POST NINE: The Double Cardigan.

On the bottom hangs the first cardigan, right-way up. The threshold of the neck points above. The limit of it’s waist pointing down below. It is the garment in it’s everyday, the placement wearing habitually practice, overlooked and assumed. Above is the hanging environment of the cardigan. It is flipped, mirroring the lower garment. It has been turned on it’s head, or should I say it’s neck. It’s waist pointing upwards to the sky. It’s usual construction of dressing has been interrupted. It is mid-way through somersault, atypical, unfamiliar and jarring.

I attempt to ‘put on’ and dress myself in the cardigan. I open its sides and first see the horizon of the neck, separating cardigan embodied from cardigan experienced. I reach for the first sleeve, one of four. I take the lower left sleeve and pull my arm through. Already I am struck by the extend of this garment, my head it not free, my field of vision will become dressed to.

I turn and reach for the other sleeve, and pull through my right arm. The cardigan is now on my back, to a greater extend than usual. I feel as though it’s spongey, knitted texture is standing behind me, following me, looking over my shoulder. The cardigan has my back, including the back of my head.

I go to button up my front starting at the bottom. Button one, it tightens over my hips. Button two closes echoing the button of my belly. Button three, bust in. Button four neckline em-bound. Button five, a repeated neck. Button six, the first time my lips have worn without cosmetics. Button seven dresses my eyesight. Button eight completes the construction of this personal space.

I am now wearing the garment in its whole. My body is dressed in the usual ways, and new unusual. When I look around the inside of the cardigan, I can experience it’s space in a new way. Instead of coming to know it through an established experience of it’s touch against my torso, with my sight resting on its outside, these sensations are now flipped. I can presently view the usual space of embodiment with my eyes registering it’s inside. I reach up to put my hands in the upper cardigans pockets. I see the impression of my hand pushing through to the pocket walls. Touch is now applied to the cardigans outside.

The flipped cardigans arms hang down like rabbit ears. I can feel them resting about my shoulders, like a dangling hug or as if trying to do hand stand. They imply an previous direction of embodiment.

Wearing the double cardigan and meditating on it’s experience explain a few things to me. It explains to me the making of the sixth sense - wearing. Wearing is mainly comprised of sight, touch and the way in which these two communicate with each other to create a dialogue/feeling of positioning. I am highly aware of the space I am wearing in the double cardigan. I am visually aware of the space around my sight in the upper cardigan, which I know is simultaneously felt as touch against my body in the lower cardigan. I am seeing and and touching the act of dress at the same time. My sight has form and my touch has eyes. I have a new sense of self framed by the wearing of the double cardigan and the experience of its embodiment. I have put on a double cardigan, wearing a garment and an environment.