Unfound (Side-affect, Side-effect)
As far back as I can remember, I have looked for presence. For self. I looked for it in my childhood room shared with two brothers, in my desks, lockers and cubbyholes over the years in so many schools, apartments, houses, and offices, across the fields, around the tracks and roads over which I ran in high school, college and beyond, in countless books of philosophy, science, technology, art, literature and poetry, closets, cupboards, laboratories and even under the carpet that I secretly pried up in the far corner of the public library near the books on refinishing furniture. Through my life I have looked in all of these places and more, across so many different spaces.
I wrote of this process in my diary, which became a journal, which became a log. I read what I wrote — searching for traces of clues — and wrote more when I found cause to propose paths for future follow-up.
With an impatient retrospective gaze I know I have looked — both openly and surreptitiously — in places scattered halfway around the world, under countless skies and through innumerable seasons, and before, behind, under and to the side of so many things. I warily avoided questions or requests, anxious of what might be thought or done with me should anyone learn of my doings. I didn’t question myself, fearful that to admit any other thoughts would be to lose the self I had made of myself in the process.
But those questioning thoughts have always been there — just behind what I instead force myself to see — the one place I don’t look.
