foreword

2012-01-18T12:04:00.000-08:00

Foreword

Stella

I call her Luna – I don’t know what sex she is - she doesn’thave a body – but I feel more comfortable with the idea of her as a girl; andshe needs a name since she is – in a sense - alive.

How to explain? We are. We were. Twins. Gemini. Starpaired in the womb. Fated to journey together. To be born together. Stella andLuna… only I was born, physically, at 9 months; at 3 months my mother, Natalie-Muriel,bled away a little clot of life and pain and caution kept her in bed for a weekand everyone moved on, except Luna. Who refused to give up this chance of alife. She moved in. to me. My dark side. How do I know this? That when I hearher voice it is not my madness but another’s? well I don’t know, but this storyis my explanation of her, us, to me.

Luna

In the beginning was Natalie-Muriel and she was thesea of consciousness and the snake said ‘Take my fruit. You will be more powerful, more happy, moresatisfied. You will be able to create,have children. Instead of living alonefor eternity you will become the spiral of life and you will bear children andit will be painful but you will love them more than this man, this god,yourself, life. And you will die butyour children will colonise the earth from your man’s seed and your seed andsome will find stony ground and some will blossom’. And she said, ‘Yes, yes, I choose. I want that’.

And man blamed her and she was guilty and ashamed andshe could not talk to her man because he said ‘You did this. You made me. You nagged me into doing this. Its your fault’. And her heartsaid, ‘No, its your responsibility too’. But she could not say that. Sheturned inside herself and was bitter with her blame for herself and she didwhat every woman would do to try to make it right. She bore him a child. And after three months her first-born was a miscarriage - beautiful in spirit - but she turned away from the bloodand the pitiful clot and the loss and she felt - the world will not see this child I made and I mayloose another and I fear it. And she lay in her bed and held on for months until she birthed a girl; a little star, tiny and bright.

But the spirit of her firstborn was still within her - Natalie could feel it but she could not own it. She was grieving and she could not speak her to or of her grief. She had no-one to share it with. She thought she must walk behind her husband, smile and show her baby, cover her hurt... and thespirit went smaller and smaller and it hid in a cell. But the cell gave birth toanother cell exactly like it and another and another and another. And I spread out, but the cells could not be alive in the world. They were not children. They were not stem cells growing leaves ofhealthy plants in the sunshine. They were reproducing intheir own image and that image was full of frustration and hate and Natalie felt it and knew itcould only be healed with love of itself and she could not give that love as she busied with her history and her future and her man and herchild.

I know this, I am Luna - I need to heal. Like heals like. A fractal is an imagewhich reproduces itself. Take acauliflower, cut the stalk, cut each branch from the stem, line them up on thetable. Each is a smaller budding imageof the rest. They have self-similarity.I am similar to Stella, I will grow with her, in her, show her from inside what she can be,heal her… and when we have a child it will be our child and she will bebeautiful and I will live for ever through her, through her people. So I traded skins, I leftNatalie and curled myself up in Stella and my spirit sat in her heart and herbrain and swam round her growing body, and in the beginning we were friends….

the skin trade

foreword