The Real Selfie
I’m trying to be the boss of me. Trying to track my inner voices and translate the new languages that enter my dreams. I travel on parallel journeys in the form of a woman who can imagine life as an expat who no longer holds a solid address or as a hermit in a cabin by a river or as a host for weary travelers who are short of funds and in need of shelter or a student of something I haven’t mastered before — physics? law? growing camellias?
I watch as my oldest dog goes from the door to the backyard and back into the house, whistling her unsettling whine, an unwagging tail bringing up the rear as she edges up to my knees for a head rub, a back massage, something any creature might hanker for in the last days of chill. “Mocha, settle down.” I chide her. At the same instant, a leaf blower’s scream incites her to barking. Then her whine returns as I try to let her be in her body like I am trying to be in mine. And I feel the discomfort of not being able to do it myself — settle, that is. Into the nature of choice and how too many of them can lead to confusion and doubt. Which is why I avoid the cereal aisle at the grocery store. It just seems wrong to have an entire aisle devoted to dozens of boxed configurations of pressed nutritional promise. Wouldn’t one or two do?
I’m trying to be the boss of me. Trying to track my inner voices and make sure they’re serving the True Self. Trying to translate the languages that enter my dreams and adapt to the promise that life is so much bigger and grander and more glorious than I could possibly sum up in one lifetime of being the boss of me.
