I was in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, doing my usual morning beauty routine — lotions, positions, facercize, hair removal —  and going through my usual mental exercise as well. Regularly, as I attend to my body, I try and remind myself that the reason I labor, I suffer, so meticulously beautifying and grooming is because of my delusion that this face, this body represents me, it is who I am.  This morning though, my mind wandered a little and I decided to change up the contemplation a bit; a crazy through jumped into my head, maybe there is another wrong view here, that beauty is who/ what I am.  Suddenly my mind became sharp and I realized that was the ticket…

Beauty is what I am and this body lets me be that identity. It proves me. Who I am and this body are intertwined, I can’t separate the two because –naturally — I need the body to demonstrate the characteristic. It is essential to who I am.  And then the questions and contemplation flowed freely:

How can I be intertwined with, proven, or identified by, things that tick on without me? Back in the day, I thought San Francisco was who I was. Being an SFer was so integral to my identity, it was simply so me,  that to say out loud, “SF is who I am”,  just felt ‘right’ in my heart. But the is truth that I left San Francisco and on it ticked. Businesses still ran, folks continued to live our their lives, the sun rose and fell on the city, even when I was no longer there. I will leave this body, and though the aggregates will change form, they will tick on. This body will tick on without me after I am gone.

Moreover, while I was in SF its not like I controlled the city, that I got it to do my bidding –just look at the drugs and homelessness and high taxes as evidence that the city was never mine to command. Just so, I don’t control this body even while it is where I abide, if I did I wouldn’t be standing in front of the mirror, doing  the same rituals over and over, to slow the sag and reverse the wrinkle.

How can I be intertwined with, proven, or identified by things when after we part ways, I tick on? Now that I have left SF, I live somewhere else, I am something, somebody, else. The city doesn’t define me anymore, just as I never did define it.  When I leave this body, it will no longer define me. SF went its way and I went mine.  One day, this body will go its way and I will go mine.

When I moved to NY, the pain, the despair was born out of the fact that I believed I lost not just my home, but who I was. By loosing SF, I lost my identity. All the time I lived in SF the  proof  that it wasn’t really “who I am” was clear –after all, I didn’t control the place — but I was able to ignore this proof and pretend that SF defined me. But when I moved, claiming the identity of an SFer strained credulity  too much. The claim of mineness, me-ness, while always a stretch was finally beyond believable, even to my fibbing mind.

SF was, of course, always just a place I lived. Just like my body is a place I live. Still, I let things like where I live, the job I do, the family and friend roles I have, define me. These passing things, that eventually tick on without me, that I eventually tick on without, I pretend to be an essential  aspect of my identity. But the truth is, its not who I am, or  I wouldn’t now be something else. Eventually, I got over the loss of countless  old cities, old jobs, old lovers, long dead family and friends, retired hobbies. I have grown different and my heart has separated from what I once held dear . The pain and loss of  all those old instances fades and I  find myself inventing new ‘who I ams’ to replace the old, queuing up the shit that will cause me pain down the road.

I don’t see if something were really  ‘who I am’, essential to being ‘me’, I wouldn’t be able to go on without it. If beauty were who I was, I wouldn’t be able to tick on as I grow old, fat, have bad hair and skin days. I don’t see that there is no way to get the characteristics of things that aren’t who I am to reflect me. Afterall, how can I hope for success  BEING BEAUTIFUL, assuming that identity, when I  use an uglifying object –this body– to achieve being the pretty me I want to be.

I suffer with each sag, with each pound, through each pyrrhic morning beauty ritual, as my body reminds me, on the daily, that it can’t prove me. It can’t represent me. It can’t be me and I can’t be it. I suffer because each wrinkle, stray hair, extra pound, is a further stain of the credulity of my hollow body claims. “I am SF” an old voice used to whisper in my head. But then I left and SF went tickin on without me. I went tickin on without it. “I am this body, and I am beautiful” whispers a voice in my head as I stare in the mirror. But one of these days, this body will tick on without me and, quite possibly before it does so there will be no beauty in it left to claim. And I, with a new future birth, a new form, a new name, all the new things I claim in service of the new ‘who I am’,  will tick on without this body, queuing up the new shit that will cause me pain down the road.