I haven't seriously looked at myself in the mirror in a while, but a few days ago I got pictures from two months back, and I guess I was looking then. The inability of my outer image to express anything about my inner state confounds me. All I can see is me looking at the camera, me taking a picture. That is of course a mental state in itself, but an additional, second-layer state. I don't know what to think about my images of me. I used to take shot after shot on a digital camera and delete the ones I didn't like, but some commitment to veracity (or possibly the price of film and processing) makes me feel responsibility towards film pictures, to be that person, to admit that it's me even when it's not flattering or apparently meaningful. A lot of the time I just bore and frustrate myself.
I've found myself crying in public a lot lately, and in a self-voyeuristic way I wish I had pictures of that. Instead of looking like a stranger at the way I look at myself, it would be nice to look with my own eyes through a stranger's view of the disaster I've lately been. At the time I was mortified and humiliated that I could have so little control, and maybe reinforcing the temporal separation would help me hate that side of myself more, from my ivory tower in the future.
To sum it up, I guess, I'm still battling time and volition and the unending imprisonment of me within my mind.
Here are self-portraits I took in high school. I no longer have access to that account, and it's currently holding my name hostage. I couldn't find the one I was looking for.
Here is another account of photographs from high school. Still have not found the one I wanted, although I was sure it was there. Instead:
A person I am not, with a camera I have lost, in a house where I no longer live.
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