Here's my (first) awkward confession of the day:

Five minutes ago I posted this on my conduit --

* * *

Looking at it now (and looking at it before I pressed POST), I wonder(ed) if I was giving the wrong impression...
with the intent to give the wrong impression.

I'm teetering on that slender margin between being deceitful (I'm coping well with my struggles)
and being hopeful (I'm coping well with my struggles).

Does posting something like that suggest I have achieved a finishing self, an actual(izing) self
rather than what I'm really doing -- striving to lean toward the minor inclination to achieve
(ha!)
a finishing, actual(izing) self?

It's not a current photo. Because I don't have current photos of me laughing.

I want to work on that. I will work on that.

Isn't that reason enough?
I wasn't more solid when I shot that photo of me in the passenger seat of Nohemi's convertible at night,
but I was more likely to laugh.

* * *

Last night I spent two hours watching/listening to a flamenco troupe.
I felt like I was high I smiled so much.

I had forgotten my phone at home (for hours!),
was with easygoing company (Megan)
and forgot where I was (in the simultaneous state of tear-down and build-up) for songs at a time.

And I didn't have a camera, didn't want a camera, didn't think about a camera.
But I was happy. I was. I laughed, I danced (in the private confines of my stationary body), I talked to no one really.

* * *

So this post was not a question but an explanation. (I'm just realizing this as I type.)

I'm in a place where I (feel the) need to explain myself. That's for another day.

* * *

A little more Dean Young:

We laugh [...] at the truth that is shown to us out of place, devoid of decorum,
in disjuncture from our expectations of consistency.

Laughter is always brief in its triumph over pain,
but in its intensity it suggests too that pain is brief.