Insta-Luco

Apparently I have an Instagram and that is where these pictures have come from. No one asked me if I wanted an Instagram, but there you have it - my life. My distinct lack of control in all-that-I-do. And so I feel I must explain, you see, as these pictures involve so much artifice.

Life is a construction, as are our personalities (I am an INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs test, "The Scientist," if you can believe the results), but we must show our hands when those constructions come to obscure the tiny vibrating strand of truth that is authenticity.

Authenticity? Really? I apologize. It is either that the photographic effects the prison guard has used have intoxicated me, or it is all the grading that has unraveled me like a spool of thread. Either way, I am not quite here in my head.

And the world has become a rather dizzy place.

I haven't posted, reader, in two weeks.

It is another semester and the prison guard needs my steady paw. My scrutiny. She needs any help I will give her, honestly, because at the moment it seems as though she could build a house of these papers-to-be-graded and move into it.

I really must be dizzy to believe her capable of building a house-not-a-prison.

What was it we were discussing?

Ah yes, authenticity. These photographs seem to me to move too far from the real-Luco. The actual-me. They cross some unclear boundary and become something-altogether-else.

Perhaps I myself become Hipster-Luco.

I do not even know what to say in this moment that crushes my heart like a mouse in its vice grip; I yearn for a long bike ride on a fixie-with-no-brakes to my local organic green market so that I can pick up some fresh made rutabaga pickles and house-smoked bacon; my body moves against my will toward the door, towards Outside; do I own argyle? Can I find a cardigan that would fit my damned feline form? And my body moves me and I am moved; let me play the ukulele and listen to Gangnam Style while maintaining my composure, but still making insightful, witty remarks.

And this picture? I know how the prison guard defaced me. It was MS Paint.

My blood is a wave flooding the shore.

Do not be confused, reader. I apologize for my lapse.

Do not fear, I am your Luco, only. Although I understand in a thunderous way the appeal of rockabilly, flannel shirts, wide-framed glasses, and tights.

I am Luco, hipster, embracing my identity; for if identity is a construction, then it may be built and shaped, torn down and rebuilt; I am be the Scientist today and the Philosopher tomorrow. Maybe one day the Romantic?

Who knows how we change in every moment we exist - how each thought, gesture, television program, Web site, and picture affect us; how every billboard and park bench, bumper sticker and Youtube comment alter us.

We are changed each time we interact. We change each time we move toward or away. Each time we reach or do not reach.

And this day too we have the ability to become someone new. Even if we are reborn to merely grapple again with our own pathos. Bathos? There is something encouraging in this, although it also seems strange to me, and frightening. We should take more care with all we do.

 

Before we die and there is no more chance for change.