I was listening to "dust in the wind" on the right hand side. The video from 1977.
I was typing about the direction of artificial intelligence on the left. I speak on stage tomorrow.
I'm bleeding, so I ache deeply like a shovel of dark fertile compost. I ate too much spicy jungle curry, so my stomach is swirling like an oil spill. I'm in Dublin, in an old catholic boys boarding school which has since become a hotel, sitting at an old wooden desk.
I look up into the mirror that seems to be a part of the old desk and I see myself for the first time in many years. I am looking back at me with the same look I had once when I painted a self-portrait in high school for art class. A little bit sad, a little bit trapped, a great depth of meaning, a tough kid saying "don't mess with me" and a little girl saying "i'm fragile." Round, small, close-together eyes and purple eye bags. Narrow face and a look like I've been thinking too much and breathing too little.
My face is back. I thought.
Wait - I recognize myself.
I haven't recognized myself for a while. "I don't recognize myself," I used to tell my partner. It was after a long phase of wanting to return to some sort of recognizeable state, after I had achieved all my dreams and there was not a lot left to do for myself. The only imaginable goals depended on other people. I found that other person, and I found I couldn't push and force them brutally through a mountain like I could myself - by turning into a ghost, penetrating a few boulders and osmosising through to the other side. If you use that technique on others they get injured quickly. So there I sat, on one side of the mountain, a bit cold and lost.
"I don't recognize myself," I would tell him, on the bad days when I had no sense of time or transformation or development or rebellion. "What do you mean?" He'd say, hurt and a bit afraid; not knowing if I was being dramatic or philosophical or mad. "I'm a bit mad," I'd confess. I had read about dissociation. It meant if you looked in the mirror you didn't know who it was. You look down on your hands, your thighs, your wobbly knees, and you'd feel like it's not yours. You could squeeze your own knee and it would respond, but not be yours. Like being trapped in someone else's life. It's horrific and emptying and makes you feel purposeless and completely lost and how can you do anything for yourself if you're not there anymore. Or for others if you don't believe you are you to have something to offer. Later I'd forget, and try somehow to be a good loyal friend to him. Because you can be a friend without knowing who you are. Or at least its something trainable.
Today when I looked up I suddenly realized it was me. Here I am!
It was that look. I'm in a towel, feet up on the desk with the windows wide open, listening to Kansas wailing. I suddenly felt self-aware and self-conscious. Have the other hotel guests been hearing me on repeat? Can they hear my thoughts? Suddenly my own thoughts became loud and clear and transported like a gas to fill the air of the whole room and out the window into the 19th-century sandstone brick courtyard.
I feel completely and utterly ok in a way I haven't in a long long time. Maybe since the day I got my first tattoo 2,2 years ago in Tel Aviv, when I recognized my left forearm last (not sure about my face), and recognized my spirit, looking over the sea, having a drink at the beach instead of working, the day after a big meeting. So I took that forearm and got a "yes" tattooed right into it, as a way of affirming that there I was, and I recognized it.
Today I recognized my whole self again. I'm a bit fat, a wailer of a human, a tyrant flycatcher, a wild bluegrass mountain singer, a brazilian shoreside crooner. I look like a 6 year old german american with maybe some percentage of latin american. I feel masculine, globby, gorgeous and delicate. With great potential for being strong and underinvested natural grace. I have great freckles and destroyed toenails. My back is weak so I perch my legs up at every opportunity. I can fly in my sleep and I can do things without thinking. I can be very nice and I can be very mean. I run away in order to be found.
