
April 15, 2010
Remember why we Exist You and I

April 7, 2010
Mocking Smile

This is my face? How could this be me? People look at me and they see this? What’s so special about this face? Nothing really, I’m sure it would blend skillfully into the crowd. That’s good to know, now I can stop worrying about people judging me and putting me down, how could they if they can’t even single me out. This is not a child’s face. I do not appear younger than everyone my own age…
Good. Now that I know my body doesn’t give off the wrong image, it gives off no image; I know that people don’t know what my soul is like. Good good, that means they aren’t wrong about me yet. Good. Now all I need is for my body to give off the image of my soul.
Soul is disembodied. Soul doesn’t figure to the body at all. Identity does. Identity is the image the body gives off. My body will never be as my soul and vice versa, but at least I can be happy in it. If my body becomes what my soul dreams of in this « tangible’ world, wouldn’t that make me happy in recapitulation? How do I make that happen? Be myself?

So I found that looking in a mirror and talking to yourself can be hours of fun. I honestly feel for the past few days that I am talking to someone else. It feels good to see yourself as someone else. It’s easy to interact with others when you don’t realize you’re there. You don’t worry about the image your body is making your soul look like. But when you do, you start to justify in circles and move in circles instead of forward. So? Why not talk to yourself without realizing you’re there? Magnificent process that works wonders. I will know what my soul says when I’m not thinking about it and will be able to know myself? I’ve been a happy dreamer for the past week. I want a mirror in my room now.
1. Jean Carriès (1855-1894)
Grotesque mask, element for the Monumental Door, 1891/1894
Photo : Philippe Ladet/Petit Palais/R. Viollet
March 19, 2010
I have Two Cavities to get Fixed on Monday

Yesterday I slept through my radio alarm and instead I woke up to the phone ringing. The call was to inform me that I was late for my Dentist’s appointment and that I would have to reschedule. I felt quite dreadful. I don’t know why this happens to me, but whatever I do, no matter how subtle or honest I am I always end up looking like I’m out of it, clumsy, and indolent. I am no slacker believe me. I am usually earlier than on time, but for some reason these mishaps curiously always happen at the worst times.
I usually have trouble telling others what I do with my days because to them reading and writing and all the small things I do to keep on learning is not anything that helps me forward, so I’ve got nothing to answer and I look so worthless. And I am trying to get a job even though it feels oh so awful, but really it only looks like I’m slacking, doing my best to avoid employment and continue to leech off of others. I absolutely despise leeching! I probably look like I’m justifying my sluggishness with pathetic excuses right now… Well this is complicated!
Needless to get into a spiral of justifying justifications, because, though I had missed my appointment, I ran to the dentist
anyways and was able to get an appointment one hour later. This took me up a spiral of relief actually. In the dentist’s chair my dentist kept asking me questions: Did you miss class to come here? Are you in college? Why aren’t you in college anymore? Do you work? It’s funny the way dentists ask you a bunch of questions even though you clearly can’t talk with their hands in your mouth. When I could slip a word in the conversation I did my best not to sound idle. I was honest with her, told her I was not sure what to do yet but that school was not the place for me. I told her I had no room to be creative in the literature program. I was amazed. Instead of judging me like I thought a dentist might she admitted to have been the queen of indecisiveness after high school. She had ambitions and she never followed through with them, yet there she was, quite a content dentist. She asked me, and not in a pejorative manner, “So your like an artist at heart?” It made me smile and attempt to nod as she flossed my teeth.I found I could work around her questions, with genuine honesty, and manage to express myself and be understood. Although I was at the dentist’s, a place that is so esthetically far away from who I truly am, I felt like myself (I still don’t know what that is though), I felt comfortable.
(Pictures from Public Record Office Victoria and Ontario Archives)
