Not Subject To Change

Identity is found in location. I am an American. Identity is found in family. I am a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, and a cousin. Identity is found in activity. I am a fencer, a singer, and – hopefully – a future architect. Identity is found in beliefs. I am a Christian. Identity is found in many things, but where does it exist in us? Where is it found in the person seeking identity? Is it found in the soul or the mind? The heart or the stomach? Passion or fleeting obsession? My identity is different than the person I share a moment with in the elevator. It is found in an ever-changing flow of thoughts and encounters, and it is something set into motion that I may or may not ever be able to affect. It is something held by the Fates measuring, measuring, measuring until the thread reaches its end. Identity is found in many things but it exists in the soul.

Once the home of identity is established, I have to ask myself what makes up my soul. This question has plagued the human mind since the dawn of time. Even the ancient Egyptians believed man to have a soul that was weighable after death. Though they had decided upon its existence, they did not know of what it was composed. As a high school graduate, I can adequately explain how different organs of the body are composed and what their purpose is, but the soul has no composition. It has no place. The soul is the essence of the person. It is the identity; not just where the identity is found. 

The things that make up one’s identity are those things which make the soul quiver, leap, soar, and still. Architecture makes my spirit soar. It is the essence of design that is in everything. Nature reflects it, buildings either reveal or reject it, and everyday objects omit its essence. Music and singing make my soul leap. The simple notes plucked on a guitar make me want to dance, and singing lifts my mind into a euphoric world of simple loveliness. Words make my spirit shake and quiver, whether they are words to a song, a novel, a movie or play script, or even spoken words. The ability of the human tongue is captivating. All of these things make my soul move, but beauty – true beauty – makes my soul still. True beauty is the thing that makes my breath spill from my lungs. It calls for me to sit and take in its intoxicating scent. It can be anything, but true beauty is the thing that quiets my soul and makes time, space, and life stop.

 All these things affect my soul in a way that they will never affect anyone else’s. While the different subjects may touch others’ souls, they do not move their spirits in the same way. This is what makes it my identity. The fact that architecture, music, words, and true beauty are embedded in the essence and fibers of my soul, makes my identity an “architecture-music-words-true-beauty-lover.” This will never change. The things I find my identity in are subject to change, but my soul is not. 

Closing Thoughts

I'm about to reach the finish line of an extreme segment of my life. Thoughts of redefinition, purpose, planning, and identity have been constantly filling my mind. What comes next is a mystery. What I do with who I am is a secret slowly unraveling like a roll of ribbon taking me further and further away from what I knew and closer and closer to something I want to know. The future is calling to me as I walk blindly toward it like looking into a summer setting sun. The future is bright and I'm not sure what to see in it, but I like what I see. I don't know who I am going to be but I know who I am now. Do I need to be different? Sure, there are things I would change. Who wouldn't? But who do I want to become? Who have I become? There is so much about identity that fluctuates, and yet there is also something about human identity that is solid and forever true. The fallenness of mankind gives us a good base layer. Unfortunately, this makes everyone have the identity of evil. But one has to wonder if this is true? Theologically, yes. Man is innately evil. Rousseau and Dryden would disagree and is there merit to this? I think we would all like to believe that there is hope in the hearts and minds of the beings we are to spend the rest of our known lives with, but truly, the fault of mankind is not in his heart, but in his soul. If we cannot fix the soul, there is no reason to try and fix the heart. The heart calls for the emotion, the stomach for passion, and the mind for reason, but the soul is an altogether different entity. The soul calls for justice, virtue, goodness, and truth. These things cannot be felt. They cannot be passioned. They cannot be reasoned. To find justice, virtue, goodness, and truth is the eternal quest of the human aura. If this is our identity, why do we try to change? Why do we search for pleasure? Is there something innately painful in searching for what is truly beautiful? Will we ever find it?

Letter to a Lost Love

*****,

I would ask how you were but it would be false courtesy. There aren’t many things I have decided to get closure on before going off to college in August. I’m not going to tell you where I’m going mainly because I want this to be the last correspondence I ever have with you. You’re probably wondering what exactly I am talking about and that shouldn’t surprise me seeing how this letter is really a service to myself rather than a note to you. Let me explain.

First, thank you for your friendship – if you could call it that – two years ago. It got me through the worst year of my entire life. I was extremely depressed and I foolishly completely depended on you to fix that. So, thank you for letting me depend on you whether you knew it or not. I would hate to end this letter with you thinking you did everything wrong.

Second, I need to get something straight. You ending your correspondence with me killed me. I was very attached to you. Not to be creepy or awkward – I mean this was two years ago – but you were extremely important to me and I regret ever making that explicitly known to you. You were the first guy who actually got me as a person and – I thought – appreciated me as much as I appreciated you. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what or who you are now, but I just want you to know that when you just didn’t text me back that one day in July or whenever it was that summer, I never forgot. I don’t know if you forgot, lost my number, was disgusted by me, or whatever else, but I have never stopped thinking about why.

Not you, just why you never texted or messaged me or anything. I really needed your friendship desperately, and I have always wondered why you didn’t text me back. I know, you’re probably reading this thinking I am an obsessed psychopath, and I can say with almost 100% certainty that I am not. I am perfectly happy with my life right now, I’m just one of those people who needs answers and I really don’t need an answer from you as much as I just want you to know. I needed your friendship. I know you’re a guy and you probably don’t care what some random, average, Memphian you saw twice thinks of you and, honestly, you shouldn’t care. I don’t want you to care about what I’m saying. Like I said at the beginning, this letter is for my benefit. I just want to know in the back of my mind that you read this and know how I’ve felt and how many wasted thoughts I’ve had on this one problem that I’m sure was due to something stupid.

I would have loved to forget. I would have loved to move on, but for some reason, you had such a drastic affect on me, I haven’t been able to. I haven’t dated anyone since. I haven’t had any flings or anything because on the edge of my thoughts, this hasn’t ended – even though it obviously has. And I’m not talking about our “relationship” as much as the oddity of it ending and the reason. I have been constantly plagued with the internal monologue of “what did I do?” “could I have fixed this?” and so many other thoughts. I cannot get over you, and I’m sure you absolutely love hearing that a girl you probably haven’t thought about for two years has had this creepy obsession with you, but let me explain.

I am not obsessed with you. I really don’t care about you, outside of caring for people in general. The only reason you ever cross my mind is because of the way things ended between us. I am very interested to see how your life is just because I feel like I knew so much about your life. But I don’t want you to think I’m still attracted to you or anything because I am not. I just needed to let you know. I deleted your number, unfriended you on facebook, deleted your contact on Skype. I purged you from my entire world trying to get the thoughts of the end out of my head and nothing worked. This letter is my final purge, and it had better work because after this I’m done. I won’t come find you. I won’t let you talk to me if I ever do find you. If you try to contact me, I most like will not respond. I am not trying to be rude or mean or hateful. Its just that once I have finally gotten all of you away from me, I don’t want you back. Someone else deserves your thoughts and attention. I don’t want you to think about this letter. If you’re actually still reading this far, I’ll be amazed. I just wanted you to know that I hadn’t simply forgotten. I’m not trying to teach you a lesson or even tell you to do anything.

I just wanted the last word.

Sonnet

To feel the never-ending drum

Of conscience, and to hide the face

Behind the mask of false disguise

Is proof that cold blood rules our race.

This blood which man himself makes numb

By all the ice around the space

Where life begins, the first demise,

And through the heart we lose all trace.

But, through the soul – here, truth we see –

Is Light withstanding well known Sin

Which teases, prods, and breaks within

Foundations Faith has built for me.

So, Pain, I know, cannot begin

Unless I cease pursuing Thee.

My Name

The life of the Anonymous is a life without ties. Being without a name holds a great amount of freedom; a great amount of mystery. There is great beauty in the nameless. They have no face, or they have the face of a mask. 

Man is least himself

When he talks in his own

PERSON.

Give him a MASK

And he will tell you the 

TRUTH.

- Oscar Wilde

This is where the irony of my author's title is introduced. "Anonymity is Key." I find that in my thoughts, there is a name; a name that can be easily deduced through personality, philosophy, and persona. This is frightening. Fear bursts from this ever present fact willing me to hide behind the mask of Anonymity. Is hiding behind a mask cowardly? Was Guy Fawkes a coward? If he was, one of my heroes may not be so brave after all. But what about our everyday persona is not a mask? Are we not always hiding under some mask from fear, insecurity, pain, or grief? Why is appearing behind a mask any less cowardly? I find a mask to be the true understanding of truth. The purposefulness of The Mask gives the wearer total freedom to say, think, see, and do whatever he wishes. If we do not share our thoughts now, what will wearing a mask change other than build our strength?

Beneath this mask, there is more than flesh. 

Beneath this mask, there is an idea; and ideas, 

Mr. Creedy, are bulletproof.

- V

Reality

When we as human beings sleep, we dream, and in these dreams we become who we truly are. In our dreams, our wildest fantasies become reality and our darkest secrets become plastered on every billboard on the road that leads to nowhere. But why is it that we need these slips from reality to express what we truly desire? Why do we need the fear of our dreams and the pleasure of our secret lives to understand reality?

Because reality is not real. Reality is just a simple span of time in the universe set aside for you. Reality for you is not reality for someone else, it’s not reality for your brother, your sister, your friend. Reality is relative. They say, “That’s reality,” but it actually isn’t because when one person says something is reality, that is not the same reality another is experiencing in the same moment. When I say, “That car is silver,” and you say, “No, that car is champagne,” we both see the same car but we are not perceiving the same reality. And when we say something is something like a car is a car, we are only calling it what it has been called to us, so does that make it a car? Is the fact that language permits its name to be “Car” make it so? Or is it still a hunk of metal, aerodynamically jumbled together to create a device to transport us from A to B?

Why do we say that all we want is true reality when reality is not real? Reality is what you make it to be. Reality is boring if you find it that way. It is exciting or sad or funny or pointless or futile or depressing or crazy or black if you want it to be that way. Nothing anyone says makes reality what it is. No one can tell you that the world is a square unless you believe it to be. No one can say that what you read is not paper unless you have dubbed it so. You are the creator of your universe, your mind the painter of your existence. But then you have to wonder how a God who wanted to create something beautiful would make those that live there create their own reality. Did God create the world believing this? Are we wrong? Is all reality the same? Are all people existing in the same reality taking part in one another’s taking pieces parts of the same puzzle until finally two people’s puzzles meet in a cascade of events that only God would have been able to predict? Why do we wonder these things if God is overall in charge of reality in the first place? If he had wanted us to agree with one reality, why would he have led us to think these things in the first place?

Time and time again, we wonder if our world is real. It is because we make it so because God made it so because God is the creator of the true reality and the minds that create the individual realities.

This leads me to believe that there is a reality that we create for ourselves that is not the reality that God created but our reflection of that true reality. Everyone has a different reflection that changes and morphs and in the end we create for ourselves a similar yet different view of the universe around us that is still in common with the true reality that God created in the beginning. We have created for ourselves what we want the world to be but God has created for us the world he wanted us to want to create for ourselves to be a world of our own.

Pain

They always say, “Things could get worse,” but you have to wonder if there is a point where nothing could get worse than it was right at that moment. If, by any crazy chance, you had reached the bottom of the “worse” barrel and there was no where else to go but up; up through the pain and misery, twice as difficult to pull through than the events that got you to the bottom. Maybe thinking about that is what got me here. Maybe the time wasted on thought is what made this moment cascade like children’s building blocks. Whatever the cause, I didn’t care. I don’t even remember how to care. All the feeling was numb, all the smells dull, all the colors fake, and all the sounds soft, and at that moment, I stopped. I stopped the tears. I stopped the sound. I stopped my thoughts and I stilled my being. I stilled by body long enough to quiet the aching pain pulsing in the pit of my stomach. The pain I knew would never subside. Pain I knew was insatiably feeding on every positive emotion passing through my breaking body.

Pain is a funny thing. Something you don’t think about til it’s gone, and when there is no pain, what do you feel? You’re supposed to fell pleasure, right? But no. Once the pain was gone, all I felt was the absence of it. I had to come to the conclusion of which was worse: pain or nothing? They always say, “Pain lets you know you’re alive,” but the absence of pain makes you aware of that fact. The absence of constant pain makes it painfully obvious that your existence is not a dream, it is not something that will one day be alright, it is something that will forever be gnawing at the core of your being wanting to destroy every thought, every happiness, and every petty burst of giddiness that comes from pleasure.

But why do I speak of pain? Why do I torment my thoughts with what torments me already? Because, to fully understand something, it is beneficial to study its opposite. True goodness is something we fallen human beings rarely come across in our lifetimes. When we do, the cynical, skeptical mindsets of the modern era warp the goodness into bad, but true goodness is a thing worth searching for. True goodness makes taking the pain worth it, makes hurt pleasurable and makes the ending exciting because you know that after all the pain and evil of the world, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

This is such a pragmatic view of the world, that to reach the beautiful end it is necessary to suffer injustice. But what can we ask for? Pain is a necessary result of what we want. We, as humans, want pleasure, we want goodness, but, because of the fallen nature of humanity, there is an opposite for everything.

Forward or Backward?

I ran. My feet methodically pounded the earth carrying me further and further away. I ran from nothing and from everything. The constant struggle between my true humanity and what I wanted to truly be moved my feet to soar. It was as if everything I feared was behind and everything I hoped was before and the only way to reach anything was to run. Running made the reach less distant. I never stumbled, I never slowed, and I never glanced behind. I was leaving the past headed toward the horizon; the glowing, distant, beautiful horizon. I ran until I reached it, and kept running. Running as if to catch the sun and hold it down never letting it sink behind the curvature of the earth taunting me with its ever present time-turning power. I ran until I could see nothing at all. Black night settled slowly over the world calling it to drift to sleep, calling it to forget what had happened and let the blackness consume it. Night did not prevail, and I carried on more carefully than before.

Every movement forward made the wish to go back more severe. I wanted the pleasures and flesh of life more than anything. They were so easy and simple. Why the soul needed its complications was difficult if not impossible to understand which is why I ran. I ran to escape both. I ran to escape the pleasures of humanity and the purity of the soul. I ran to escape into my mind, to debate the existence of this dichotomy, to understand the middle ground. I never found it, and I kept running. I did discover the choice. To go forward, running, trapped inside my mind for all eternity, or to stop, and make the decision to pick a path. The path forward would be near impossible, but with such an ethereal end. The path back would be of ease and simplicity; everything a human of base nature wants. But I am stopped by the idea of my own humanity. If I am so tempted by what is behind, how can I ever move forward with new beauty of life? I am finally leaving the infamous cave of reflected illusions, and I am seeing the beautiful yet painful Sun, but can I simply give up and turn back to my cave? I must seek the truth of reality and understand that my life before was a lie. Everything I have ever believed, seen, trusted is simply a cheap imitation of the perfected Form above. How can I not choose to go forward?