Hegel said that the self is in a constant process of becoming.

By this he means: it is not

a ready-made, enduring, immalleable thing engaged in being; rather, it is continually in-the-
making, intentioned with becoming.1 In my view, if there is such thing as a self, it is merely that:
a subject actively and continuously engaged in the process of becoming, of self-making.
This is especially true for the young adult. The philosophy of William James tells us that an
individual’s self-concept is only as stable as the environment by which it is surrounded. It is no
wonder, then, that, as young adults -- with constantly-changing social environments, deluged
with new people, ideas and perspectives at every turn -- our identities feel perpetually in flux.
While identity in previous times was more fixed -- grounded in immutable constants like
geography, religion, familial vocational tradition, birth-given gender and a heteronormative
sexual orientation -- we are now free to choose an identity for ourselves, to create one, to mix-
and-match different elements like we would a bag of groceries at the supermarket.2
This is profoundly liberating, but also profoundly confusing.3 At the cusp of adulthood,
we’re in this process of becoming, at what feels like the culmination of it, at which point we’re
under tremendous pressure to cease becoming and start being, to finalize a self that is to be an
enduring, immalleable constant over time (what do you like to do with your time? What’s your
major? And what are you gonna do with that?) Continuously molded by our ever-changing
environments, in this ongoing process of self-making, burdened with constructing a self-
concept, it is no wonder that we, as young adults, often feel that we exist primarily in a state of
existential crisis, in between fleeting moments of clarity.
In October of my senior year of high school, crouched over 3 SAT 2 books, under the
influence of what I hoped would give me concentration, I had a revelation -- which I
unfortunately scrawled over the important “-AR verbs” section of my Spanish book. At the time,
I’d recently subscribed to this notion that you are the average of the people with whom you
spend the most time4 -- rooted in this Biblical proverb about your identity being the sum of the
company you keep.5 The revelation was not least due to the influence of three refreshingly
quirky, strangely wonderful individuals to whom I’d recently become close, and from whose
insight I would necessarily draw.
The revelation, in its bare bones, centered around a distinction: that between
“authentists” and “conventionals.” An authentist was an individual harboring a unique identity
cultivated primarily on his or her own, congruent with his or her own notions of fulfillment or
meaning. Conventionals’ identities were primarily a product of that by which they were
surrounded. For instance, a conventional might have conversations primarily about peers and

1 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1807. Print.
2 It’s almost intuitive that the rise of a consumer-capitalist culture -- defined by an emphasis on choice,
offering an endless array of competing options for every choice a consumer makes -- would give rise to a
“revolution of choice in other aspects of life, including in the area of fashioning our identities.
3 An oft-noted consequence of the “revolution of choice” inaugurated by modernity is the paradox of
choice, a phenomenon first described in psychologist Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice -
Why Less is More” published in 2004. Schwartz argues that, while free, autonomous choice usually leads
to happiness, modern Americans are so inundated with choices that it leads to indecision, unhappiness,
and confusion.
4 Groth, Aimee. "You're The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With."Business
Insider. Business Insider, 24 July 2012. Web. 25 Feb. 2017.
5 Proverbs 13:20: “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.”
pop culture rather than ideas; conform to the attitudes, behaviors, and trends of the masses;
and embrace the norms of contemporary culture without question.
I sought to embark on a journey of becoming an authentist -- or embracing the latent,
authentist self that had perhaps always existed under layers of conformity. I envisioned my
brand of authentism to consist in a unique music taste; a penchant for writing and photography;
a love for nature and the outdoors; a life philosophy specific to me; a curiosity for learning and
engaging with new ideas; an intellectual growth mindset; meaningful - rather than superficial -
connections with people on my same wavelength; an emphasis on idea-creation rather than
consumption of popular culture; and, above all, a unique collection of art, movies, books,
quotes, music and poems, that were fundamental to my identity and felt distinctly my own. My
senior year was largely a journey of self-creation and introspection through which I created a
distinct identity representative of the authentist I wanted to be.6
I was much less social than I’d been in past years. I rejected hook-up culture and
eschewed romantic pursuits, instead opting to spend the school year working on myself and
admiring my authentist, gay (unbeknownst to me at the time) best friend, who we’ll call EM,
alongside whom I grew tremendously. By EM’s side, I became in touch with creative energy and
became more emotionally intelligent and I started to analyze personalities and discuss the
meaning of lyrics and see the world in a different light. I developed a distinct music taste;
learned way too much about personality typing (MBTI); immersed myself in poetry and
philosophy, nurtured my passions for writing, photography and the outdoors; and constructed an
identity grounded in works of art most meaningful to me (the lecture “This is Water” by David
Foster Wallace; the slam poem “Shrinking Women;” the poem “Desiderata;” the painting “Starry
Night;” the movies “American Beauty,” “Boyhood” and “Juno;” an eclectic mix of classic rock,
rock, indie, alternative, and indie folk music.)
At the beginning of senior year, I was disillusioned with social media, tuned into its
psychological effects -- on girls especially -- and fascinated by philosophy. For my senior thesis
in my high school Humanities program, I wrote a paper that was “an existentialist feminist look
into social media’s brand of sexual objection of young women.” It connected a twentieth-century
French philosopher (Simone de Beauvoir)'s feminist views to contemporary social media
culture, and was bookended by a pretentious allusion to the Plato’s Cave Allegory7 and how
enlightenment was the key to empowerment. I went to a poetry slam in D.C. on homecoming
night, and on the way home we listened to CDs my friend burned replete with tracks by obscure,
local rock bands. One night, EM and my friend CR and I were planning to go on a walk through
nature, converse, smoke weed and listen to music by our favorite obscure indie-folk singer
(Sufjan Stevens), but one of EM’s best friends calls him in desperation, home alone in the
depths of a depressive episode on the cusp of suicide. So, immediately, we drive over so EM
can comfort her, and CR and I sit in the car for what must be an hour and, naturally, discuss life
and death and suffering, the human condition, and mental illness -- which I’ve never

6 An important note: this identity was and is constantly changing as I grow. I’m constantly changing based
on influential experiences and ideas and people with which I come into contact. Authentism, as I see it,
isn’t unwavering adherence to a fixed identity defined in opposition to social norms; rather, it’s a continual
adjustment of your self-concept as you see fit. While conventionals are also engaged in continual identity-
adjustment, it’s the doing of this through the lens of your own experiences and goals that makes distinct
the authentist from the conventional.
7 Cohen, S. Marc. "Allegory of the Cave." University of Washington. N.p., 2006. Web. 25 Feb. 2017.
experienced. CR enlightens me about her struggle with depression and suicidal past, and about
her drug addict sister and her mother’s death a year ago. My worldview is fundamentally
changed. I end up crying, in need of emotional succor from EM and CR, even though I hardly
knew suicidal girl, because I’m unaccustomed to experiences like these and I feel emotion so
deeply.
I wrote one of my UVa application essays about how desiderata was my favorite word
and connected it to the poem, which hung on the wall in my room.
I wrote my final project in AP Lit analyzing the symbolism and social criticism in one of
my favorite movies: American Beauty.
I had the idea to write, as some sort of concluding reflection to high school, an essay
about my high school experience cultivating an identity, and the ways in which particular events
and individuals have shaped me. (I outlined and began to write this but never finished it.)
The day after I finished my pretentious thesis paper, after the conclusion of college apps,
exams, and the last academic semester that mattered for college admissions, we had this
miraculous snowstorm, the roads so blanketed with sugar-white snow that we couldn’t even
leave the driveway. It was a storm of cleansing, of restoration and renewal -- from the ills of a
semester teaching that human worth at 18 was measured in standardized test scores, GPA, and
the arbitrary decisions of college admission boards. We’re out of school for about two weeks,
and I have this grand, idealized vision for my second semester senior year, which I describe in a
“second semester senior year manifesto” I write. I write about how I want to explore the
outdoors endlessly, and pursue my passions - for writing and for music and for photography - to
go on spontaneous adventures and photo shoots after school in faraway places and to concerts
in D.C. and to climb to the roofs of buildings and capitalize on this newfound sense of
independence and autonomy that I’d never felt before. During the break, I also write a lot of
poetry, learn guitar chords, take beautiful photographs with my mother and we trek out into the
snow to photograph every sunset, and watch Dead Poets Society and Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind and read the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock for the first time.
In February, I have the idea for a documentary film, a goal which I was dead-set on
making into a reality. It was to begin in black-and-white, with a girl - VS - with a pixie cut, holding
a cigarette (for the aesthetic) and telling a story about the dangerous, abusive love of her
previous lover and then I wanted it to conclude with her uttering the words “what do you do with
a love like that?” which is a line from an excellent Raymond Carver short story “What We Talk
About When We Talk About Love” performed in Birdman, a movie I love. It would then cut to a
shot of a cozy, little coffee shop with a French sentimentality to it and the song “Norwegian
Wood” by the Beatles would play in the background. I wanted the film to be a collection of
different individuals, sitting in this coffee shop, telling the story of their “one who got away,” a
romantic interest who they somehow let go who they’ll never forget. The transitions between
each person would just be a waiter bringing the next person their food and coffee. I had picked
out a coffee shop and downloaded video editing software. I had eight people lined up to do it. I
filmed the first, DS -- whose story inspired the film -- for hours by a lake in his neighborhood,
where his One Who Got Away had years ago been reading the day after she rejected him. She
had rejected him after he serenaded her with a guitar song he wrote for her on the roof of their
elementary school. He told me that when he saw saw her reading by the lake that day, he had
kissed her and then just walked away, because “it had to be that way.” DS was a gifted
storyteller with a calming, whimsical voice and a certain sadness intrinsic to him (the fruit of a
life of adversity and struggle), yet possessed a boundless optimism and love for the world that
never ceased to amaze me. This line from the Great Gatsby fits DS well: “If personality is an
unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some
heightened sensitivity to the promises of life... he had an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic
readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever
find again.” I went home and hardly did any of my homework, because I was blissfully content
with my reality, and it was second semester senior year, and I cared about “life-sustaining
experiences” and “authenticity” and meaning much more than I did Molecular Biology lab
reports.
The only other person I recorded was an Italian goddess of a woman by the name of
MP. MP is a beautiful soul whose voice is succulent and Siren-like and draws you in irrevocably;
who makes you believe she’s just the sunlight that’ll illume the way to happiness and truth;
whose personality alone inspires you to be a better person. There’s a line from Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that describes MP well: “If there’s a truly seductive quality about
[MP], it’s that her personality promises to take you out of the mundane. Amazing, burning
meteorite will carry you to another world where things are exciting.” MP spent hours pouring her
heart out to me in eloquent articulation of a prince charming-turned-manipulative-and-abusive
first love story of a boy from Italy, with whom she fell in love in England. It gave me tremendous
new light into her as a person and her depths, and our friendship took on a new meaning.
I never recorded the other people recounting their tales, but there was something truly
magical about learning stories that held emotional weight for people close to me. I think it’s easy
to get caught up in seeing our own lives this way but neglecting the complexity and nuance in
others’ stories. As it happens, neglecting to consider the situational factors that shape others’
actions -- but using our own stories to justify our own -- is a common human tendency, which
psychologists term “the fundamental attribution error.”8 David Foster Wallace gets at this in his
wonderful “This is Water” lecture,9 in which he implores us to adjust our attributional default
settings and view others in the charitable, forgiving light of the circumstances by which they
might be afflicted.10 There’s this beautiful Internet word -- sonder11 -- which describes so
precisely this feeling of listening to the One Who Got Away stories. This is its definition: “the
realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—
populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic
story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with
elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you

8 http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic521566.files/D_jones_nisbett1971pp79-94.pdf
9 http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf
10 DFW encourages us to, for instance, consider the possibility that some of the drivers of “huge, stupid,
lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon
tanks of gas...who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just twenty
stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam” might “have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find
driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can
feel safe enough to 5 drive; or that the Hummer that just cut [him] off is maybe being driven by a father
whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a
way bigger, more legitimate hurry than [DFW] is— it is actually [DFW] who [is in] his way.”
11 http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder
might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing
on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.”
There’s a line from one of my favorite movies, My Dinner with Andre, that, upon hearing,
the main character is found crying uncontrollably. The line is: “I could always live in my art, but
never in my life.” Senior year, I became so immersed in my art -- of self-creation, in pursuit of
authenticity and purpose -- that I wasn’t truly living; I was so caught up in my own head, that I
didn’t see what was right in front of me. Mid-second semester, things began to change.
In the beginning of March, it was starting to show signs of springtime, and, as such, I
was reborn. I began to reconnect with an old friend by the name of SK, who I’d only met junior
year who it felt like I’d known for my whole life. One day before we’d ever even held hands, we
spent 8 hours alone together: hiking and trying to climb to the top of a building to get views of
the city and then getting dinner and seeing a movie. SK made me fall in love with the world in
the sweet, renewing season of my senior spring. Summer unfolded seamlessly -- a sonata
rehearsed to crisp perfection as if each note flowed from the next without so much as a lifted
finger. We were deeply in love, and had a magical summer of stargazing and hiking to waterfalls
and camping in the rain and swimming in secluded waterholes and bonfires and remarking on
how lucky we were to be suspended in this beautiful fragment of eternity together. Once SK and
I began dating, everything in my life seemed to miraculously fall together -- a coincidence that I
unfortunately long-attributed to his influence.12 I committed to UVa, and with the weight of the
life-deciding decision of where to matriculate off my back, felt more at ease than ever in high
school.13
SK and I had a perfect prom weekend together, which ushered in our high school
graduation and the wave of wonderful, end-of-high-school activities that followed. Stumbling into
the summer with no plans, in early June I happened into an old friend, SS, parking her car
outside a grad party. SS informed me of a job opportunity working at a kids’ gourmet cooking
camp, for which you would get paid significantly more than minimum wage. SS connected me to
her boss, and I interviewed the next day. The following day, I got the job. It was my first paying
job (in contrast to the boring, 9-5, resume-booster, unpaid internships of previous summers), I
earned around $1.5k, had meaningful experiences working with children, and had a job to keep
me busy during the days while SK was at his prestigious techy internship. Socially, I’d been a
floater for the longest time -- with a makeshift collection of individual friends spread across
social circles -- but, this summer, we created a friend group through a combination of our
closest friends. The friend group became incredibly tight-knit, and SK and I planned a variety of
social events: multiple bonfires, a July 4th party SK threw for me when I was worried the
summer might go downhill, a surprise birthday party I threw for SK, a journey to a rope-swing
into a river. The most meaningful weekend was when SK and I went camping at a lake in West
Virginia with his family and family friends to celebrate his eighteenth birthday. The day before I
left for college, we got our favorite cheese plate at one of our favorite restaurants and I gave him
framed pictures of us for his dorm room and we kept walking around my neighborhood
discussing our fears for the future, but resolving that our relationship could stand the test of
distance. When it came to say goodbye, we kept trying to go our separate ways but then we
12 I think the relationship gave me a certain energy that I was able to pour into my other pursuits, but the
energy of the relationship came from both sides and it would be a mistake
13 I still firmly remember my freshman year self with an 89.4 in Algebra, frantically googling “can you get
into Harvard with a B?”
kept running back to each other to say goodbye again and say “I love you,” “I love you more,”
“No, that’s impossible” and agree every time that this was goodbye for real -- he had to be home
30 minutes ago. Seeing him drive away scared me, and ushered in a great sadness.14 I felt a de
ja vu feeling in September as I watched his train depart from the Charlottesville station for the
first time, sitting on the train platform in the rain for 20 minutes and crying. This feeling of
sadness ushered in a wave of gratitude as I realized that sadness this profound from SK’s
departure could only be the product of what profound joy his presence gave me. I became
grateful, then, for a life rich with such emotionally intense experiences and to have the pleasure
of feeling so deeply.15 SK and I visited each other every other weekend for the first semester of
college. In coming to UVa, I was somehow a more productive and functional person than I’d
ever been in high school. I woke up to my 7:30 am alarms every morning, without fail, was
reimbued with a passion for school and a dedication to my (endlessly fascinating) coursework,
and was able to be more responsible, organized and on top of everything in school than ever
before. I joined extracurricular activities, became a part of a friend group, and became the
outgoing, fun girl who would go out anywhere from one to three nights a weekend. I had wild,
archetypal college weekends -- when I wasn’t seeing the boy with whom I was in a happy,
healthy, relationship oft-described to me as the poster child of a perfect long-distance. I worked
diligently during the weeks and let loose on the weekends, made more friends than ever, and
ended the semester with a 4.0 GPA.
On December 16th, the first day of his winter break, SK broke up with me. It was -- as is
the nature of breakups -- the reality check that I didn’t want but desperately needed. From the
outside, it might’ve seemed as if my months with SK were my months of perfection. This was
my initial thought, along with the concern that the end of my relationship with SK would herald
my gradual demise into the mediocrity of my high school self. I took some time to introspect and
ruminate -- once again isolating myself from the outside world. I saw the movie My Dinner with
Andre16 for the first time, and watched most of the show Westworld. Westworld is a TV show
about robots in a futuristic amusement park -- who are all slaves to the human guests’ base
desires, like sex and murder -- slowly becoming conscious. There’s this maze that’s a mystery
the entire season, which has to do with the robots’ journey to consciousness. In the last
episode, they reveal the secret to it, describing the preconditions for consciousness: first,
memory; second, improvisation; third, self-interest; and, lastly, most importantly: suffering.

14 The lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye” describe this feeling perfectly:
“But now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.”
15 This can be summed up in a Winnie the Pooh quote: “How lucky I am to have some[one] who makes
saying goodbye so hard.”
16 My Dinner with Andre takes place entirely over the course of one dinner conversation and follows
protagonist Andre, a director, as he recounts his journeys across the world and the insights they brought
about the nature of consciousness, truth, and the human experience.
 So then, my family is at my grandparents’ house, and it’s Christmas Eve, and it’s merry
and gleeful, and we’re feasting on Prosecco and Italian food, and we begin to watch home
videos from my childhood taken on a tape recorder. And then, in one of the videos, I see my
grandmother (my father’s mom). The closest one to me on either side of the extended family,
she was someone who I admired greatly, with whom I shared even the most intimate of secrets,
by whom I was tremendously shaped. She was hilarious, insightful, and unspeakably intelligent;
instilled in me a love for poetry, art and great food; and encouraged me, from a young age, to
keep writing. She had passed away in early June. I’d just come back from a date with SK. I
didn’t cry. I felt like a robot, like some sort of monster. I used to feel so deeply. I used to cry at
the smallest things, and I was indescribably close to her, for years and years of life.17 Things
went on as usual. I went to work the next morning, worked for the summer, went to school for a
semester, not once crying about it. And then, suddenly, it’s Christmas Eve, and I hear her voice,
and she's speaking to me (little, four year old me) and I just start bawling, uncontrollably. Upon
reflection, I have the thought that the sadness of my breakup awakened me from a sort of
unconscious slumber, and helped me tap into sadness I wasn’t in touch with, that I hadn’t
processed yet. For months, my emotional energy was so focused on this one individual that I’d
unwittingly limited by emotional experience. Suddenly, I’m awake again. I’m no longer in a state
of starry-eyed bliss and can begin to glimpse the agony of everyday existence, of my suffering
and that of others. It’s only now that I can process all my sorrow and pain. In a way, it’s
beautiful. I’m sitting there, sobbing at the Christmas Eve dinner table, and I think to myself:
“wow, that’s a feeling.” I think back to the Westworld episode about how experiencing suffering
was the final, key element to achieving consciousness.18 I realize I hadn’t suffered much over
the course of the past 9 months. With a happy family life, social life in both Maryland and
Virginia, relationship, and summer job and good grades, I didn’t experience much pain. For me,
that meant I was complacent, not constantly engaged in questioning my identity and seeking to
grow and change myself. First semester, I reverted back to conformity in order to gain
acceptance in a new social environment. I embraced the “work hard, play hard” ethos of UVa,
subscribing to the notion that success was measured by how high you could keep your GPA
while maximizing the number of nights you went out.
It’s easy to become a cog in the machine when you’re not suffering -- or not actively
questioning your reality and seeking to authentically fashion yourself and construct meaning out
of your experiences. It’s easy, in the mundane trappings of day-to-day existence, to become
unconscious, to become immersed in a fog that separates you from reality, emotion, and true,
human experience. It’s easy to slip into a routine of conformity and feel like you’re doing well.19

17 I remember, on one of the last days our family was in the hospital when she was unresponsive, I was
speaking to my (doctor) uncle in the hallway. He told me that some of the relatives were mad because
they would go into her room at the hospital to talk to her and she just wouldn’t speak, which confused me
because I’d spoken to her at length during her last days of full consciousness, and she was so full of
energy and life, as per usual. He told me that her heart was a car with only a few miles left, and she’d
spent most of them on me.
18 The notion that consciousness can be borne out pain is not a novel idea. Carl Jung gets at this when
he said: “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how
absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of
light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
19 Point of clarification: This is not to say that a life of conformity can’t be prosperity by one’s subjective
standards of a well-lived life; that very well may be the case, as different people construct meaning out of
 My unconsciousness and conformity were in large part a consequence of me being
lulled into a sense of comfort from my ostensible prosperity in every realm of life. I think that
departure from your comfort zone and suffering are two of the key preconditions to true
consciousness. Comfort -- which distances you from both of these -- can breed a state of
complacency. You’re running on autopilot, not truly perceiving or experiencing reality or
questioning or really thinking about your experiences and seeking to grow from them. This
wonderful excerpt from My Dinner with Andre helps to illuminate this.20
There’s a quote on my closet door that reads “every society honors its live conformists
and its dead troublemakers.” I liked the honor too much to step back and realize that I’d fallen
back into the conventional norm from which I’d worked so hard to depart. I realized I hadn’t
written or photographed for pleasure all semester; I’d hardly read for pleasure; I hadn’t
discovered new music I really loved in months; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sat down
and analyzed song lyrics or poetry; I didn’t know the personality types of my closest friends.
Most of my friends at school weren’t authentists; most of the conversations I had weren’t deep
and meaningful; many of them were superficial, and many so far from physical consciousness
that we didn’t remember them in the morning. I didn’t gravitate toward those with similar
interests or with an energy that attracted me; socially, I was indiscriminate: I made all the friends
I could and clung onto them for fear of social alienation. I wanted to reclaim the authentist self
which my senior year self worked so hard to create.
We continued watching the home videos, and I notice I’m holding this tiny, green piece
of fabric in quite a few of them. It was, I recalled, the green piece of fabric from my mother’s
chest of drawers that I’d found about a week ago and pocketed (it was in my purse, right then,

experience in different ways and thus have different standards for what constitutes a life well-lived. In my
specific case, I’d abandoned my notions of fulfillment and meaning and therein lay my problem.
20 Andre: I wouldn't put an electric blanket on for anything... I think that that kind of comfort just
separates you from reality in a very direct way...I mean, if you don't have that electric blanket, and your
apartment is cold, and you need to put on another blanket, or go into the closet and pile up coats on top
of the blankets you have, well, then you know it's cold. And that sets up a link of things. You have
compassion for the per...well, is the person next to you cold? Are there other people in the world who are
cold? What a cold night. I like the cold, my God, I never realized. I don't want a blanket, it's fun being cold,
I can snuggle up against you even more because it's cold. All sorts of things occur to you. Turn on that
electric blanket, and it's like taking a tranquilizer or it's like being lobotomized by watching television. I
think you enter the dream world again.
Andre: I mean, what does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the
seasons, or winter, or cold don't in any way affect us? I mean, we're animals, after all. I mean, what does
that mean? I think that means that instead of living under the sun and the moon and the sky and the stars,
we're living in a fantasy world of our own making. Don't you see that comfort can be dangerous? I mean,
you like to be comfortable, and I like to be comfortable, too, but comfort can lull you into a dangerous
tranquillity. I mean, my mother knew a woman, Lady Hatfield, who was one of the richest women in the
world, and she died of starvation because all she would eat was chicken. I mean, she just liked chicken,
Wally, and that was all she would eat, and actually, her body was starving, but she didn't know it cause
she was quite happy eating her chicken, and so, she finally died.
Andre: See, I honestly believe that we're all like Lady Hatfield now, we're having a lovely, comfortable
time with our electric blankets and our chicken, and meanwhile we're starving because we're so cut off
from contact with reality that we're not getting any real sustenance...cause we don't see the world. We
don't see ourselves. We don't see how our actions affect other people.
at the dinner table). And then I got broken up with, and a week passess, and we’re watching
these home videos. My mom tells me that it was called "my piece" and that I was such an
imaginative child who would take it with me wherever I went and hold onto it as a source of
creativity whenever I wanted to tell stories. She tells me before I wrote them down, I’d tell them
aloud, everywhere, to everyone, holding this scrap of fabric in the air as I did. I was so creative,
so unapologetically myself, so free from judgment or influence from the world outside of me and
my story-telling. And then it all comes rushing back to me, and I’m running my hands over it,
and I can’t believe where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I think: I want to be that girl again. I’m
on my way.