third-person is a storytelling exercise focusing on perception, description and that one burning question we always seem to ask: "when people look at me, what do they see?"

it was conceived one sunny saturday afternoon on a park bench at the end of a street between the pacific ocean and an outdoor strip mall. there at the intersection of ocean boulevard and second street, one girl sat, waiting. the scene around her was almost too much for her senses. she wanted to inhale it all in, the smells and sights and feelings. so she sat, with an open notebook on her lap and a black pilot v-ball in her hand, and wrote.

she sat, terribly self-conscious and nervous, but also incredibly aware and in awe. she sat, and she wondered -- what it might be like to be that homeless person sitting on the bench beside her, how it must feel to walk down the boulevard juggling arms-full of j. crew and anthropologie shopping bags, who would next step out of the big blue bus and onto the hot pavement.

she found herself staring, until a thought interrupted her: someone, somewhere, sometime could be staring at her, too. someone could be watching her, right then and there, wondering what she was doing there, on that bench, at that intersection, watching intently and writing furiously in that square black book.

maybe someone was. maybe someone still is. maybe that someone is me.

third-person is a view of my life i've never taken before, one from the outside looking on. not in my head or through my soul. just there. on the surface. in plain view. for all the world to see.