99999
Milan Kundrea will tell you all in an ever so delicate poetic fashion that trying to define one's self is futile. Outsiders define us, and our idea about our definition is ultimately tainted by that very thing: a rippling reflection of ourselves in a pool of water of which we choose the most outer abstracted rings of images to be the truest reflection of ourselves. This false imago is a watered down ontology that is no more to the human spirit than tax forms and sitcoms. Ive given up on defining myself, or maybe I just sold myself a long time ago to the subcultures rehashed by Urban Outfitters and Target. All I am is a drab section of the bibliography of the biographies written about someone else's life that will inspire a teenager with an overbite in Maine and a man in China looking at a water bug he's caught in a jar from the water drenched rice fields of his village. This is my abstraction, my excuse for apathy. I try to rationalize it like Elridge Cleaver tried to rationalize raping White Women to justify his "black rage" in Soul On Ice. It's just difficult for me to rest my head with age, weeding through bad memories to find the solace of blue book bed time stories, chalk, and merry go rounds: pure, too simple to need definition.