Selfie To God With Love
Behind the Art
the watcher or the watched?
For the longest time, the struggle: being seen, yet wanting to disappear. Wanting to be seen really. Not for the outer looks, but for inner presence. For real.
Going through life self-conscious: a six-foot female model you couldn’t miss, with a steadicam runway walk. Swift. Ready to take off, or in French, décoller—to unstick; to unpeel a presence from its embodiment. To detach. Barely present outwardly. Acutely present within.
A man stumbles and falls to the ground. At the art gallery, people study not the art but the hat, the face, the height. Who is she? Look, it’s HER! That model, you know, the one with the long, exotic name? Oh, my God!
The unheard inner argument: do i exist? why all the staring? can’t a person just live in peace?
Again, for the longest time, the struggle:
in front of the camera—exposed
behind the lens—revealing
Hamlet? Or Ophelia? Ponder—or drown?
You’re a girl. Then a woman. Supertall. A giant. So.
Basketball? Modeling? What other options?
But. What if …
… you have the personality of a lake, the water soft, lapping against indifference, a darkened depth—thirty-three fathoms—where ghostboats drift to the stars
… you are an artist, a seer, a KingThinker, a poet, a swan
… to you, God is Generator, Organizer, Destroyer. G-O-D
All those people, the pulsing intersection, threads of consciousness stitched into bodily form. A physical embodiment borrowed from the Great Mother for a fleeting life of eating, pooping, conversing, producing, mating, ticking, breathing.
Where, oh where are You, Beloved?
You are everywhere and all things, yet where is Your House, and how to open Your Door? You can’t be known. You can’t be destroyed…
Thousand are thine eyes, yet thou hast no eyes;
Thousand are thy forms, yet thou hast no form;
Thousand are thy lotus feet, and yet thou hast no feet…
… the light which lives in every heart,
And Thy light which illumines every soul.
- Azure Salver, Peace Lagoon
Couldn’t take the staring. Let the hair go grey. Got behind the camera, to study how it is done.
How is it done, Beloved? How are we all created, sustained, returned Home? Why this fuzzy, fragmented world, the intermittent consciousness rising and sinking?
My life is my love letter to You.
Because.
Who is it, looking out at the world, through my eyes?
It can only be You. You are everything and everywhere.
I nearly died. I will die. I will pass through You like a song. I will slip into You like rain. You will fold me into You like butter.
When I look inside, I disappear—the thing I always wanted.
When I disappear—only then can I see. And be seen.
You are doing it all. Through me.
Through all of this.
My eye glasses broke! Picking out new frames at the optical store, this issue was, quite literally, in my face: which frames look best on me from the outside versus which fit most comfortably to help me see?
Striking beautiful selfie