December 21, 2012 - I sit in half-lotus position - surrendering all grasp to image, feeling, emotion, sensation, knowledge - and unsplash into an infinite ocean of absolute awareness and nothing more; awareness that is aware of "my" mind's quasi-subconscious tendency to "understand" what "enlightenment" is, and in abiding as this pure, empty awareness - of form and not as the form itself, including the form of thought attempting to understand a state of pure thoughtlessness - ironically understanding...

So what is the best way out of here?

Monotony creeps as the predator he is.

Let drama chase him out of the neighborhood with that wiry broom of unnecessary complexity.

This glass house built around the warmth can’t stand the waves. Walls crashing slice lacerations with the sharp wit that bleed pools of remorse scabbed over with time.

A sticky brown film that forms like condescending condensation on the glass of feces force-fed and swallowed down my accepting emotional esophagus.

Just to spew out the common thoughts meant to be regurgitated to the retarded youth.

Will the future feed on my foie gras of bittersweet aspirations?

Only to be outlawed later by some crunchy hypocrites dishing it out and refusing their due share.

Ravished by desire

Pinpricked by Temptation

As I forward tumble

Into the Deep of the Dilemma:

Fidelity to Right,

or

Flirtation with Wrong?

Mortality ringing true

As I'm searching for you

This is the oldest poem I have access to, it's from my senior year of high school. It was fun to read back through my old journals but I'm mostly struck by how dramatic I was, haha.

I think freedom lies in acting openly. If you're not constrained by trying to keep up an appearance or persona, you aren't held captive by the management of other people's perceptions. I know that this is something I struggle with but I've always admired people who simply are who they are--there are no pretenses, no inconsistencies, no lies. Just a human, being themselves. Everything else is just frosting.

Growing up, I never really cared for my name. As an adult, I'm still not sure that I like it so much as I've just acquiesced to the fact that this is my name. In high school I'd considered trying to change it when I went to college but I ended up rooming with a friend I'd known since sixth grade so that thought quickly dissipated. For better or worse, I have given in to being me. It's not a bad name, as far as names go, but it just doesn't quite feel like it resonates with me, never really has.

As a kid, I always changed my name when my best friend and I played games. Anne, Chloe, Amy, Charlotte, Tiger (I was six and kind of a weirdo)--as long as it wasn't my own name, I was open to it. In first grade, I decided to try out some of my alternate names. Each time, the worksheet was returned to me with the misnomer crossed out and a note in red pen that said, "This is not your name." I'm pretty sure my teacher thought I was going through some kind of elementary identity crisis.

When I was twenty-one, I visited my friend, V, in Boston. On one of my last nights there, we went out to a bar with a bunch of his friends. We ended up talking to a young woman neither of us had met before who introduced herself as Home Fries.

"Nice to meet you, I'm V," V had said, offering his hand. I followed suit and as Home Fries chatted with V, I studied her. Unnatural blonde curls forced into submission with hairspray, skin damaged by either the sun or a tanning bed, and small lines scrunched into accordions at the corners of her eyes. She was dressed in Daisy Dukes and a crop top that exposed soft, slightly doughy albeit very tanned skin. But more than her appearance, I was fixated on her name. She had obviously chosen to rebrand herself as "Home Fries" but for all I know, that's what it says on her birth certificate. I had so many follow up questions but no nerve with which to ask them. Why Home Fries? How long have you gone by that? Is this just your nighttime, bar alter-ego or are you Home Fries when you go to the bank? What name is on your driver's license? How did you settle on Home Fries? Did you try out variations like "Home Slice" first?

My most pressing question, however, is how does it feel to claim a new identity? At the time, I felt so boring and insecure that I didn't even know how to be myself, let alone a super alter-ego.

I have always found drag queens fascinating. The amount of effort that goes into the physical transformation is nothing short of an art form but, as might be expected, I am more interested in the alter-egos that drag produces. The punny names appeal to my love of words but even more than that, I love the personalities of drag queens. Loud, vibrant, confidant--they're everything I want to be. Maybe with a little less makeup and God knows newborn deer are more graceful than me attempting to walk in high heels, but I love the whole concept of getting to be someone else for awhile. Someone that you want to be.

I suppose that's why I've started writing under a pen name. I've been published under my real name, my maiden name, but I still feel that kind of disconnect. I'm also afraid of being judged for what I create. Writing under a fake name in no way guarantees freedom from judgement and I know that if I don't want to be judged, I shouldn't pursue a career in a creative field. It's like posting a video on YouTube--you can post an adorable video of your puppy sneezing and the comment section will probably be filled with positive comments but there will always be that one asshole who is going say your dog is stupid while declaring everyone's mother should do unspeakable sexual acts But writing under a pseudonym does give me a sense of freedom, like with this new name I can be who I want to be--or at least I can write what I want to write. Maybe somewhere along the way I'll become confident enough to own my writing again. Or maybe I'll decide that I like my author alter-ego and I'll choose to stick with it as my career moves forward. Either way, I'm going to have to figure out how to accept who I am, regardless of moniker.

I sometimes wonder about Home Fries. It's been nearly seven years since the first and only time I met her and the brief conversation we had. I'm sure a little effort on the internet could help me find her if I wanted to so I could finally ask her all of my questions but I'd rather not. I prefer to think of her as my champion of identity, my alter-ego spirit animal. If I were to say anything to her, I don't think I'd ask any questions. Instead, I would simply thank her for showing me, an insecure twenty-one-year-old, that I could be whoever I wanted to be, even if it has taken me seven years to realize the lesson. I clearly don't have anywhere near the amount of answers I want about who I am or who I want to be but I think I'm finally starting to figure it out--even if it took a random encounter and a pen name to get there.

I wonder what the father of my father of my father of my father - dating back 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, 10,000,000, 100,000,000, 1,000,000,000, and 10,000,000,000 years ago, respectively - was doing. It's a rather trippy thought to entertain. Think about evolution, genetics, DNA, reproduction. In a certain sense, "you" have always existed, through all your past "fathers" and "mothers," through all past plays of nature.

StellarBee is destined to create a book series as massively genius, successful, and inspiring as Harry Potter, and to establish herself, in the near future, as one of the most up and coming young authors on the planet.

It is only a matter of time before she becomes a bestseller, and a Legend on Prose.

All great authors experience writer's block, a certain lack of inspiration without a firm sense of knowing when it will end. But when it does end, and it always does - when that block-dam is overcome by pent-up waters of creative genius and inspiration - the release is pure refreshment; pure, renewed appreciation of being a passionate and talented young author, destined to create the next historically great book(s).