to fold one's self is to pull one's self out, out like a narrow long strip, and then to put the front-facing side against the front-facing side, so now you have a strip of your two faces, facing each other, for a brief moment, before a crease is created. your backsides out, your faces facing towards.

and then you press down with your thumb, and your front sides confront each other. what does this mean? to actually take a look at myself from myself?

but then, you pull one's self out again even more, and fold that which was folded, and fold that which was folded again.

to look at myself over and over again, tangled and stacked through. necessarily tangled. what does this mean? what do I learn? what do I actually learn by looking at myself? to examine myself in third-person? to take apart my being and see the crevices, dust bunnies, cracks, hidden gems?

I know what it feels like, though. it feels scary. because all this time one's self thought it knew one's self (after all it was in itself), but to look at myself is really to get expected for unexpected discoveries you cannot undiscover. like traveling to a new country or city irrevocably. here you are! here, this is more of you. now you are more and you could never be less.

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so. who are we? I'm curious to encounter this process now. it feels qualitatively different than walking across a field in a breeze when I was 15, walking barefoot in a field thinking about the fact that I'm thinking about the fact that I'm thinking, for the first time.

this feels... hard. curious. it's not just to live through the self, to coast and slide on sled and feel a direct joy. it's to take one's glasses off (did you know you were wearing glasses all this time?) and to take a look at the glasses, maybe go ahh on them and wipe them a bit, and to put them back on. what do these glasses look like? to look at one's self. to imagine myself in 3d, filmed by a friend.

I am excited and scared and apprehensive and curious about this. let's go forth. this feels different. not to look, nor to look at the looking, but to take a shower, rub my eyes, go to bed.