Shared Skin

December 6th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Imagine that your skin is not a thin envelope of tissue holding your internal organs together, but is 15 ft thick. Its inner layers are close to the core of your body and you can feel the organs, vessels, and bones penetrating the skin. At this level it has the texture and consistency of meat. About 1ft out from your centre your skin is more glutinous, and there are organs here that migrate slowly through and around the body. Further out still the skin is runny like syrup, although there are currents within it which prevent it from dripping away completely and pooling on the floor. At this level your skin is permeable and subject to influences from outside. There may be currents flowing in your skin that are caused by a passing car, or another person moving close to you. There may even by objects and parts of objects protruding into your skin from the outside world. Further out still from your centre, and your skin is like water, like the aliens in The Abyss. It flows and forms eddies around you as you move and your thoughts and feelings appear as ripples in this liquid skin. Here there is considerable traffic with the outside world; objects float in your skin and the hands of lovers and friends splash in the waves. At its outermost level your skin is an evanescent gas, roiling and swirling amongst the atmospheres of the world. Here your skin mixes with the skin of everything else around you. The world appears in your shared skin.

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