Chapter 2: Current View of the Self

The image below represents the combination of the past and the present. Using a picture from my youth combined with a picture taken of myself earlier this year, it's astounding to see how different I am! There are the rather mundane things, my skin appears lighter, and I've obviously grown into my face. However, I notice a clear difference in my personality by just looking at these pictures. The little girl is shy, looking at the camera (probably because she is forced to), waiting for it to be over, barley smiling. As a woman behind her, I stand with undying confidence, wearing sunglasses and posing in a public restaurant, clearly flaunting and slightly obnoxiously basking in the glow of my sense of self.

  

This video is my second piece. I am performing one of Portia's monologues from Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." The theme I wanted to explore here was the "thought," or that of the internal monologue. In other words, what is the character thinking during each line? When does her thought change? Where is she in said moment? To make the work aesthetically pleasing, I decided to use Photobooth's effects. These effects also represent the different mindset the actor explores when creating the monologue. The top sections, representing the Id and the Ego, the bottom sections representing the Superego and (most importantly), the grounded aspects of the physical body. 

                                            MY SPIRITUAL WOK: MEDITATION 

"Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there - buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day." - Deepak Chopra.

I was astounded when I meditated. For only 15 minutes, I sat, legs folded, in absolute, silence. What I thought would be a rather seamless experience ended up being something entirely different. I connected within myself and began to realize every flaw that I wish to change about myself. "I'm too this, I'm too that, I'm not enough of this, I'm not enough of that." As the tears began to overflow, I realized that my thoughts were influencing my experience. I was choosing to believe negative thoughts, making this meditation much more stressful and dramatic than it needed or should've been in the first place. With this change of mind, and heart, the remaining 4 minutes of meditation transported me to a rather peaceful place. I began to think of my friends, my family, my passions. It's as if my life flashed before my eyes. I don't know if 
there's an exact science to meditation, but I really enjoyed my experience. 

This image was one I took while on vacation in Thailand, last summer. It is the Thai Buddha, a figure of undying peace and strength in which they worship: 

                                               MY ADDED MODULE: 

I added this section to my module. The blue pipe cleaners represent my own self's connection to my cosmic cousins, as represented by the grounded clay. The yellow pipe cleaners, if the observer is viewing the module from the back, represents our influences in society that stem from the past (representing from Egypt and Mesopotamia as seen in Religion, Culture, and Art.) If the observer would move around and view this object from the front, they would see pink pipe cleaners stemming from the top representing our future. My goal for this model was to incorporate the past, present and future in relation to the self, proving that we cannot, as a society, as our selves, move on into the future without influences of the past. They define us as a people. To return to my theme from the first chapter, we are all connected, and in no clearer was is this connection depicted than by this module!