my Self

I have been very busy.  When I say "busy", I mean that I have been frantic running around, thinking about things, and trying to sort through all the garbage that goes into the current that runs down the middle of my soul.  But tonight, it's been different.  I have done something I hadn't done for a long time- I visited my Self.

A quote came to mind.  The context he was writing about was a little bit different from my own, but the principle is the part I think is important.  Thoreau said,

"I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."


Tonight, I cleaned my house, I closed all my books, and I turned off all of my music, I turned off all of my worries and thoughts, and I visited with my Self.  It wasn't me with Matthew Arnold, or me and Isaac Brock; it was me with me.  It wasn't me with Rudyard Kipling, or me and Sufjan Stevens; it was just me with me.

As it turns out, I really missed my Self.

And I started to realize something that I think is important.  I have not been my Self for a long time; and another quote comes to my mind.  This is Isaac Brock-

"You didn't buy a face, nope just a mask.  So HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!"


What I realized and what that quote from Isaac Brock helped me conceptualize is that I am not my Self most of the time- I am just a costume covering my Self.  Lately, I have chosen to wear the "I'm quite angry at the world" and the "I am so angry at the world I will change it no matter what" costumes.  I also have a cheesy costume.  And a goofy costume.  And an "academic" and an artsy-me costume.  I have all these, but none of them are actually me.  Even my poetry (which I thought was my pure Self coming out) is simply one or two costumes at a time exposing themselves.

I actually, despite my recent thoughts to the contrary, do know who I am.  The feeling I had while I sat with my eyes closed, shutting everything else out, was so familiar that I almost cried at having missed my dearest friend.