Wednesday, March 12, 2014

My Search for the Ideal 'Selfie'



I hate this new word selfie. The word is too cute. Cute, like the adorable mobile phones creating these mercilessly Facebook-likeable visuals.

 Technology today is too small for my hands, too tiny for my ageing eyes... obviously designed for the young and delicate. Selfies are for this world of instantaneous perfection, ephemeral... a whisper into the silky ear of a lover.

Phone cameras are too good, making too many master artisan, who turn out too many delectable temptations... scrumptious dinner images, voluptuous landscapes, and forever loveable pets. I too want my own selfie to be adorable, a transcendant irreversible documentation of mouth-watering masculinity.

Is that too much to ask?

If sexy is no longer applicable, what then should I shoot for? ... Professorially professional? Rugged ageing woodsman? Perhaps what the Japanese call Romancing Gray... that financially stable womanizer... a generous Epicurean of fine pleasures. All seem off, if partially true. Tempting self-endearment, suspended disbelief.

What exactly am I trying to express with a head tilt and a glaring glance into the camera? Surely not the self I feel, nor remember, from years of shaving in the mirror. Should I embrace the chaos, the frailty of each moment? None of it, all of it, me. Larger than life itself and really just a selfie.

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