ah, what would it be like to walk through 'The Museum Of Myself?' very embarrassing, i'd think. true, i always wanted to be a cultural hero, yet when i get right down to it, the attention would have locked me up in where i've been instead of where i'm going.
i'm a browser, so this information age is meant for me. for example, i've always enjoyed the art and energies of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and austrian painter and ecological evangelist. he put his work where his mouth is. here's a delightful, if rather too much, video on youtube (you can find many more):
looking at everything he did, i feel like a schlemiel. how do i justify myself? at the moment, sitting on top of a mountain, the snow flailing around the lookout, i keep doing the dangerous thing of asking, 'what does it all add up to?' Goethe and everyone of consequence, says, 'you can only complete your work and self in solitude.' unfortunately, that fit all too well with my hermetic nature.
SO IT'S ALL OVER? the portugese poet Fernando Pessoa, said, 'Don't lose touch with your own mythology.' and i do have such a package of illusions, and Mark Twain said, 'Don't give up your illusions. You'll still be alive, but you won't have a life.' just having had my 76th birthday by accident, an event very unreal to me, i'm trying to find excuses for myself, a way to go on.
this morning i viewed the different trails i've taken. i did learn to write poetry and plays and to direct plays. i did enough travelling to feel like an expert, though i'm not. and about the last fifteen years of photography, i can look through the photos and not blush. once i even wrote songs, took singing lessons, and got to a coffee house status. then i gave it up. performing music for me too social.
forty years writing, a few months singing, giving a few stand up comedy speeches, fifteen years taking a million pics a year. hmm, i'm starting to think quite well of myself, especially since i find pleasure in my own creations. would too much applause have stopped me in my tracks? being very thin-skinned, i've always thought so. and i wanted to go on poking around in my own inner world.
alas, i seemed finished with the tasks i've set myself, very aware my words will not grace a Parthenon or be spoken in a cathedral. right now i know i'm a speck of sand on the beach. that given, i think i may have discovered a new task: living each day as though it were a small lifetime, like a butterfly. separating today from all others days makes it significant, special somehow. every time i leave my body for a memory, i pull myself back to feel the tingle of my toes, the light sinking into my eyes.
and as a footnote, i've watched the documentary "Finding Vivian Meier" on netflex six times. a woman who worked as a nanny and took thousands of street photos, which she put in storage and died. luckily, an acolyte found the negatives and she's world famous. as those who knew her said, 'she would have liked the work having recognition, but the accolades would have made her shrivel up like a raisin.'
