Friday, February 25, 2005

Stranger

I had a fascinating conversation with a friend last night concerning our shared tendency to talk freely about subjects that others wouldn’t in an often times completely transparent attempt to guard the ‘real’ us from (pain, commitment, vulnerability, etc.). In all honesty this very blog entry is likely some attempt at exposing a truth about myself in some sort of admirable manner that makes me seem like an open book. Maybe all of my blog entries are that way, even those that have been fictionalized. There are a lot of people out there like this. There are the people that look at those people and see objects on the other side (or think they do), and, ironically, as a person who purports to be pretty open about everything and also able to get other people to be pretty open about everything, nothing annoys me more than someone who thinks they’ve figured me out. And nothing scares me more than someone who actually has. It’s not foolproof. It has to do with this whole idea that if you swallow yourself enough times you sort of forget who you are, learn to define yourself in terms of the others. Or intentionally make yourself a stranger with a barrage of “I don’t know”s when you DO knows (yes I left that ‘s’ in there on purpose). One way or another the self seems to let itself out, if with the occasional boost from a particularly supportive other. There’s little choice in the matter. There’s something beautiful about that. And you make the acquaintance of some pretty incredible people along the way.

1 comment:

Charles said...

A. D. Thomas is looking for love and a place to live. Have you made a bid yet?