, ageing like fine wine).
I terminated the clone with extreme prejudice.
‘Ghosts of Hobart’
Since then, I have been exercising vigorously and I’ve cut down on vice. I should be approaching my ideal tonnage in a few months.
Why then do I feel nostalgic for 2020? Part of me wants to reinhabit the mindset of that time, to drift through life with the boundaries of the world pushed in to unbearable degrees.
Melbourne’s lockdown was a psychological burden, but there was a simplicity to existence. Work had wound down. We bided our time. I withdrew.
In ‘Reliquary for the bones of lost suburban tribes’, an episode from December 2020, I wrote about lockdown and time dilation.
I composed it in the third person because I felt as though I’d taken leave of my body and was watching a life lived by another:
That night, after he’d cleaned up the glass, he wrote a horror story about a person who breaks curfew and embarks on a walk beyond the territorial limit. This person finds himself in the edgelands ringing his suburb, where he offends the phantasms of the night, an army of pollution-radiated demons that live in storm drains and the cracks between factories. It was a tale of possession and encoded in the telling was an expression of what it means to confront one’s fears without proper psychic armour.
—‘Reliquary for the bones of lost suburban tribes’
In some ways, my behaviour at the start of this year—the refusal to acknowledge my physical decline—was a continuation of this psychic lack.
‘Regina’, as the horror story came to be known, was recently published in Parasol journal. Unlike the newsletter episode, supposedly a report from reality, this fiction is written in the first person, raising the inevitable query: which version is the authentic self?
‘Regina’ is about breaking curfew (of any kind) in order to find a moment of transcendence, even if that means annihilation.
That dynamic powers the obsession with the ideal copy, rendered like so:
I take hordes of selfies against backdrops of ruins and waste. They fill my phone, one after the other, almost identical, with minor variations in expression. They are not for public view but they are suitable for framing. I hang them on the walls of the private slaughterhouse that exists only in my mind.
My partner thinks I’m narcissistic but she’s wrong. I study my face because I want it to change. I want the eczema, baggy eyes, doughy jowls and wrinkles to disappear. If I take enough selfies, maybe they will. Through the sheer power of thought, I’ll assume a new face. Someone brighter, handsomer, more in love with the world.
But I wonder if scrying my selfies has already initiated the transformation. What I have now could be the image I secretly desire.
—‘Regina’
‘Regina’ is perhaps the best thing I’ve ever written, but I find it sad to read now. It’s riddled with cognitive dissolution and driven by fear.
Fear of failing my family in a time of global crisis.
Fear of suburban ennui.
Fear of ageing and the rapid slide into obscurity.
Fear of my body rebelling against me.
‘Ghosts of Reservoir’
When I became unhealthy, I began to itch uncontrollably. It started in the shins and spread through the thighs, groin, chest and arms. Often, it reached my face and scalp.
It’s hard to describe. Sometimes it was an incessant itch, sometimes an intense buzz, other times an uncomfortable electric tingle. I’ve fantasised about degloving on more than one occasion.
The itch lasted for four months, day after day, and only recently subsided.
I thought it was related to the venous eczema I was diagnosed with a while ago, but the dermatologists say no. That’s a separate issue.
They can’t explain it. I’ve been tested and it’s not from food intolerance or contact allergies. It’s not neurological and it’s not a byproduct of trapped nerves. There is no rash or skin trauma, no visible signs that it exists at all.
In ‘Regina’, I call the affliction ‘eczema’ in lieu of a verifiable diagnosis.
Eczema is a stunt double for something else.
Psychic overload.
Overstimulated skin.
Dead meat dragged around on a creaking frame.
Since the doctors can’t help me, I believe that the itch is a psychic wound made flesh. It is the fallout from glorifying obsession, seasoned with the horror of realising what overdose and indulgence does to the body.
I turned it into an extreme metaphor powering a story that saved my sanity.
That’s why the lockdown nostalgia endures.
It’s a longing for when I was enslaved to a creative tension so poised it threatened to destroy at the same time as it promised to liberate.
A crushing sense of loss drove the work. Composing the work was the ultimate pleasure.
As I write these words, the itch has returned and is slowly spreading from my legs on up. The texture is different now. The itch burns.
Now, it has reached the inside of my ears, a buzz-fade on the edge of perception.
It’s a warning, a protest from within.
There must be a healthier way to find inspiration.
My eczema is raging tonight and the itch is maddening. I scratch my chest and arms until the skin breaks. I claw my neck like an animal. I take a selfie to check the damage. I’m an appalling sight. I look like I’ve been strangled.
I stare with revulsion at the disease on my hand. Fresh pustules have formed, little volcanoes of rancid blood. Others have burst and dried into scabs. I pick at the scabs, the blood flows, the cycle renews.
When the doctor explained the connection between anxiety and eczema, I imagined something inside me trying to break free, a demon of the id forcing its way into the world.
I wish I could help it on its way.
—‘Regina’
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You can read ‘Regina’ here.
Wao, great work! I can relate to this in some strange way. More specifically on tanking content marketing business and some strange eczema spot under my foot from nowhere. Strange days. Stay safe.