I patched a hole in a denim outfit with fabric from the same outfit, thus creating another hole to again be patched with fabric from the same outfit, repetitively, until there is no remaining fabric, only my stitches. It is a futile attempt to save the object. In this case I am tailoring the impossible: no matter how great the effort I expended towards this outfit’s repair, a hole will always remain. Patching a hole requires a piece of fabric larger than the hole itself, thus my efforts to save it only accelerate its demise. However, the outfit is strongest at these new seams, just as bone is at the location of a healed fracture. Congruous with the Japanese ritual of repairing cracks in ceramic vessels with gold to celebrate imperfections, this outfit becomes progressively golden.

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becoming hole, becoming whole

marin abell