Abstract
In the following collection of personal essays, I explore and illustrate my own history, relationships and objects of fascination to suggest truths about the nature of the self, the body, and performance. I draw connections between my family's eccentric relationship with the ranch I grew up on and my own relationship with beauty, idealism, self-consciousness, and the body. I posit the self as a construct bound to the whims of our imaginations and challenged by the limits of our own physical bodies. Ultimately, I explore how the forces we cannot control affect our fantasies, self-awareness, and the performances we so deeply wish to direct and determine.