Living through my interior.

This summer

This summer, I have surrendered myself to a comfy and creative Cali living. A life where family is close and provides sweet Mangos, elite Persian food, and occasional talks scolding me for my troublesome international squabbles.

Discussions about travel, career, school, friends, music, abstract expressionism, the Iranian regime, excessive cannabis use amongst privileged Cali youth, war in the Middle East, Elon, and the fictional idea of me getting a master’s degree.

Where the home is modern, spacious, and exuding feng shui, I am painting every day. Making music every day. Drinking your median Kirkland coffee every morning. I have introduced dates to my tea-side diet thanks to a recent trip to Saudi. I have stopped answering texts on time and began entering states of perpetual flow much quicker than ever before. I spend hours painting colorful retro sci-fi abstract art; hours pass, and my right hand burns in awkward areas (95% sure I have carpal tunnel right now).

This year feels different. Both in how I create and the look in my eyes. My intuition or gut has taken hold of my mind’s steering. The brain and heart serve less of a purpose nowadays. This era of my life seems to run on conviction and grit brought forth by an intuition sold on its intricate perception of people, culture, and fate.

The creative fire is burning hotter than ever, and I don’t feel the same as before. My mental life took several jagged twists over a tight period thanks to the global circuit I’m on – airplanes, sadness, sleep deprivation, degenerate college activities, music, and a mix of many other things. Now, I have centered my plane. I feel grounded and filled with purpose.

Man in the mirror

I make my normal walk to the bathroom sink to brush my teeth. I look in front of me, confronting what appears to be a male human figure in the glass. Or at least quickly remembering ‘this’ is who ‘I’ am and this is how I appear to other people. My gaze pierces through the skin, silhouettes, and racial paradigms. This particular gaze processed how a reflection would feel on psilocybin but with far less intensity; a sober ego meltdown but with a comforting reaction.

I do not look at my face to validate a beauty standard, pose, or ego. I don’t even notice my eyebrows there or my beard growing into a thick bush. I look into myself and realize I have been gazing into a different self for several weeks now. The person in front of me feels very real and honest. There is no face or character drawn by infinite lines or infinite thoughts. I am no longer a meat and bone-comprised being asking to be anthropomorphized or receive empathy for its mere existence.

No aesthetic feature or physical attribute stands between me and my understanding of the self. I no longer look at myself and see a person that should be judged, scored, and categorized. I barely see a biological creature. And rarely see me in the form of a human product used for social gain, monetary exploitation, and comparison. I am nothing but a ball of energy and force to be directed. I have simplified my vision to register the core essence of people and things. Reduction frees my mind and its bandwidth to spend more time developing a taste and comprehending purpose (the direction of this energy).

For now, my brightest moments reflect my exposed interior. Inside-out is how I choose to live and what the mirror taught me through my gaze. I have learned to be myself and sink into the character, the showman, the poet, the loser, the rebel, and the dreamer.

Eyes speak to us. The way I see myself changes my behavior and priorities. I do not need to curate my appearance for anyone because my art is too real and loud in my head.

My external beauty and swagger is distributed amongst the paintings I speedrun at 4 AM and the immersive rockstar anthems I produce and store on my Macbook. I rarely think or act on optimizing my face. I sense an aura that took 21 years to cultivate. All the junk references and voices in the background have finally begun fading away.

Lookin’ the part

To have a career or image, they say you must “look the part”. But, I feel as though optimizing looks is superficial, silly, and prone to vulnerability. Anyone can go to the thrift store or shop for designer garments to cope with their poorly saturated mindscape or Instagram gap analysis. In my book, attaching to a higher self defeats attaching to brands and look comparison games.

The market wants heroes to champion brands and comparisons. So the general populace naturally folds under this newly constructed multiplayer game: a Western concoction run by social media algorithms.

However, I will concede that beauty is a natural variable we seek to optimize. We look for beauty and construct its definition on a daily basis. Sometimes, uniforms, suits, and dresses do speak to a standard that is okay and not spiritually toxic. Some people accomplish tasks better by looking the part; for these folks, I do not see harm in their conformity and aesthetic-driven activities.

And. There are people who take beauty and fashion and mold it into an art form.

I am not one of those people, and I would argue that these folks are more rare than you’d think.

Some people with privileges tend to lean on how they look and appear to look rather than mastering a hobby or actually being someone beyond the product of numerous media and brand associations. They never internalize greatness because consumerism and being shallow is a low-hanging fruit that fills the soul’s appetite.

I am not one to judge as I understand the pressure people put on themselves – through the excuse of ‘society’ – to come off a certain way. I just love it when people choose to understand their core selves and live in a more honest way.