It's five to midnight; I should be getting to sleep or making some kind of effort with the mound of books and papers beside my bed. But I came across a friend's blog and thought about how much I like reading the few blogs I've been exposed to, and how good ones give me blog-envy every time. I've never been good at diarising, but this is Diarising For the Narcissist, and that I can manage.
Hence my name: SolipSister. It's a name I've been using for quite awhile in correspondence with a particular friend who imagines he is my brother (or Brie-Other, a sort of abject French cheese). I was saddened to find there's already a SolipSister on Blogger - the internet is great for making you realise you've never had an original thought in your life and the whole world is one big indifferent pastiche. But it's also exciting, in some ways, the unlikely connections and networks you watch unfurl before your very eyes.
Should I post photos here? The most recent photo I was sent was taken by my aforementioned friend, and it was of some mutual friends of ours - a couple. In place of the actual photo, I will describe its contents: a bedful of ruffled sheets. A man forms a vertical line in the middle of the shot, his body visible from the waist up, hairy, bearded, with arms behind his head and a very direct stare. A woman lies horizontally on the right hand side, resting her elbow on his body with her legs curled up and and her gaze fixed squarely on the photographer. Brie-Other took this picture the morning after having shared a room with the couple during a festival. Interestingly, it is not his first foray into erotic photography, having captured me and my partner early this year, a few days before I moved abroad. It was at that point in the relationship where you don't care if there are spectators, you must savour your time together. The three of us were camped on the floor of my (by this time empty, except for a mattress) bedroom, having slept off the farewell drinks of the night before, and our Third Wheel clicked away on his camera as we greeted the morning of our third-last day together. The results were quite good. After seeing his most recent work, I suggested that he open an exhibition entitled: "Moments Outside Erotica: Third Wheel Perspectives". Now if his study grant fails to come through, there's his plan B.
