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How do the people who read these pages perceive me? It's not something I'd really given much thought to until recently. I'd been startled a few times to hear stray comments like, "I have to remember that you're just an ordinary person like me," and "you do everything better than anyone else...." I'd shrugged stuff like that off as compliments from very kind friends who understood that my confidence can always use bolstering and were saying those things mostly to be kind. I still think those comments were mostly kindness. I hope. Because if they're pure truth, then they suggest, perhaps, that I make some people feel small. Or maybe the letter I got recently is a fluke. I dunno. What has prompted me to wonder about all this isn't really the issue--the issue I guess is to let everyone take a peek through my eyes in case what I've run across isn't an isolated thing.
Before I go on, let me tell you how I perceive myself. Maybe it will make more sense then, how bewildered I feel right now. Here is what I see.... I see a woman who is a professionally trained photographer who earned a lot of honors from one of the best photography schools in the world and is doing nada with that. She has a neurotransmitter imbalance which is mostly under control now but which does still affect her. She does piddling photographs every day to try to get back to where she used to be, and they're sometimes great and other times awful, and usually just so-so. Her photos are at least brave, though, because she's willing to face how far she's fallen and try to slowly climb back on the horse again. Other times, I perceive this woman to be completely pathetic and I get very angry with her for not being done climbing back on that tiny little horse by now. Hang on... deep breath. Damn it. I'm crying. Ok, now here's how I perceive my journal.... I see it as a stodgy labor of love and learning experience. I refuse to change over to a more trendy index interface and I do undignified things like putting my awards in my entries because they mean so much to me. I see lettuce between my teeth, but I can't change because I put too much effort into this to let it be ruled by what others think is good and proper and "cool" in a journal. I see my site, despite my hits, as the underdog. The underdog who wears geeky shirts, won't get rid of her metaphorical pocket-protector, but who has some really nice metaphorical handmade jewelry. I see my site as being really neat (at least to me), but hardly something anyone should be jealous of. Because I just do my thing, like everyone else does their own special thing, and it's not much of a thing when compared to what I'd once thought I'd be doing in my mid-twenties for artistic expression and so on.
So...do you see yet the small girl inside of me who writes these pages? I am a 26-year-old nobody who lives in the Midwest and does nothing of any particular interest in her day to day life. I don't have an exciting job or exciting acquaintances. I don't live in New York or LA or San Francisco. I don't have major angst or turmoil in my life. I don't know the secret meaning of life. I love my husband and my cats. I like to take pictures. I sleep with a stuffed panda bear when I'm feeling upset or insecure. I suffer from mild depression. I have accomplished none of the things I'd hoped to have accomplished by now. And despite the occasional cry-fests that brings on, I am still very happy. My struggles are small, placid struggles--trying to learn more, trying to maintain an even keel, things like that. I'm just another human being mucking about through this life as best I can. I'm bad-tempered and kind-hearted. I'm strong and vulnerable. I'm deep and shallow and earnest and tired. I have dark circles under my eyes and my back aches like an old person's. And maybe if we look in the mirror, we'll catch a glimpse of each other.
Don't put me above or below you, because I don't belong in either space, and we're in a three-dimensional space here, each occupying the corner where we fit best and can bloom. Or shine, if I'm going to go with the space analogy. Way far out with no up or down. I guess I've said enough. What you do is you, and your life is poetry. Drink your poem, eat cherries and mulberries, lemons and watermelon, and when your fingers are good and sticky, draw poems in watermelon-finger sumi-brushstrokes of dandelion skyscraper kanji. Fold them into paper airplanes to send out skimming over the lake as you suck the mulberry juice ink from your fingers and breathe poetry exhaust fumes and flower-scented air and watch birds trace lines in the air until you laugh at the absurdity and splendor of everything. These pages are nothing more than pomegranate-juice finger paintings. And I'm just a kid with sticky fingers. I love what I do in here, but you should know that your finger paintings are just as neat. And jealousy is such a waste of time when you can be eating watermelon instead.
somehow it pulls at my heart-- a wild violet. --Basho
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