Pictures...

While doing work around the house i started to interview myself. Maybe this is a product of the cold medicine i was on or maybe it's due to too much time spent alone as a child but it seemed like a fun thing to keep my brain entertained as i did mindless work around the house.

i was a difficult interview. i got all hung up on the first question: what's your favorite picture of yourself? When the camera was first invented there were people who believed it was an evil instruments that trapped a piece of your soul when your image was captured. There may be something to that.

i enjoy the art of photography. i enjoy decorating my hovel with photographs by professionals, as well as pictures of friends and family. Where pictures of important people in my life brings thoughts of joy, a pictures of myself somehow feels like some invasion of my privacy, i get overwhelmed with some sense of entrapment.

Maybe i feel some sense of less than ideal representation on film. Maybe i am uneasy with the thought of someone looking at me without me knowing (even if it is just a picture). Maybe i'm a megalomaniac in denial. Ultimately i don't put much weight behind my looks. Although i look in a mirror every morning it's usually with very specific intent: checking the cleanliness of my teeth, inspecting runs with my razor, checking under my nose for remnants of Kleenex from my regular nose-blowings. i don't associate myself with my physical body. For that matter, i don't typically see myself from outside myself.

Therefore, seeing pictures of myself is an odd thing. It doesn't seem like they are of me, yet i know they are. Combine this with the fact that i never learned how to smile on command and pictures become an odd situation for me. i smile when i'm happy and cry when i'm sad. i can't fake either insincerely so the inevitable "smile!" yelled by someone about to flash a bright light in my eyes brings discomfort and unease. This may also be why my passport photo looks like a mug-shot.

So, to recap: i am a difficult interview and i don't like people taking pictures of me. Yeah... i should probably lock myself in my house and leave the rest of the world alone. Damn hermit punk monk ... sffssg;nbuvjnunibvgbfbv...