Being a Bowl of Petunias.

Somebody came to my blog tonight by searching ‘are sensitive souls old souls?’ I’m sure it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it had me remembering the recurring dream I had throughout my childhood, which I later interpreted as a memory of not having wanted to be born.

It seems I knew what Douglas Adams’s bowl of petunias meant when it said ‘Oh no, not again’ as it hurtled under gravity towards the surface of the planet. It seems I knew I was in for a life of endlessly climbing mountains, only to endlessly keep falling off them into a pit of sludge. And all because I have to feel. If I don’t feel, I suffocate.

And then I remembered the only portrait I have of me as a baby. The eyes are cold, piercing, observant, disconnected. And I remembered my mother telling me that my eyes used to follow her around the room, and the look in them would give her the shudders.

I have lots of pictures of me as a young child, and it’s notable that the only smiles I managed were mocking, artificial ones. I was about eight before I managed to smile naturally for the camera. Maybe I was resigned to my fate by then, because it was at that age or thereabouts that the search for meaning, purpose, and the perfect connection began.

I never did become very good at smiling for the camera. Cameras are things to be stared at and challenged. It was a look I encouraged among the models who came to audition for my wife’s model agency when I was a photographer – simply because it suited my nature. But I’m digressing.

Well, why not? This is one of those rambling late night posts where I'm talking to myself, not anybody else, so do ignore it. And it’s more about reflection than ego.

But, oh to feel again; to set the spark spinning madly in the cornucopia of delights. But what of the demons which lurk there, hidden beneath the sweetmeats? What of them?