"Travelogues, diaries, and other first-person documents also represent ways of talking to the self, of making sense out of countless experiences we must integrate if our daily lives are to have meaning. Even though this kind of writing may appear to be private, intended only for ourselves, we find the "sense" of what we write in a context shaped by others. We write to remember and to organize our lives, necessary functions of living in societies."

[Erika Lindemann] A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers)

"Human beings are part of the whole called by us 'Universe,' each a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." --Albert Einstein

I am who I am...the offspring of an intriguing union between two souls. I am a living portrait, a visual representation of the human family--I am You.

I am who I am...a fully formatted, functioning, breathing being with ideas, views, opinions, wants, needs...still trying to discover and capture within myself the ethereal human qualities of love, passion, happiness, lust.

I am who I am...but there are so many layers of me which, should you try to interpret them, would be an enterprise doomed to failure.

I am who I am...a contrary being filled with ironies; a battlefield within and without myself; ever evolving on my travels upon life's curious route. Taught at an early age to carve a life out for myself I've found rather, that life has carved me out...a human portrait, a representation ofyou.

I am one part of a whole among our exotic human tribe. I am who I am...a living, human portrait, a visual representation of you.