Who I Am

if you think you know who i am, you are sadly mistaken, my poor deluded friend / you see only the stuffed-shirt academic in his middle-age geek attire, so you assume that I am as I appear / but my uniform is there to throw off those denizens of this staid and sterile universe who mistakenly believe that it is wardrobe alone that makes the man, and that a man is nothing more than what he appears to be /

if i bore you with my penny loafers, oxford shirts, and close cropped head, it's because that is what i choose to do...but don't assume that it reflects who or what I am / i am much more than my discount j.c. penny's ensemble would ever lead you to imagine / no mere teacher of philosophy or caretaker of troubled freshpersons or concerned molloy colleague or stodgy franklin square family man or reader of dull biographies of old dead dudes am i / that is all smoke and mirrors...a calculated mirage to throw off the "american idol" crowd (sorry "american idol" fans!) /

• i am more than you could know and less than I ever hoped to be / i am the alpha and omega of human experience...


• i was slimed in the River Ganges and baptized in the ashes of rotting corpses...


• i have drunk the nectar of human ecstasy and found it unsettled my stomach...


• i have had my heart ripped out and stomped upon only to find it born anew within me...


• i have watched the northern lights rise and fall in my prime and still desired yet another toast to youthful exhuberence...


• i have eaten dangerous books whole and had their wisdom enter my nervous system tearing it to shreds...


• i am iago and cassius, so tread lightly around me...


• i was there when christ was crucified on the cross but chose instead to lounge on the riverbed with the sleeping buddha.


• i have settled for less than i deserved and deserve much less than i have received from life...


• the art that i have created lies buried deep within me, so none will never see it...

i am a stranger in a cotton candy land who hates cotton candy, and that, my dear friends, is the crux of my problem.

[note: i chose to answer this question in my own way...basically by not telling you anything about myself and making that the point of my blog entry. my goal here is to show you that there is no right or wrong way to capture who you are in writing or art...just try to be yourself and follow your own inner genius!]