{"id":490,"date":"2023-03-11T23:32:34","date_gmt":"2023-03-11T23:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danortega.art\/?p=490"},"modified":"2025-07-29T20:18:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T20:18:43","slug":"self-portrait-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/?p=490","title":{"rendered":"The Lattice Where I Lost Myself"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1180\" height=\"1600\" src=\"https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1031\" srcset=\"https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373.png 1180w, https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373-755x1024.png 755w, https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373-768x1041.png 768w, https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373-1133x1536.png 1133w, https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373-300x407.png 300w, https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373-850x1153.png 850w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1180px) 100vw, 1180px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Mixed media on gesso.  12&#215;17<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cThe Lattice Where I Lost Myself\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was once a man who tried to hide from his own reflection\u2014not out of shame, but because his reflection had begun to speak in a dialect he never learned. The man, whose name changed hourly depending on who remembered him, constructed a tower\u2014not of stone, but of pixelated hesitations and emotional residue. Each layer was a moment he almost said something honest, then stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One night, in the middle of an artificial forest swirling with chlorophyll logic and copper regrets, he stepped inside the tower and removed himself, one slice at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First his hair. Then his stare. Then his misremembered arguments.<br>Each piece was pressed into the layers you see now\u2014interrupted by coral scars that held what couldn\u2019t be filed: <em>impulse, muscle memory, and unresolved laughter<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The green matrix wasn\u2019t paint. It was thought in fluid form, the atmosphere of the memory-architecture he forgot to dismantle. It moved. It still moves. You can feel it watching you, slightly, gently questioning your commitment to being whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The face? Yes, it\u2019s his. Or mine. Or yours. Depends on when you\u2019re asking.<br>It was never finished. That was the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If this painting flickers when you pass it, do not turn. It is just the tower remembering that you, too, have skipped parts of yourself. That you, too, are layered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And it is waiting to file you in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe Lattice Where I Lost Myself\u201d There was once a man who tried to hide from his own reflection\u2014not out of shame, but because his reflection had begun to speak in a dialect he never learned. The man, whose name changed hourly depending on who remembered him, constructed a tower\u2014not of stone, but of pixelated&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-series-2"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/self-4-e1752793283373.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1848,"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/1848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danortega.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}