The Varying Degrees of Self

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that ease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

-"Revelation", Robert Frost

Is it so? That all speech flickering from our lips is merely an act? A mirage in the question of whether or not we will be discovered? But then, at what point does it become a question of which self is truly us?

How odd is it that one person can call me the future version of Hitler, and yet another explains that I am nice, though I may pretend other wise. Another still, pays compliments daily to my smile, kindness and maturity. But which is true? I no longer can tell.

Do we pull the wool over even our own eyes? Hiding something we cannot bear to accept of ourselves, or perhaps wondering if pretending may actually change us after all. But then, who is who? How many of you can there be? And how well can you know yourself? Are you well aware of the expressions you make? Are you certain? Do you know how you appear to others? Or will you be surprised when someone you cannot place hugs you and you do not know why?

Spite of Genetics

I love any camouflage that makes my hair dull in comparison.

Is it not sad that a person who naturally shrinks from human contact has a genetic code fine-tuned to drawing attention? Surely such physical traits would be better suited to the openly obnoxious.

And in the mood of scared uncertainty and thought, a quote from Doctor Who:

It's like when you were a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go . . .

A Pity

Deep within the silence of nothing
The lost crestings of mirth
Abandoned in darkness
Fathomless light

It is the mark of a dream
Surely it must be?
There are the clouds
Or perhaps it is a bath of mist?
A storm of cotton balls
Or is it just snowing?

And there is the call
A cackle, a screech
A mirthless laugh, piercing
Or did a boulder just thud?

I cannot tell
What was that shadow?
Where has that bird gone?
Did it disappear within the sky?
Swallowed whole by the atmosphere?
Or is that water, a fish, hidden now in the depths?

Are we upside down?
Standing in air?
But then why have we not fallen?
Oh, what a mystery this is to me!
But, wait now, where are you going?

I wonder how long we can survive on on our own.

Questions flit past my eyes and cluster my mind with no where to go, but I wonder how many would be comfortable blurting out random questions amidst those they barely know?

It is not unusual to talk to oneself, but how many would answer herself? How different is it from exerting the concentration to create an invisible friend?

But I can barely write them, and even now it hurts to type them, for I have injured my finger. (On my left hand of course, my dominant hand. What spite.) Six days ago now, and still I can neither bend nor straighten it without pain. However, I've taken off the buddy tape temporarily due to my own worries.

My finger is a stranger to me. Streaks of blue paint the sides of it from the base to the but of the nail. One side is oddly smooshed, like when you press your palms against a pain of glass, and unusually wrinkly at the bottom. The entire digit has a grotesque, yellow hue to it and the knuckle is wrapped in a bruise. It bothers me.

I grow tired of these thoughts. What I need is a distraction. What circulates within the minds of others?