Paint and Pixels

I have not, therefore, I am not.
My camera is absent. I have not officially declared it as "lost" or "gone" yet, because I still have some hope that it will turn up. I don't feel guilty about misplacing it, because I don't think that I was handling it irresponsibly. I just supernaturally… perhaps divinely… disappeared without a trace. Oddly enough, this happens to my things all of the time. If this phenomenon is, in fact, controlled by a divine power, than God is probably messing with me in order to show me how UNdivine I am.
Having to live without my camera has shed some light on the fact that I am insanely addicted to material things. I thrive on material things and they create my identity. Without something substantial to define who I am, I am nothing. Without a camera to document my experiences, the experiences aren't even worth having to me. Without something tangible to memorialize a characteristic of myself, I am not sure it even exists. I have been aware of this character flaw for a while, even though I try to deny and ignore it. Refer back to the blog entitled "I can't get no satisfaction". Shortly after I wrote that blog, my art bag (with every art supply I ever owned in it) got stolen out of my car while we were staying in a hotel on our move back to Colorado. I didn't write about that event or tell many people about it, because it was too painful and devastating to me at the time. Without an airbrush, and paint tubes, and paint brushes, and drop clothes, and messy apron, I am not really an artist. I am slowly replacing each one of those items… and slowly buying myself back.
Even my blogging is, in a way, a physical thing that I use to create who I am. Even though, in essence, a blog is only a pattern of glowing pixels, it is tangible in a very visual sense, especially myspace. If I didn't have a myspace profile, I would not know who I was. I would not know "about me" or "who I want want to meet" or my "general interests" or even my zodiac sign.
My dependency on material possessions is why I am so human. I have a body and eyes and nose and hands, and they make me who I am. When you are content to have your identity being defined by your spirit, that is divine. That is what I wish I wanted to strive for… but I don't. I wish I could find my camera.