The itch isn’t on the surface, or even immediately underneath; it’s deeper than that. Termites burrowing through the marrow, veins and arteries full of sticky treacle. Arms, legs, chest, back. A shrinkwrap membrane teeming with crickets and grasshoppers. The slow, relentless motion of maggots, arriving decades too early.
Even naked, I’m wearing a hair shirt. I have to scratch, though I know it provides no relief. I have to rip and tear this fleshy parchment, plough sub-dermal furrows, gouge open ruby-red gorges. Cool mercury switches to boiling lead in a second, then back again. Hands dart furtively – shouldn’t be doing this, can’t not be doing this.
Unable to shed my skin, I’m shredding my skin. The mornings bring an aftermath of scar and scab, harsh consonants fusing, forming a carapace that keeps the inside in and the outside out.
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Well hello.
Dry skin annoying you too huh?
Or am I not reading deep enough…. again…
You are absolutely correct. Central heating at home, air-conditioning in the car and at the office, too-hot baths, several layers of clothes to keep me from feeling chilled to the bone… all resulting in the unbearably irritating sensations described in this post.
Mrs Hg has got so sick of me constrantly scratching that she came back from a shopping expedition on Saturday laden with lotions & potions. (I think the bleeding was freaking her out a bit as well.)
The Oilatum bath oil is quite nice and certainly doing the trick, but I’m a bit dubious about the anti-itching cream, which smells foul and seems to make little difference.
Never mind, the euphemisms on the packaging are quite fun. I particularly liked the concept of “personal itching” (as though there were any other kind!).
Hmm. As a long-term scratching flaker I can recommend a) slathering yourself in olive oil before getting in to the bath (natural rather than petrolium-based oil, better for the skin so I’m told) and b) using Dove soap products which my friend with really bad eczema told me about because her friend the paediatric dermatologist recommends them to parents of itchies and scratchies. Better still, stop using soap at all and use a strigil.
And stay away from nickel…
Things that make me go mmmmm
Alan’s got comments (and he’s a fisherman) Dr Omed is Google-bombing The Passion of Christ AKMA writes the best p-review of the above film. The Shoe Project. It’s fab. I’ve just submitted b2′s weekendboots to the scrutiny of the lucent-spiked…
Goatsmilk soap and creme probably the easiest place to get it would be crabtree and evelyn