Thursday, June 25, 2015

Never too old to learn...

I was 28 when I learned that you had to use both eyes when looking through a view master, or binoculars.. I know. I. Know. But I'm just a bit stupid most of the time...
I learned this lesson one evening while at some friends house looking at their 3d photos from a recent trip. I'm sitting around a table with A LOT of super smart people; so their reaction to my statement,'well, time to switch eyes, my left one is tired.' The room went silent before they gasped. Followed by,' you are joking right?' No. I wasn't joking. I've always looked through with just one eye because it makes my eyes ache when I try to use both. Yes, once again, my 'silliness' becomes the laugh track for the evening, which happened to stretch into months. Good thing I can take a joke.
At this time, I was working at Star of the Sea and on my lunch break I would go into the preschool room and look at all of the old Disney view masters I just never 'got' as a child. My mind was blown. I was finally seeing these things in 3d and finally understood what all the fuss was about as a child.
I try to do that when I am just out and about, looking at the 3D quality of the world we live in. I am always amazed when I can be looking at something and then I all of a sudden can see it more vastly. Seeing the depth of the tree line around this gorgeous town, looking at my friends and family as the complete beings they are rather than the stored idea of what my mind registers them as. Recognizing my back space as equally as my front space. For most of my life I have not really paid much attention to how the back half of me moves through this world. I was too wrapped up on the front half and trying to keep most of it covered up out of childhood silliness and fear. 
It is one of the things I work on a lot along my path of self awareness and discovery. I call it 'my unfolding' of the layers of guilt and shame, mostly from always wanting to keep myself covered across the belly and crotch. I have developed this spiral, diagonal hold from protecting everyone from my 'masculinity ', gayness and gut. It has always been the classic cross the leg and cross the arm and hunch to keep it under wrap thing.
Seriously, what was I thinking.
This year, I have started to see myself, and more importantly, feel myself within the space I occupy. One morning, while breaking my rule of not using a mirror, I stood and witnessed myself and I saw the physical strain my body has been under from all these years of straining to keep it together. So now the work begins. Now, I cut through that restraint and work on freeing my body, mind and soul from all those years of conditioning. But hey, now I get to go through my collection of 3D images I have logged away and really examine them and see what is really there in the depths. I'm sure it won't be as incredible and fun as looking at those Disney images, clicking my way to a happy ending; but it is me I'm talking about so I am sure it will be colorful regardless of the issue I'm observing.

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