the last burnt sienna crayon

Who am I?

You tell me, because I’m not sure anymore.

I’ve tried to collect together all of the things which I’ve known myself by over the years, but it just doesn’t seem to make a coherent whole. It doesn’t make any sense. And then I try to collect together all of the things that have influenced or even directly caused those things which I have known myself by and I realise that for a large percentage of my life, I have come up with some excuse or other for “not being myself today/this week/month/year/decade/etc”. And if percentage wise I’m spending more time making excuses than actually ‘being myself’, then how can I really claim that the me that I am less of the time is the ‘real’ me?

For a large percentage of the time, I have always felt that my life has taken ‘time outs’ and I, the ‘real me’, was just sitting in waiting for whatever influencing factor that was masking me to go away, or for me to finally achieve the back to the real me’ state.

But I must have been mistaken. Because the mask never comes off. It only seems to change. It changes from day to day and year by year. And saying that makes it sound like it really must just be that ‘changing thing’ that we’re all supposed to do as we go through life anyway, but for some reason it doesn’t quite feel like that. It doesn’t quite feel authentic. It doesn’t feel like a natural evolution.

My striving has always been to be my most authentic and honest self, like some mythical, unblemished, Platonic Form or something, to all and particularly to me. However, whereas I used to think I knew who or what that authentic Form was and what she liked and how she thought and how she acted, I’m just not so sure anymore. When do the blemishes become no longer something to sweep away and make excuse for, but become the thing itself? What if all my blemishes aren’t something added to cover up me, but are actually now me?

If you start with a table and break off one of it’s legs, you can probably fix it back on, with the right glue and nails. No harm done in the end, it’s still a table. But once you start to take a chisel to the table and gouge out some big gaping holes, it starts to become something a bit different. And you no longer wait for it to be fixed back to its ideal state, you have to accept that it is now either a sculpture or junk, and not useful as a table any longer.

And lately I’m starting to feel a bit like that chiseled table, starting to accept that there is no ideal Form for me to become anymore. And I’m wondering how much I get to control what the finished sculpture of me will look like. Or do I simply call it junk, throw it all out and start from scratch? But if that were the case, what do I do with all the stuff left over, from everything that has gone before, the thought patterns, the beliefs, the dis/likes, the behaviours?

I think in the end I just have to keep chiseling. But without my Platonic Form to model myself after, how do I know what my eventual goal is anymore?

So why did I post that poem?

It had been posted a time ago on somebody else’s blog (because they actually liked it), but I had it taken down and thought that it made more sense to have it on my own, but more than that, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about vulnerability.

An old friend (we met at university when I was still living in the Homeland about 15 years ago) called me the other evening. We hadn’t actually spoken (other than e-mails) in a long time, hadn’t seen each other in about 5 years, so we talked for an hour and a half. . . internationally. We talked about some difficult things, and it surprised me how easy it was to confide. When I hung up I briefly worried that I shouldn’t have been so honest, I mean, at least here on the blog, I know that if people didn’t want to know, then they wouldn’t bother clicking, but on the phone. . . well, you know how the ‘worst case scenario’ thought process works.

But my concerns were soon alleviated when I quickly received an e-mail from my friend saying that it had been good to talk and a very kind and empathetic comment on some things I had said. Acceptance from my friend, and relief from me.

I don’t lose friends easily or lightly.

You see, a very long time ago (shortly before I met my friend who phoned me, actually) I had another friend, this time from as far back as childhood, who I had thought would ’stick around’. But when our lives travelled different paths, the communication stopped, though I tried to reestablish it many times. No responses. None. I had thought that whereas you could ‘dump’ a boy/girlfriend, that you couldn’t dump a ‘friend.’

I was wrong.

I had, in the distant past, confided many things to this childhood friend, but when life changed, when we suddenly were no longer children or even ‘youth’, those confidences didn’t seem to matter anymore. Perhaps he needed to sweep the past away. Perhaps I have been unfair to not understand my old friend’s side.

I saw this earlier friend when I recently travelled back to the homeland. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in over 15 years and it surprised me how easily we slipped back into conversation. We talked for 3 hours over lunch about many things, about music, about our marriages, about mutual friends, about the old days. Almost like neither of us had ever left home or lost touch. . . but I have had no communication or replies since, and again I have tried.

No contact. None.

I heard or was told somewhere along the line that there can be no true communication between two people, no real friendship, no love, familial or otherwise, no meaningful interaction with God, and no honesty without mutual vulnerability that stems from trust.

On the whole, I agree with that. You, reader, of all people, if you visit here regularly, know that I can be quick to risk vulnerability, and I’m sure I do it for that reason. And generally I have trusted you with that vulnerability, though I may not even know you. Perhaps too quick to trust in strangers, too quick to establish impossible relationships between writer and reader. But for the most part I have found that in doing so, I have been greatly rewarded with the friendships that I have both reinforced and have found. By friends that see my blemishes, and ’stick around’. I’d rather show those blemishes, as I’ve never been any good at hiding. I’m always found out.

But where there is trust, there is vulnerability and where there is vulnerability there is a risk of rejection, like with my earlier friend, and where there is rejection, there is hurt. I guess I got my hopes up after the reconnection.

There’s a part of me, actually, that doesn’t mind being rejected, as long as it’s early on in getting to know someone, as long as it happens before I have made myself too fragile in the face of the prospect of that rejection. If I say “this is who I really am” and you reject me, before I have a chance to lose too much, that’s ok. I can accept that. But if I spend years establishing a friendship, I will feel like my vulnerability has been trampled on under foot if they suddenly turn and walk the other way. (Thus an old, perhaps bitter, poem, written to an old friend, who didn’t ’stick around’.)

So why do I put myself out there? I guess, because I think that if I do, put myself out there, warts and all, and you keep coming back to read, or to speak to me, or to waste/spend your time with me, then perhaps you won’t reject me. But there’s always a chance with friends who aren’t honest with each other that the secret of warts will be found out and the rejection is sure to follow. That kind of rejection hurts because it is never expected. So, I guess I’d rather show my warts. Because I know they’ll be found out anyway.

I write all of that because I was reassured by my university friend after our phone call the other evening, that my warts aren’t so repugnant and there would be no rejection today. I write this, not to mourn a lost friendship, but to celebrate a good one. When I wrote that poem so many years ago, a rejection was fresh and raw, and I was still willing to reestablish a friendship. But after talking to and being reassured by my other friend, it has reinforced the idea that I think I’ll just concentrate on the friends who ’stick around’.

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“Time it was and what a time it was it was,
A time of innocence a time of confidences.

Long ago it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they’re all thats left you.”

My faith story has been more of a “crawling towards the finish line, panting for water, clutching hold of whatever I’ve got left and trying not to drop it or get hit by a car” kind of experience rather than a “thunderbolt, zap, bang, Damascus Road, WOOHOO, Word from God” kind of “wow everything’s so different now” kind of experience. . .

. . . until about two weeks ago. But I kind of think that if I had met Jesus on the Damascus Road, it would have been a lot easier to talk about than what actually happened.

I just wanted to say that. That’s all for now, but I just thought I’d say that.

I fear I may have given some of you a skewed impression.

An impression that what you read or see here is a picture of “me“. And whereas that is not untrue, it’s not completely accurate either. It is, it isn’t. You decide.

This blog is a reflection, a dark mirror, an impression of a carved relief, a place to store the tapes that run through my head, especially in the mornings and especially as of late, to allow for a less noisy approach to my day. It is a place to leave it, so that I stop carrying it, hearing it.

That’s all.

And you may or may not have an out of focus picture. It is all true (I would never offer you lies, my reader, only truth), but it may or may not be fact. Because this photographer can only take and present these pictures in whatever way she chooses. You, reader, will take from them what you will. The viewer always does.