introduceyourself

It's hard to say lots of facts and stuff about yourself when you're trying to slough off all of those identification markers and ways to hold onto an idea of what you're supposed to be. Are the facts who I am--female, Western-raised, twentysomething, physical attributes and chronological happenings? Or thoughts and feelings and ephemeral things--introverted, luminous, self-doubtful, inquisitive? Or, y'know, absolutely none of that because am I the parts that change, or the part that stays the same?
Eh, you can probably tell a lot about me just by that first bit, wibbly and wobbly and not exactly concrete though it was.

Hey, hi, hello, my name is Kathryn. I enjoy words a lot, and I like people. I live in Virginia, and I care about bodies, mostly. I just got certified in massage therapy and seriously, bodies are the coolest things. The way the outside world affects your insides and creates your version of reality is really fascinating. My voice hits your ears and vibrates hairs and bones inside of your ear to get decoded in your brain. My touch activates nerve endings in your skin to flash and sizzle up into your brain--sensational, really. Your eyes bring in information through cones and rods and then flip that information so that it's right side up and then your brain can make sense of it. Then how information is stored in your muscles, in your body, how you carry your idea of the world in the very sinew of your flesh. The world actually does exist inside of you--and there's no such thing as reality without you. And, besides, touch feels great.

Sometimes, when my thoughts are this large, it's hard to really see the importance of cleaning my room. Sometimes, when my feelings take up all of my heart and stomach and gut, it's difficult to do homework in a coffee shop when there is a very brooding and attractive person scribbling into notebooks. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I prefer the woe-is-me attitude of hopeless romantic or bruised & broken artist-mystic. And, even when all of those things are the case, I'm pretty sure that everything is actually all right and it's just my idea of how I'm supposed to be devastatingly perfect that's making me feel bad, not just... regular reality.

Anyway, I'll probably write a mostly of these types of things. I like learning things through social/sexual/self interactions, and it'll be pretty Buddhist in nature. Hopefully I'll post pictures and bits of my art or other fun things so it's not just a bunch of my words floating around. I'm excited to be in this community and learn more and share more, and now this is starting to sound like a résumé which is not exactly what I'm going for so I'll just close with some pictures because everybody likes looking at things.

(that is a picture of Marshall Mathers in an Alf shirt, in case you didn't know).

(and this is a very good picture of me from 3 years ago. I don't have pictures taken that often, but I still essentially look like this, at least when the angle is just right and faces and stuff.)