Ten Minute Break: What are you working for?

"Well, for a guy like me..." The words spill out as if there's been no other thought for years.

***

Nina Simone's "Baltimore" - Amazing.

***

I had a dream last night that I picked up a bag, packed it with a few items, and left for a plane to Korea. I realized I had nothing with me, and that I was totally unprepared to leave, but that didn't stop me. I was ready to go. There were all these people around me, going to Korea also, and it felt a little weird. Weird because I felt my trip was private, and totally unrelated to anyone elses voyage.

***
Some thoughts on identity physics:

Shedding the other, over and over again, is the true art of self creation.

Like a game of peek a boo, your hands close, then open, then close, then open.
The glimpses of self in the mirror play with memory and mirroring, showing you present while the past is still fresh. The physical placing of hands over eyes, or hiding, is the constant game we play with ourselves. Peek-a-boo!

Now, when we walk around, living life, and going about with our various obsessions, we have this mirror image in mind. This image can be, sometimes, the image of the other, or mirror self that does not reflect who you are, but instead, who you are not. This is a kind of condition, human or not, that constantly poses a question regarding identity--if what I am not preexists what I am, where is agency? What part of existence is self activated?

There can be a method of dealing with this condition which involves the individual's acceptence of this condition, and there are several derivatives of this method. One is the acceptence that the self is naturally progressing towards some kind of ideal, and this method can be known as "the role-model." Secondly is the often discouraging realization that an ideal is precisely the antithesis of reality, and that an individual can only react to the "villain"--this is the "comic book" method. The third and final kind of method is a more dynamic kind and one that this writer would reccomend to anyone who finds themselves in a system of self-identification through otherness.

***

My friend said, it's weird when you think of all these things you want to tell someone, and you realize they're gone. They've been gone for a long time. It's sad. To think these people who fill up our lives can just dissapear.

But also, I don't say things like, I don't want to see you ever again, or I'll never forgive you. You shouldn't say things like that.