Disability and Illness in Arts-Informed Research: Moving Toward ...

The Subtle Marks
of Vulnerability

—Hillman (1992, p. 32)

I focus upon a form of experience—transient, embodied, and visceral—characterised by my sensation of vulnerability. It is a bodily perception briefly in my consciousness. I could step away, altogether deny the presence and effect of the barely perceptible, but the subtle mark rendered upon my flesh draws my attention.

Rejection, denial, and observance are all held within this sensation. I don't want it. The sensation is apparent when I am with the heart of a dead cow, a crushed earthworm, my daughter Willa. It can be theorised in relationship to my body, which is one form of escape. Four parallel lines cut my skin, and blood beads upon its surface. “We spend our lives not seeing what we saw” (Cixous, 1993, p. 9). In not seeing, we deny memory memorialisation of our experience, and she mirrors a tense memory, a brittle memory of not seeing. My task is to learn to