the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
trying to recognize my own face ~ July 7, 2004 - 1:41 a.m. i'm not sure what it is i'm seeing in the mirror today. i have this kind of... fascination. curiosity maybe. it's not vanity, not conceit. but sometimes i find myself staring into the mirror, just to see my own face. it's like i'm trying to solve a puzzle. there's just so much reflected there, and it's constantly changing. i'm astounded when i look at photographs of myself, all those frozen bits of time. i have so many different faces. so many facets of myself that surface, moment to moment. sometimes i don't even know what's going on inside of me, until i read it in my face. sometimes i look like a stranger. when i was first backpacking in southeast asia, i would go for long stretches of days without ever seeing a mirror. when i did encounter one, finally, there were times i wouldn't even recognize myself. wildhaired, tanned and freckled, sweat rolling down my cheeks, eyes nearly feral with the effort to contain it all. in college sometimes i would sit on the counter in the shared bathroom of my dorm, just sit cross-legged in front of the mirror and stare into the eyes of the woman i was becoming. there was a time on the road, years ago, when i fell into bed with a poet friend who's house i was staying at, a mistake of the kind you make when you're stoned and stupid with lack of sleep at 5am. i woke up in the morning feeling nauseous with fear, barely able to look at him. i shut myself in the bathroom for a shower and stared at the terrified eyes in the mirror, realizing in that moment how deep the mistake had been, and how badly i needed to get myself out of that house. there's a photo of me that my mother took on the wharf in santa cruz, when they came to visit for my 21st birthday. i'm looking down into the depths of the wharf where the sea lions live, and i'm smiling a dreamy smile. what fascinates me most about that picture is that i look about eight years old. open and innocent and unscarred by the world. there is so much inside of me. tonight i don't even know what it is that i'm seeing. the sadness which has been haunting me since i came to this place is there, but it's not predominant. there's something else, deep and complicated and nearly unfamiliar. i look like someone i hardly know. i guess there's something deep going on that i'm not quite privy to, yet. it's been a strange day, cloudy and shifting, with rain and shadows and uncertain light. it's hard to know anything for sure on days like today. i'll look again tomorrow.
(((rings))) |