Pith.

You start with the self. The person. The feeling.

That feeling becomes metaphor. Person becomes place. Place gets reduced to symbol. Symbol becomes abstract. Abstraction becomes metaphor.

All feeling is metaphor, all metaphor is feeling.

The final feeling is an imitation of the original feeling. It goes through the motions. A replica. It chases the original feeling all its life but cannot get there. That is its curse-this sisyphean journey.

So I destroy the image. I'm remaking it. The clothing I make doesn't need to prove itself, its worth, its lineage. We remove the frivolities. We cut it down to its necessary silhouette. It remains. It exists. Despite.

I am worshipping the idols—my lineage, a country I can never call my own, a mother tongue that will never be mine again, and a past that is long gone.

MI recreate it. Make it again. It exists here and now and again and forever. It's my pith. It's under my skin. It's my insatiable desire to prove my blood, my worth, my heritage.

I am saying it's there—I promise.