Skyler lives apart from my other dolls, on a bookshelf that houses my precious antiquarian collection of Sulamith Wulfing books. It feels right for Skyler to be there, because I consider her to be a sort of an indirect descendent of Sulamith Wulfing's work. She was created in the spirit of Wulfing's unique illustration aesthetic, which informs much of my own work and is present to at some level in each and every one of my dolls.
When I was a little girl, I believed that my toys came to life and went about their own business at night time, freezing back into inanimate objects in the morning. This seems to be a very common delusion for children, as if it's some kind of a necessary, early childhood developmental mechanism. Kind of like Lacan's Mirror Stage theory. I wonder if there is a psychoanalytic theory by any scholar that would explain why many kids engage in that phantasy of living toys? Anybody childhood physiologists here that have an explanation?
Well, I no longer believe in the living toys nonsense but for some reason, a force of habit perhaps, whenever I pass by my favourite bookshelf on the way to the kitchen, I always glance at Skyler involuntarily to see if she's moved while I slept. I roll my eyes whenever I catch myself in this silly act, but I know that the next time I'm heading to the kitchen, I'll be looking for it again.
I think I'll go make me some tea.