Banks of the Euphrates : This is not the end

The funny thing about photographs is that they allow you to see yourself as you never get to as a body. Even when you look at yourself mirrored, you're seeing a distorted version of yourself: you through your own eyes and no one else's. I'd like to make a film someday in which the main protagonist will only be visible in reflections -- snatches of his body visible in the glass of buildings, mirrors, a stranger's sunglasses, a strategic fish-bowl. This blog post will be something like that (although you, Tony, have seen me fully formed!). So, this is my sort-of reflection on the semester. It's going to be somewhat veiled, because we must veil ourselves in public places. And it'll be fragmented too, 'cause that's how I feel.

The camera's an eye of its own to be sure, but it's also somehow like a dream of the body, or at least a projection of it (or, for me, a nightmare. I hate being photographed, mostly because I can't think I'm beautiful I guess and beautiful is what a picture's meant to be). No one can see your dreams but you ... they're perhaps the most intimate moments of life. Only you can bear witness. No one can ever witness a dream's ghost town ... but you live with it every day.

It's been a dream-heavy few months for me, with my life in sleep more tangible than my waking one or so it's seemed sometimes. There's so much to say, and so little I can ... I'll make a list of things I've felt:

More woman than root.

More painter than speaker.

More head than heart.

More balloon than human.

More string than bone.

More memory than body.

Oh wait! The feeling of singing in that stairwell with Baylor (or the stairwell of Casa Zimbabwe, or on the street all around Berkeley, or in my room, or in a black-lighted bar ...) was like waking up to fog in Point Reyes that fell thick around you. Enchanted forest. First snow. A hush you could catch, for a little while.

I did a lot that I wouldn't have expected in this class (and in general over this past semester).

This class has been the place I could come to to be whole, and maybe that's enough. I'm not saying that fragments are bad. There's just too much of myself to say or hold here. I imagine giving birth and being able to point to something outside of myself, say -- here, look here, that's all.

I lack coherence at this hour ... but here's some of what I look like from certain angles