The shadows of our daily lives obscure the great questions. When was the last time you thought about the nature of God? Does God exist? What are the limits of the Universe? Does it ever end? What was there before the beginning? What happens when we die? Where do you go? All your ideas, memories, feelings, desires, dreams, and thoughts? What happens to you? Yourself. That one being which is largely unexplored. There are places in the world still where Man has yet to set foot. Still, Yourself, remain largely unexplored.

     Look at the mirror. Your particular eyes. Your variety of nose. Your crooked smile. Your structured face. Your thoughts. Your perception of that face. Your perception of your thoughts as they flare into existence. Yourself. What do you know about yourself?

     Ha, yourself. Ha, how little do you know about yourself. Ha. Ha, that you never recognized the reason to relish on the everyday. New world, ha-ha. There's no one in this place like yourself. Your face opens like a ripe fruit. Yourself opens like a star being born. Infinite possibilities. Of Love. Of Thought. Of Images. Of Behavior. Of Experience. Of Personality. Of Action.

     Why do some throw it all away? Death by hanging. Blowing their brains away. Ingesting fatal toxins. In the depths of their dispair they're blind to the stake of the self. From one moment to the next, you invent yourself, you recalculate yourself, you reimagine yourself, you transcend yourself. You're staring at one of the ultimate mysteries: Yourself.

     It's not about narcissism. We're not concerned with just the surface here. Not concerned with whether you're beautiful or disfigured. We're considering what lies beyond: actions, thoughts, feelings, instincts, beliefs. The flesh will return to the soil from which it came. Gorgeous faces and scared ones alike will all end the same in the end--mush in the earth. Yourself--that's another matter.

     Albert Einstein. Jesus. William Shakespeare. Joan Of Arc. Plato. Pablo Picasso. Salvador Dali. Mohandas Gandhi. John Lennon. Rainer Maria Rilke. Jorge Luis Borges. Michaelangelo. The list goes on--all were themselves. From different ethnicities. From different eras. From different ranges of feeling, understanding and being. All themselves and gone. Their miracle once was and what we experience in the now of them is the trail they left behind.

     Don't care what anybody thinks or says. Whoever you are. Whenever you are. Wherever you are. You are yourself. And the premise lies therein for you to build upon the being that faces back at you in the mirror. What actions will you take? What images will you give meaning to? What lives will you touch? What desires will you pursue? What trail will you leave behind? What kind of ghost do you want to be?

     I. I'm Armando Valle. Who will you be?