Other Than Ours
Isobel Wohl
Marlene Steyn
You can’t cry when your head is underwater
Lychee One
5 October-12 November 2016
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We build ourselves a house. I put the floorboards down; you hammer in the nails that keep them there. They must not come back up. The most careful of us is chosen to tend the garden. There is so much to prune. When we are tired we rest; the lazy among us ask who should be mother. Please don’t burn yourself when you cut the cake or drop the tray; see the steam? That means the water’s very hot. And keep track of where I am; I’d rather you not seal the basement with me in it. Before the corners, shout all the names and see who answers. Please also accidentally no nails in my hands.
There have got to be stairs in this house because a set of stairs is how you get from the bottom to the top. When a floor is a river a stair is a bridge and when you are drowning your hair fans out like all the steps I stand on.
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From the window we see images: a garden in the distance. We hang these pictures from our walls as if they were our walls and we did not know it (I, too, decorate myself with myselves, daubing, untutored. There’s no manual for this kind of construction and when there’s a problem at the site we realise that the emergency exit’s just another throat, also choking, same smoke, untutored. Together trace the epiglottis; I’ll let you use your toe
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flex extend open close). And hide the walls with arrases, with hanging painted gardens. An arras enables an error enables an arrow (an error itself). True self explain how intimate we are; explain who hides listening behind the thing I mean to tell you and point at the exactitude when it peeks out. Will it be easier if we go upstairs? Shimmy up the vine, darling, if stairs don’t suit.
A scene is a room of time defined by the presence of actors. There have been two just now hiding behind each other, one piercing another and back (point being, these are the same and both are made of velvet: pierce, hide). Classically speaking, when one leaves the space breaks down.
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From the windows of our house you can see water and when I wake up at midnight or 11:11 I see people that form and run like rivers. If I keep watching I see them collect into lakes; when we know each other they invite me for a swim. I strip off. Their skins and hairs are malleable like mine. The roots of my trees will be your fingers; the roots of my fingers will be her trees or his and in the forest we’ll be hunted like wolves with strange paths, bulbous machinations, detachability and pointing and the tracing of a limb before mouth contact.
But when you kiss my hand why do you spit on it?
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This is how addition works: you add and you add and you add and that means everything’s added to everything else. Parentheses are distinct from the meat of the walnut so before and after can mix. Your hand plus snake mouth plus my foot all misbordered, lace and the crashing of a wave at the shoreline (folded, blind).
Toe still in epiglottis, epiglottis still. Someday will you find me in the painted garden? I mean hanging.
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We are so lucky we inherited this skeleton with its good bones. Its rafters high and regal its windows exact for framing the actions of the neighbours who are already our next and additional best friends.
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An extra nail, perhaps? Ten, thirty extra, hundreds: nails like eyes eggs auricular (your job: hold down heart rooms, sleep well in them, do not bar the gates). This means that my heart watches you and that the pulse of my watching is what keeps the floor under our feet.
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Touch your skin soap yourself up it is time for your bath blow bubbles watch them grow
come you are building the house of your body your mind and others live there
and are lived in they breathe in the bubbles of your soap sweat unmistakable
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to rage and sing and choke on orbs like this. Breathe inside as a baby bird, before it is a baby, does whatever is analogous to breathing, chest sacs filled with something slicker than water, before air, not alive: inhabiting. When we split it apart and put in the nails there is still a space that is touching.
A stranger kisses the cross section of your fingerprint and makes a home in the striations of your muscles. None of us say you love me but we all say arrow arrow.
我们的之外
伊莎贝尔 · 沃尔
马 琳 · 丝 丹
在水里你哭不出来
荔枝一号
2016年10月5日至11月12日
我们为自己建了幢房子。我把地板放了下来，你用锤子钉上钉子，将它们留在那里。他们一定回不来了。人们选中我们中最谨慎的人来看护园子。有这么多要修剪的枝条。我们累了就休息；偷懒的家伙问谁来当妈去操心这些。你们切蛋糕或是放下盘子，小心别伤着自己；看见水蒸气了吗？说明水很滚烫。我到哪里，你们要跟到哪里；但愿你别和我一起封在地下室里。转角之前，把所有人名字喊一遍，听听谁会回答。也要小心我手里没有钉子。
这间房子里必须有梯子，有了它，你可以从地下到上面。如果地板是条河，梯子是座桥，你溺在水里了，头发像我脚踩上去的阶梯一样散了开来。
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透过窗户，我们看到了景色，原来远处有座花园。我们把这些画挂在墙上，仿佛画就是墙，我们都分辨不出（我也胡乱地涂涂抹抹着，把自己打扮了一番。我们这么造房子，没有什么说明指示而言，现场有问题出现的时候，我们意识到紧急出口也只是虚设，浓烟冒起时，喉咙同样感到窒息。影响到会厌软骨；我要让你的脚趾
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伸、屈、开、闭）。请用挂毯、绘制的花园盖住墙壁。挂毯是犯错的开始，是箭头的指向（是错误本身）。真实的自我诠释了我们是如何地亲密；解释了是谁躲避着，听着我想告诉你的事情，真我的自我对准了方向。我们到楼上去更容易吗？亲爱的，如果梯子不合适的话，就爬蔓藤吧。
场景是时间组成的房间，时间通过现身的演员来定义。刚才有两个互相躲着对方，一个穿过另一个（要说一下，这些都是一样的，两个都是天鹅绒制成的：穿过的，隐藏的）。一般来说，一个没有的话，整个空间就塌了下来。
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从我们房子窗户望去，可以看到水，午夜或是11:11醒来时，我看到人们不断涌现，越聚越多。继续观察下去，发现人们川流不息；我们认识对方的话，他们会邀请我游泳。我脱下衣服。他们的皮肤和头发像我一样柔韧。我的树根将是你的手指；我的手指将是他、她的树木，森林里，我们像狼一样被人追捕，奇怪的路径上布满诡计，有股疏离感，碰到嘴唇之前，瞄准和追踪的是胳膊。
不过为什么你亲我手时，往手上吐了口水？
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这就是此外的情况了：你加啊、加啊，也就是每个东西都加到了另一个东西上。混合前后，插入的部分和核桃重要的部分相当不同。你的手、蛇的嘴还有我的脚全都错位了，蕾丝与卷起的海浪在海岸线上（起伏、炫目）。
脚趾仍踩到会厌，会厌照旧。某天你会在描绘的花园里找到我吗？我意思是挂着的画。
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我们那么幸运，传承了这种结构很好的框架。装的橼子高高的，很豪华，窗户的位置看得到邻居的活动情况，他们是我们未来最好的朋友。
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也许是一个多余的钉子？十个、三十个，上百个：钉子像耳朵形状的两枚鸡蛋（你要做的是按住心房，好好睡一觉，别把门闩上）。这意味着我的心观察着你，观看的脉动与你脚踩地板相一致。
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触碰你的肌肤，为自己打上肥皂吧，到了你看着洗澡水泡沫变大的时候。
你在建造自己身体与思想的住所，而其他人住在那里
毋庸置疑，他们在你的肥皂泡里呼吸
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像这样发怒、唱歌、感到窒息。像幼鸟一样向内呼吸着，还是胚胎的时候，做类似呼吸一样的动作，胸部里面是比水还要光滑的东西，在接触空气之前，并不是活跃的。我们把它分开，并放入钉子时，仍有让人动容的空间。
一个陌生人吻了你指纹一部分，在你肌肉的纹路里营造出一个家。我们中没人说你爱我，不过我们都说箭头、箭头。