There are currently two great mysteries which I would like to solve right this minute. Well, actually there are three, but one is far too blush-inflicting to ever mention publicly. Although I should stop right now and warn you that to be honest they aren’t “great mysteries” by any stretch of the imagination, but are just things that have been pinching at my nerves with great pressure…
If you have scrolled through this blog at all or even glanced at the sidebar, you can see that I’m very much into photography. Having said that, it seems that I tend to fail rather miserably in front of the camera (except when it is I who has taken the photo) and most especially when I’m the only person in a photo. This leads me to Life’s-Great-Mystery-Right-This-Very-Instant #1 – why is it that I look horrible even in photos taken by my own mother, who is a professional photographer that specialised in portraiture and children’s photography, no less? I’m not going to post any examples, because it’s too cringe worthy and I can’t bear to splash unflattering photos of myself on the internet when enough people have done so already… but the question remains, why?! My mum has said herself, that even she can’t figure out why, and that I make her feel incompetent! For some reason unbeknownst to us, I tend to just seize up and hate being in front of the camera, especially when she’s behind it. I really don’t know why. She thinks its ironic that she used to make a killing living by making ugly people look pretty, but cannot seem to make me look… anywhere near normal or how I usually look, let alone look good. I just look astoundingly dreadful in her photos. To contrast this, here’s a random picture I took of myself in a public bathroom. That sounds like an idiotic thing to do, yes, I don’t deny that, but let me rephrase – it was the bathroom at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, and I was waiting for someone else to finish up, you see. Anyway, the point is, I look absolutely normal there, as I would usually look, if you were to run into me on any given day (except when I’m in a bad mood). So therein lies the great mystery – why do I look nice in thoughtless photos taken in bathrooms of famous places, and instead look awful in pictures taken by other people, even a professional with whom I live and am very close to?
Just some more photos from Grauman’s Chinese Theater (I thought I’d spell it the way it’s spelt over there…) which I never got around to posting.
As for Life’s-Great-Mystery-Right-This-Very-Instant #2, I am very curious to know whether I am the only person who thinks like this or does this: does anyone else ever think of painful things that are touchy subjects or just things in general that bring you great pain from the past, even though you’re “over it”… and rather, does anyone else do this in almost like a scab-picking way wherein you test the waters a bit, and the first time the thin new skin peels off and it hurts like hell again, but the next time it heals back slightly better and it hurts less, and you repeat this cycle until it’s almost like you’ve desensitised yourself to these great painful memories from the past? I keep doing it, I can’t fucking help it. I have been feeling increasingly better and calmer about things in the past that just a month or two ago would have outright upset me to the point of tears instantly, but I just still don’t feel completely healed. It’s even worse when I feel like there are things that I would have had control over, if only I had known I could reach certain people at all. I guess that’s why I just keep playing the blame game in my head, even though I know it’s pointless, and this is the happiest I have been for a long, loooong time.
On (the fear of) old diaries and notebooks:
Try me, now
Is it safe yet?
Those wounds you shared
Is it safe yet?
Open it, now
Has it been long enough?
Those fires you snuffed
Has it been long enough?
Right/write it, now
Is what you said still true?
Those deepest scars of you
Is what you said still true?
And good lord, please, the All Blacks must destroy Japan in their match tomorrow, or the country will be outraged, especially with the “not risking top players with minor injuries” going on at the moment…