Parental Voice in the Back

I am walking.
There are photographs of backs in the showcase.
Honza says and then he also writes: “Behind every back there is a story to tell. Some back is beautiful, but it isn’t for free. To create small circles on a back you need to take a small flask with a round mouth, place it on the skin and suck out the air. It won’t work on places where the tissue is perfused with blood and nourished. But on places where different body waste is accumulated, the tissue there is inflexible, stiff and fragile. When such place is sucked, the blood vessels tear up, the blood pours out into subcutis and bruises appear. At the same time the body waste is dislodged. Something evaporates into the small vessel and something is taken by the lymphatic system. The tissue gets usually clogged at contracted points. It contracts because of membranes which are all over the body. Imagine a piece of plastic foam in a HDPE bag which is being more and more throttled in order to reduce the space inside and to contract the pores of the plastic foam. So this is what it looks like. The membraneous system reacts to the stress by contractions which are sometimes so strong that they can deform us. Body reacts to acute stress but it keeps with the help of the cells ‘ memory abilities also previous stresses which are often recurrences, chains and offshoots of previous stresses.”
I am walking on. In the room there is a loud speaker box with a skull carved out of wood. Wood is a wild material. The sound cannot be heard, I remember voice. The voice is close to a breath. The source of a voice is a flow of breath encountering obstacles. Our parents’ remarks are sometimes deadening but in the end they are perhaps life-giving, because they are obstacles teaching us how to go on. I am going on. I am aware that I also deaden my kids with my remarks and with my voice. I deaden wild material. My back aches because I carry my kids on my back. I am walking on. Suspense. Story.

Magdalena Hrubá