Infatuation

I hate my body. I really do. Not that that is all too surprising when coming from a woman in her late 20s in America. Here's the surprising part: I love taking pictures of myself. I don't mean naughty naked pictures or anything... Just pictures of my face, mostly. Sometimes my feet. And I am always taken aback at how much I like the way I look in these pictures. I don't like the way I end up looking in pictures taken by others. But self portraits are an entirely different story.

I have been known (and this is embarrassing) to spend hours at a time with my little sessions. I refer to them (mostly to myself) as my "cam-whore" sessions. And they are. I play to the camera, I make love to the camera. I always get good results. So the question is, how is it possible that these pictures that I take of myself inevitably make me feel beautiful, while pictures taken by others only re-enforce my physical self-loathing? (Emphasis on the physical. There is a whole other set of stuff that re-enforces my emotional self loathing.)

If only I could transfer that feel good feeling that comes from a successful "cam-whore" session to the rest of my life.

Cool Dip in the Waters of Conversation

I have not, until recently, had nearly enough appreciation for good conversation. I suppose it only took a month of being starved for human contact for me to realize how much good comes from a solid conversation with someone on the same wave-length as myself. But that was supposed to be the point of this whole mountain retreat, to learn things about me... So, mission accomplished I suppose.

Last night, I was chatting with an old friend via Facebook. It was a great conversation, one of the ones that flows seamlessly from topic to topic without the need for said topics to actually be connected. Which is, in my opinion, one of the best kinds of conversation.  It made me sad though, to realize that I have taken this sort of contact for granted. I don't talk to people enough. Not without agenda, not without at least an idea of conversational flow. What kind of shining gems of randomness am I missing out on because of this? Ideas of psychic ipods, auditory hallucinations that might really be messages I can't usually hear because I don't have silence in my life, the realization that most of my fears these days are tangible things... All in one conversation. I need to talk more. Maybe we all do.

My Words Just Break and Melt

Sitting on a creek bank today, I considered the fluidity of thought.
As the water flowed by, over rocks and past trees; over my hand and through my fingers, I thought about how this water was a lot like my own stream of consciousness. It flows over and through everything around me, and it, even when I may not want it to. I need dams in place for my thought-process.

Earthquake, Part One.

I was reading Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood the other day and came across a reference to "liminal moments". According to Wikipedia, "liminality" is defined as "a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes". It occurred to me, after I looked up the definition, that lately I seem to be living my life in a perpetual state of liminality these days.
I seem, especially for the last few days, to be sliding gradually between to worlds, and I don't seem to have a lot of control over which I remain in. In one, everything is fine, I am in the process of going back to school to finally make something of myself, feel emotionally stable, and am satisfactorily happy. In the other, I am barely clinging to reality, and can barely trust myself minute to minute as far as perception goes.
Yesterday, as I lay in bed, between sleep and waking, I found myself wondering which was the truly normal state of being. Is it possible that these waking moments, these bits and pieces of "reality" are truly the dream? I know it is a question that has been asked before but these days, for me, the lines are so blurred I'm not even sure half the time whether I am awake or asleep.
Thus this blog. Hopefully I can get a better understanding if I write it all down and maybe even get some feedback from others.