Who Not to Wear

The conference room lectured me when I walked in.

"Not good enough"

"Not smart enough"

"Not well dressed enough"

I was fine with the first two; I've lived with my neuroses long enough to know that a quick 'glass of milk and cookie and off to bed with you' was enough to sate their endless need for attention. The last one though, *that* pissed me off.

Who are *they* to judge how I dress. Who am *I* to judge how I dress. And they told two friends, and they told two friends and so on, and so on.

Party time. Little, fragile, non-existent ego got on its high horse and went for a gallop. One hand stayed on the reigns, and the other draped everything in duality.

Their Versace versus my verisimilitude.

Their black and white view of reality versus my superior, color-visioned, extra-spiritual-value-added wonder perspective. (Patented)

Grace again.

The mundane took shape over the next eight hours, and wobbled around the room, occasionally poking me in the ribs for reaction, but mostly happy to let me float in and out of detachment. The last trip down the rabbit hole, like a good productive cough, produced the needed results. But it started like this:

Who Not to Wear?

Take all the roles, projections, actors, stooges, non-integrated pieces, shadow-selves, id-bits, psychological backwash - in short, everything that apparently made 'me' me, and put them back on the rack. (This was clearly *off* the rack stuff).

FatherPoetMysticMusicianRunnerProjectManagerHusbandFriendLoverRegrettorBrotherSonEmbarrasment
GloriousLightSoporificoBlissJealousSlackAssCulturalCreative
NobodySomebodyBothSomebodyandNobody

And the carpet lit up like a giant Tibetan Mandela;
Altar at the far end - see?

And I stood looking at the rack, flipping through the 'choices', and realized that there were some additions: all the roles I was putting on the others in the room.

And it was clear: there was no separation on the rack; the ego's masquerade ball was all clothed with this off-the-rack-shit. 'Their roles', 'my' roles, all melded into one big curtain...

And I, the wizard, stood on this side of it, waiting for it to be pulled back so the room could see me in all my glory.

So:

Queue music, pull the curtain back, and Witness the ultimate Know-joke:

What can you hear before hearing; see before seeing; feel before feeling, and know before knowing?

Nothing.

Get it?

No thing.

Just This.

This, with no-one to wear.