My Sheer Dress

In conversation with Etty Hillesum, Dutch author of confessional letters and whom many refer to as a mystic:

"That great obstacle is always the representation and never the reality." (1941)

This falls in line with Buddhist teachings of wisdom and its counterpart, ignorance. And I've come to see the truth in this. But for one blog post, I shall entertain the powerful potentiality of one overlooked form of representation: the sheer dress.

It's a dark grey dress that arrives just below the knees. Quite the statement; yet not an unambiguous one. Its asymmetric cut at the top belies any conformity to a prêt-à-porter logic (which is itself misleading despite its iterability). In the dress, the contours of her body are evocative, daring an interpretation. The dress' translucency and delicacy suggest an ease in understanding. Yet, her swift movements and poignant gestures in the dress shift the direction of any impending or obvious translation. It takes flight. She takes flight. The dress becomes her poetic rupture of any imposed intelligibility. Of this, she is fully aware. One sees her through the sheer dress.