Your Skin is a Beautiful Story

And the artist co-creating jewellery with insects

Today I have been thinking about all the different ways we build narratives of dream and expectation in our minds. All the layers we’ve woven within us around our bones and collected into our auras like stars and planets — turning and mirrorballing the light of the suns we are to ourselves.

All the stories we’ve absorbed hold close, become a skin we wear. A skin we can’t see ourselves, from the inside out, but we can be seen in, from the outside in.

And it made me think of Caddisfly Larvae — those tiny stream creatures that spend one of their incarnations building little pieces of water sediment — sand and bark and bone and stone — into a tubular shell.

Sealing themselves inside their treasures with a silk spun from the mouth, they cement themselves in until they’re ready to fly.

There’s a moment in new friendships when the shimmering freshness of a first acquaintance starts to steady into focus, like a mirage cooling to reveal the view. This is often when the caddisfly larvae skins of stories reveal their components. Close up, see how a…