Monday, June 29, 2009

Self/Beauty/Community

Continuing the dialogue, somewhat, in regards to beauty and our extant conceptions of what it consists of in our daily lives. I believe that our identities consist of everything that informs them, whether that be conformation to social realities and formal career necessities, or our inner perceptions and emotions and thoughts, or the visceral, undeniable touch of the boundaries of skin, or the face in the mirror that restricts us more immediately to what we can't avoid. I believe that we are all--and none--of these things. We are gods, terrible and beautiful. The only thing that would confine us is our own lack of vision. I have different masks that I can put on and take off, dependent on the situation and with who I am dealing with, but the inner integrity of who I am remains constant. Because I am also you. Because everything is also I. We. Us. Empathy and intuition is the only way into this understanding. I believe such things about beauty.

We scribe our differing perspectives, for example, onto this communal blog. And it begs the question of how one could ever rightfully be lonely. We listen to ourselves through each other, hearing ourselves echoing deeply through the chamber of multiple existences. Nothing that anyone could write could ever be wholly alien to our understanding of ourselves. And that's beautiful.

My name is Mark, and I am at a kind of transitional moment in my life in many ways, which makes it difficult for me to articulate simply what and who I am without seeming overly self-absorbed, which I've probably already succeeded in doing. But I live in NYC and I am recently become a NYC Teaching Fellow, and it is certainly a pleasure to have yet another venue to share deeply with others in a cyberspatial sort of way with mostly complete and total strangers. I have a blog that I have been updating less and less frequently, and I hope that this opportunity to jumpstart the creative juices will assist not only myself but others in the good cause of creative thought generation. At the very least, it's fun. Cheers! And hello Maisha and thanks for the invite.

1 comment:

  1. I am so glad you're here! And I'm so glad you're writing. This is insanely exhilerating. Invite friends, if you want.

    Hugs.

    - m

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