I'm coming to terms with the uncomfortable cognizance that what I say about myself is only what I want to be true, my mouth trying a reality on for size. I can take a back seat to myself and watch, anticipating the inevitable contradictory backslide. It's okay. My sympathy for myself is vast (I say), encompassing oceans of attempted identity.



What I really want is to watch someone else watching me, to catch them in the act of purposeful looking, someone who knows me well enough to have a body of data, however incomplete. My mind slides down the ledger of assumed observations—what have they seen me do in the past? Might the addition of the present moment tip some balance of opinion?



Maybe both attempts to distance myself from self, reactions to the constrictive awareness of my boundaries.

Summer 2016