Sincerity doesn't seem like something many people are capable of anymore.

I am sincere because I want people to know who I really am. But sometimes we aren't suppose to show certain parts of ourselves; it isn't acceptable. So I often find myself hiding. And I am sick of trying/pretending to be something or someone that I'm not.

I already wear my heart on my sleeve as much as I can. I bear my soul to the world on this blog. So why do I feel so fake?

Because I am surrounded by fake people. Not everyone, but many. Or maybe they are real. It doesn't matter. What I think of them doesn't matter because they are they, and I am I. And while I want to know them, understand them, feel what they feel, what really matters right now is how I feel. And how I can feel better. This is because I am alone in my room, on a Saturday night, after eating way too much, and watching a movie that should have made me cry more than it did.
And I am thinking about the beautiful sun hitting the body and feathers of the bird on the pier in Illwaco.
I am thinking about how it made me feel.
I never thought I would stop photographing it.
I stared into the lifeless eye, still attached to the beak, which were both disconnected from the rest of the twisted form.
I wondered if it was bad to find this beautiful; to invade its space and capture the sun glinting off the feathers with my camera.
But this body held a soul once, and it, laying there discarded, made me find some peace in death. Because the life was gone from the eye (the eye that no longer had any function, of seeing, of perceiving), but the life was not gone, because the story of the bird played backward in my mind. It lifted from the strip of man-made land and struggled through the air, taking back its last breaths, and moving toward its first. It got stronger and stronger and landing on the post of the dock, with the others for the last time... for the first time. It lifted off, again backward and flew back home. It lived its whole life again. A life, a mind, a will. Just like me.
Now, the body, soaking the sun, rewarded for carrying the soul.
and the soul, somewhere else. A new body. A heaven. Surrounding me. Or scattered across the universe. I don't know which, or whether it is something else. But I do know somehow that the things those empty eyes have seen will never be forgotten. Even if I am the only to remember.