Caught You Looking

Mirrors mirrors on the walls . . .

Catching fleeting glimpses of myself doing things that I have never before been able to see is unnerving. Unsettling. I feel like a voyeur of my own life. I, like many others I suppose, am uncomfortable with myself. I cringe when I hear recordings of my voice. Photographs rarely come close to capturing who I feel that I am. I would probably run screaming into the woods never to return should I ever get caught on film during sex. It's not that I carry a bad image of myself. I just prefer to see myself through your eyes than through my own.

So I face the mirrors and look above myself. I focus on a spot beyond where I am. I can see myself but am not the central image. I am one of many. I can work this way. Then I realize that I have done the same with you. Only occasionally do I look straight at you. Take your gaze. Create a oneness. I now recall that you have never looked away. You have met the gaze but haven't challenged it. You have accepted it and, allowed it to go its merry way when I needed to change my focus. You have been patient. And gentle.

There are so many reflections. Many types of reflections. Reflections upon reflections. Reflecting light. Reflecting Sound. Bats use sound waves to situate themselves. They send out signals that bounce back to them. The faster the signals are reflected back, the closer the object is. There must be a physical sensation/feeling attached to these signals. Wouldn't the bat need to 'know' if the surface is hard or soft. If the fruit is ripe or not? Otherwise, this navigational system would be too simple. Unelegant. When the natural world appears unelegant I tend to think that it's my perception that's flawed. I'm missing a piece of the big picture.

Memory is a reflection. So are moods. Emotions. Thoughts. We sit. We reflect. We reflect upon our world. We reflect upon our moods. Ourselves. These reflections feel incomplete. That perhaps we are only acknowledging part of what is being reflected our way. We see the reflection. Or touch it. Smell it. But we don't fully experience it. Actually, at some level we must be experiencing it fully. We just aren't aware of it. We stop at the image and get scared. Scared that someone else might be there. Looking.