Vellum: Paper or Skin?

Last night I dreamt about leaving a job. I know I am wracked with sleepless fear at the moment. It is a strange sensation. It was constant 2 years ago, and I would lie awake, elecrically charged, all night and my eyelids would not stay shut.

I think a lot about surfaces and substances, and how things are really made. And about the changes in substances that we are unaware of. The body changes so dramatically, and yet we don't even see its evolution. And it isn't because we aren't watching. ** showed me a piece by a live artist whose name I can't remember. He took photos of himself every day for a year, in the same room, in the same position, in the same clothes. He changed significantly in appearance over that year. But I don't know if we only see superficial change and are blind to substantial change. Even the supporting structures must change. Do we not see it because we refuse to believe in the idea of substantial instability?

And surface too. I remember as a child being astounded by the body's ability to heal. I wonder if children experience the horror of wounds that can't heal before they realise that they can? ** and **'s cat has had a wound that can't heal for about 2 years. It stinks, and I am alwayts uneasy about it. Children's incessant scab picking is perhaps because they don't understand their skin as a preservable surface, but just as an opportunity for prickly, naughty pleasure. Scabs were so fascinating when we were children.

I like the idea of X-Rays. There is something funny and old fashioned in the name even. I used to often want to have them taken just so I could look at myself. Now I want an MRI. There was an artist, although I can't remember her name, who was part of the same exhibition as Char Davies at ACMI who had done amazing stuff with MRI.