Me now and the Me of nine years ago

It turns out that I kept a journal for most of 1994, 1995, and 1996. I just found them all when I went back to Seattle for a few days. Taken as a general phenomenon, this doesn't seem too spectacular, but when I think of the specifics of the entries I find myself feeling proud and awestruck. What interests me is the patience involved in the maintenance of the entries. Even if nothing wonderful happened I still penned a few words to describe my day. There are many short paragraphs that start with thoughts like "Nothing much happened today" and "I'm really bored. When is life going to get interesting?" I guess I didn't have much to do besides sit in my room and write. I wasn't a social teenager. Well, I was and I wasn't. I was acting. I played the part at times, and at other times I retreated to the confines of my room. I didn't like to be at keg parties, but I liked the idea of going to them. You know? At least, this is how I see myself now.

It's interesting that my new curriculum and study of history coincides with the re-discovery of my own personal journals. Last semester I learned that history is a complex and difficult concept. I'm no longer sure that "reality" is anything at all. Well, I was pretty sure of that before but now it's a lock. What, after all, is the difference between history and memory? The two are often conflated. But now I am aware that my own journals, thousands of pages (1,700 pages, actually; I'm writing hyperbolically for my future self to look back at and reflect upon) present a younger version of myself, but that self is a stranger to me and is only partially represented by those ancient scrawlings.

One of my last college classes was Metaphysics (remember, Jeff? Remember the slowness and the agony? The stoner who felt compelled to find answers to his high and half-baked (pun) musings on life, the universe and everything?). In that class we confronted the famous metaphysical dilemmas of our time. One of them had to do with pictures of oneself. We were asked whether, when we looked at old pictures of ourselves, we were looking at the same person that we believed ourselves to be presently, or if we were looking at another kind of ourselves. Are we one entity throughout our lifetime or are we a long string of unique entities that file neatly under the heading of "Self"? I believe Jeff and I rolled our eyes every 5.6 seconds in that class. This was partially due to the fact that we would soon graduate, but it may also have been because we didn't have the energy to really deal with identity-challenging questions like that. So here I am, three-and-a-half years later, dealing with the same dilemmas.

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Next semester I'll be working on Occult Philosophy and Avant-Garde performance art and theatre from 1950-now. I actually know something about both of those topics, so maybe these blog entries will be spicy.

I'm also going crazy thinking about the photography of Cindy Sherman. Here's one of her works. Does it make you feel something? If it does, you know I'm down to talk about it.