I smile at myself in the mirror and look pretty.
In the dressing room of a store, I make the same faces
And what I see is not my usual smile but me looking puzzled from the side.
Before the bathroom mirror, I make a move and see it happen.
In the dressing room’s three-way mirror, watching myself move is like watching someone else.
What I feel is disconnected from what I see.
It's not just like watching another person. I am not disconcerted or made nauseous or anything by other people, thank goodness.
Other people don't surprise me, no matter how they are.
But everything I do in front of that mirror surprises me. I can't control it. I can't even stay still. I fix the face in the middle mirror and--op!--there goes the figure on the side.
It's not just like watching another person. I am not disconcerted or made nauseous or anything by other people, thank goodness.
Other people don't surprise me, no matter how they are.
But everything I do in front of that mirror surprises me. I can't control it. I can't even stay still. I fix the face in the middle mirror and--op!--there goes the figure on the side.
It's like seeing someone else where I am supposed to be.
So this is what most people see of me all the time, I think.
Reflected in the minds of others.
The only time I look the way I do when I stand facing myself head-on before the mirror is when I’m standing, facing myself head-on, before the mirror.
A sense of cluelessness, of having no idea
In face of a huge, smothering idea and a world of infinite clues.
A sense that the thing not understood surrounds me from all directions, at all times, and that I'm just glimpsing it.
It won't stay still long enough for me to even look at it; it changes every time I move, every time I breathe; I can't catch it.
This skiddish reflection is only the surface of this unknown. I am on the surface of the surface of the surface of the surface of the surface...
The dressing-room mirrors are not arranged opposite each other to make their reflections go on and on,
But the hidden mirrors are exactly that way.
I leave the dressing room and leave the reflection behind.
I take the rest with me: the infinite unknown.
Yet the world stops shimmering.
I walk out of the store clothed in a new black box and getting along fine,
Content with the smidgen of knowledge, still and sure and certain, that a few people are in love with whatever they see
When they look at me.
In face of a huge, smothering idea and a world of infinite clues.
A sense that the thing not understood surrounds me from all directions, at all times, and that I'm just glimpsing it.
It won't stay still long enough for me to even look at it; it changes every time I move, every time I breathe; I can't catch it.
This skiddish reflection is only the surface of this unknown. I am on the surface of the surface of the surface of the surface of the surface...
The dressing-room mirrors are not arranged opposite each other to make their reflections go on and on,
But the hidden mirrors are exactly that way.
I leave the dressing room and leave the reflection behind.
I take the rest with me: the infinite unknown.
Yet the world stops shimmering.
I walk out of the store clothed in a new black box and getting along fine,
Content with the smidgen of knowledge, still and sure and certain, that a few people are in love with whatever they see
When they look at me.
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