Carapace

The carapace is a wonderful thing in its own right and I can celebrate its utility and its beauty — I can, I honestly can. But I never really forget that for all its protective value, it’s also a small, confined place, like a pedestal … or a prison.

Like anybody trying to get along in the world, I have to armour myself plenty often just to navigate through my life. And that’s fine, but there always comes a point where I don’t like to be closed off like that, where I want to take it all down to the nerve-endings, or something close to it.

I love the carapace, honest and true, I do, but I need to prise the goddam thing — that sheltering shell — off my back, regularly, in order to think and make and learn and feel and find the things I have to think and make and learn and feel and find, the real things, the mattering things.

How very odd. Just as I was preparing this post, which uses two images of work by the fashion designer Alexander McQueen, I read that he was found dead at his home today. How horribly sad. I don’t know what can be said except that he lived a very alive life in his 40 years, more so than many of us do in twice that lifespan. RIP, Mr. McQueen.