mind palace research
Photography from research carried out across the United Kingdom, France, and Vermont in service of the project "body we hide".
The woods seethe with mist. The chill curls around your bare toes as they pick through beds of leaves and avoid twigs. Roots cross over the path you’ve worn down; you’ve been this way before. Time doesn’t tell you how long ago this was and instead folds in on itself, making your footsteps a retracing. A heart-like rhythm thuds while you walk, or maybe it’s just the sound of open space in the woods. And there across the rustled surface of lake water is what you’ve been looking for.
From the shore’s curves, the house rises. Her limbs are at once decrepit and alive, hearty stonework hidden under thick moss. The windows are dark, but her eyes are looking. Her wings are unfurled like she’s waiting. You’re caught somewhere between horror and comfort when you see her. It’s because you see you in her. Within those walls you see you in a perfectly-set dining room dancing on top of the table, you see you like a ghost in a dress moving up curling staircases and down weaving halls; you see you beheading another you, tangled in vines struggling, losing your faith with your hair tied back around the antlers growing out of your head; you see another you with a stab mark in her back laying her forehead on antler-girl’s shoulder. You see their hurt woven with your own but you also see the life they kindle in this place and therefore in you. In relief, in exhaustion, the whole house sighs.
(statement written on the mind palace 4.25.19)