the two of us and them.

As I write this I remember myself there, as I saw us being. That is, me and the location. I try to separate the defining details of our relation to one another that have, not so ironically, defined us accordingly. The process that these words result from is the undertakings of a mind at work—something similar to a scientist’s practice but less obligated to the natural behavior of the observed. During my current retrospect, I begin to unravel our connection to one another and, in doing so, aim to pull loose the threads that have spun us around each other. They are flimsy, but somehow still, we remain entrapped in the network of its web and interconnected in the complexity of our condition. Do we lack the strength to fight for freedom? Or do we find comfort in the closeness that confines us like a strange sense of belonging to one another for the time being? Are these the reasons why we do not outwardly object to our positioning, or are there still others that we are not aware of within our selves?

I ascend by way of elevator to the fifth floor. I am emptied inside a pocket-house of congestion. I breathe for breaths that are momentarily not within me and proceed, faintly, into the office where I am one portrait amongst a collection of faces. To be a portrait, one must be studied. I notice them watching me. I see them searching over the lines that define me and within the substance I have developed into and thus, determines me. To be a face, one must only be seen on scene. A face is a face. I look at the multitudes of faces, like a performer that looks towards a faceless audience, but spend no time looking inside of their faces. Their personas pass through me. I cling to nothing.

I deliver my name to the assistant, as if it is not mine, as if I am only dropping it off to be used, devoured, digested. She calls someone that at that moment of experience I do not recognize by name. In this industry we work towards titles. Names are left at home where one [can] practices being a practical participant in the flow of natural life. The someone who was called and who I am supposedly there to see says something, and she ends the call and looks at me with new enlarged eyes of enlightenment.

She tells me a name. Then I realize she is talking to me and saying my name. I’ve almost forgotten myself—my name—who my name claims I am. As if how my name sounds and the type of person it suggests is different than how I feel, different than the person I feel I am. But there is no time to question this and decide on an answer. I look up into her eyes and become fixated on our positioning against and yet, towards, each other. Instantly, I take on the title of my name, the role of its character and become the person my name conceives I am. She looks at me differently. Her new behavior changes the air the space locks in. There is less pressure impacting the air and I feel lighter from this change. For the first time, I am aware of, I breathe. Your coat, a cappuccino, a glass of champagne? She asks. Let me take, let me give! She insists. I reject her royalties. I feel they are not mine to take or give, but the person’s she has decided I become and believed me to be. Even though that person is here, I am not entirely her and so I keep my distance. I have a secret sense of separation. I remain loyal to the longevity of this loneliness.

I say something to her. But I can’t quote it. The person inside my name was speaking, not the self behind it. Consequently, my memory can’t remember the exact words that were spoken. This often happens when it wasn’t oneself that was talking, but a stranger. A stranger within you. A other self that speaks through your mouth and falls into space and because it stands before you, makes the observer believe that it is you who is responsible for its existence. Is one? Is one responsible? Is one existing? Or are there many living all at once?

The woman I have come to meet enters from behind the wall and through a door. Everyone sharing the space freezes and becomes solid statues of ice sculptures. I do and am otherwise. Naturally I stand and move forward—trying not to break the silence everyone has suddenly become sustained to. Their unusual behavior is not challenged. The woman pretends to be unaware—as if the sudden stillness that has transpired is expected and common. I adapt to the change. I detect it is expected of me. Does this make me common, as well?

“At last,” she regards to me. “We have been waiting for your face.” I put my palm to my cheek and feel for my face. It is still there. From her words, I feared they had taken it. But since I am wearing it, it is still mine. I feel safe not being faceless.

A man sits staring inside the room. He, too, is one that has been waiting for my face. “The casting director told us about you,” she starts. “She told us everything about you.” Everything? She only saw my face. We exchanged a few words. Is that everything of me? “You know what that means?” That I was seen. “That eyes seek you.” My humor is not appreciated. “You are aware of yourself, aren’t you?” This isn’t a question. I do not answer. “That you are fortunate,” she continues. “Fortunate for this face of yours.” This. I grimace at her word choice. As if she assumes that “this” is one of my many faces for selection and subjection. “You are a piece of art,” he chimes in. “Minus all the excess that art is contrived with nowadays.” He steps closer towards me. “However, you do evoke emotion and display sentiment.” He sounds concerned. “The audience of the world can appreciate that and the industry could benefit from it. Empowering!” I feel like the conversation that is circulating revolves around someone else—someone I cannot see—someone I do not know—therefore, someone I cannot allow myself to judge. My silence speaks of my solitude. It mocks my segregation. And ironically in the process of, it sequesters their attention and they become pinned by my stillness that is impenetrable. I am affected by my evocative effect. “The casting director explained that you were intense. She said it wasn’t off putting, but elevating—that she was struck by it and fell towards you, as if the very nature of you made her vulnerable. She admitted to feeling that you were fake—not not real but unreal. And that this conception conveyed a contradiction—a curiosity that observers of you would feel challenged by and end up committed to. She was intimidated by your intensity. Do you believe her judgment of you to be true?” If it speaks truly of what she perceived, I would not claim it to be false. “You have not been direct with your answers. Why do they say nothing?” They must say something or you could not question them or our discourse would have ended. But as you can hear, it is still not over until one of us stops sensing what is being spoken. I don’t dismiss the truth others claim to discern. I only can question the accuracy of reality that affected the judgment of perception. The woman moves her mouth. She places a folder over her lips, so I cannot read her words. The man materializes her mutterings, “Yes, hips like an hourglass.” “Can’t be wasting time,” she responds, basically as a reaction to her own restated reaction of my body. “A bit shorter than we had surmised. But you wear heels, don’t you?” I nod. “And you can wear them all the time, can you not? I could. “What’s the smallest your waist has been?” 23 on a bad day, a real bad day. They are engaged with my answer. But I don’t enjoy bad days, so a 24. “Can you get it there again? Straighten out those curves. Because with that face of yours, we have immediate bookings. But you have to follow our rules and you have to play to the game.” To lose myself in such short time seems unnatural and unhealthy. I could but one shouldn’t. They speak without me. “Have you considered the screen?” I work in film. “Listen if you refuse the standards set by the modeling industry, there is still potential for you in other mediums. What we mean is have you thought of becoming an actress?” I haven’t thought to try and be different roles. “You should. We are giving you options to choose from. We believe in you.” My metamorphosis is encouraged. I am to be taken by transformation. I am to be no longer me behind my name, but she—a face in front of it, a face fashioned for pretense. They are convinced I contain a collection of characters. Yet, I cannot conceive of existing out of context of the one character that controls me.

As I write this I remember myself there, as I saw myself being. Do I believe my judgment of myself to be true? I believe not in the entirety of everything I see. I see a one-dimensional world until I shift my location in space and my placement positions my perspective differently. I see the other side of the door, the entrance or possibly it is the exit, the twin of your silhouette, your half’s partner. The light hits differently, the sides do not seem similar, nothing is the same. I cannot imagine myself loving anything that was not distinct. I do not maintain that there is a dramatic alteration to sight, but to sensations that slip out from beneath the door of one’s heart and spark stimulus to seep from the sponge of the mind and permeate the air like a fog before the eyes. The mind reacts differently depending upon the eye’s choice of sightings—just as the same structured story has multiple variations depending upon the ear that picks and chooses the words that are delivered from an outsider’s mouth, even though he always tells, says and shares the same thing in an unvarying order. Memory fictionalizes truth. Memory fabricates what was found. Memory crafts the art of experience explained only through the artist’s dependency on words and his existence in the world of language.

What can I make of the story I have told that involves scenes seen by sightings of a self that was sensationalized? I remember us there, that is me and the location. Then I remember us leaving the location—exiting the space of that foreign world and entering the space of a world stretched by the scars of streets. I left with others: a character I was controlled by, a character I was claimed to be and characters I was convinced I could be. I do not know whether I am always coming or leaving and when I do if I will exit into the same self as I entered as. I do know I have one face. I do know I am fortunate for this, one.