Eyes vs. Hair

My girlfriend has mentioned on numerous occasions that she thinks I like to look in the mirror. I suppose that’s true, and I’m trying to figure out it if is more a product of vanity or curiosity. I have to tell you: I like the color of my eyes. Or maybe I should say the colors of my eyes. Sometimes pale blue, sometimes greenish or “aquamarine” as someone once said, sometimes speckled and grayish. I hate the fact that Word’s spellcheck just changed my spelling of greyish to “grayish.” I hate gray with an A. And it has everything to do with appearance. So now Microsoft is telling me what color my eyes are.

The more I think about my eyes, the more I realize (real eyes) that maybe I like them because other people have told me that they like them. One of them was a former Seagal and former girlfriend of my uncle. I was about 11, and I didn’t take compliments well. I told her that it might be because my contacts have a very slight blueish tint. The tint really doesn’t change the color at all. My mom intervened and told me I should just say “Thanks” and take the compliment. She may have saved me from later dating disasters. Lesson number one: if someone compliments your appearance, don’t explain why you may actually be less attractive than you appear. There is no reason to point out that throbbing zit on your chin. It has been noticed or not. Not is better and still a possibility if you don’t point it out.

Once, I was talking to two friends. We were discussing the features we found attractive in other people, and one friend and I immediately said “eyes.” It seemed like a no-brainer. The third, however, said she was attracted to hair and didn’t think much about eyes. It seemed odd to me somehow. Aren’t the eyes the most important? Isn’t that where you can read someone best? But she pointed out that both of us who had said “eyes” had “beautiful eyes.” The third had rather squinty eyes and were a color I don’t think I actually ever saw. But she had long, thick hair.

Really, I should not like my eyes very much. They don’t work properly. Without my contacts or glasses, I cannot read a normal-sized book unless it is less than 5 inches from my face. In public, I would never recognize anyone I knew until they were less than 10 feet from me. This could lead to bitter misunderstandings and hurt feelings. But for some reason, I am not ashamed of this defect because other people can’t see my myopia. I suppose people who are blind from birth form their self-image in other ways. That could be good or bad, I suppose, depending on whether they are surrounded by assholes or by loving relatives.

Reflection on writing on reflection

I’ve had teachers say, “reflect on it in writing.” I’ve written similar things on papers my students turn in to me. Sometimes I think I know what it means, that somehow seeing my thoughts on paper—seeing my thoughts on paper (that’s not really what it is)—is a reflection. That I am somehow looking at myself as my thoughts appear on paper. But once they are on paper, they aren’t really my thoughts. They are words, which are like thoughts, but not perfectly.

I cannot really translate my thoughts well. They are, shall we say, “multimedia.” There are songs and layers and images and ticking noises and slideshows and fragmented videos and people that meld together and even dancing midgets and talking monkeys sometimes. Sometimes they leak and ooze and freeze and explode or rot. Sometimes they simply disappear. Sometimes they are in Spanish. No, these “thoughts” on paper are not really my thoughts. I am far more scattered. Asi es la vida.

And much of the time, this paper is not even paper. If I could feed leaves through my printer without totally fucking it up, I would put my thoughts on leaves, my non-thoughts on leaves or maybe rocks. Then my thoughts could literally blow away in the wind, or I could throw one in a lake and let it sink to the bottom, or perhaps even more violent things. But somehow I think real thoughts are more buoyant. They keep coming up—or at least I think they are coming up, surfacing—like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot or Dracula. They exist and they don’t and nobody can prove otherwise.

So maybe this is an attempt to prove my existence. This reflection proves my existence? It is far too organized, and I didn’t even get to select the font.

Found poem: Heather's poem

Our society tells us if our identity is appropriate or not
we can warp our image
I would talk to myself in different voices
love to find things that I have in common with others that are really basic but beautiful.
others are meant to disguise
my "child molester" look
working on your car (tight situations)
identity is not about me worrying
how well they maintain their body and how they groom themselves
what is hip, attractive, and what is not
high schoolers need cliques to survive socially

Comment on this quote #3 Pascal

"We are not satisfied with the life that is in us and in our own being: we want to live an imaginary life in the minds of other people. For this reason we are anxious to shine. We work continually to embellish and preserve this imaginary being, and neglect the true one." Pascal

A poem about mirrors

Big City Coffee
Violent Sun

Garage Glass Door
Panes
Inside-Out
From Inside

A Sidewalk

Outside-In
From Outside

Waiting for her to pass

Mirrors and shelves and orange walls
On the sidewalk
Inside where I walk
Where she walks

Sipping Earl Grey

My eyes are in the tea
Looking back at me
What do they see, do they see?
That’s all they saw

A column shoots up from the midst (mist), some monolith of stagnant hope slowly

shrinking

Comment on this quote #2- Drew Carey

I see my face in the mirror and go, 'I'm a Halloween costume? That's what they think of me?
Drew Carey

Mirrors in Bars: Drinking to your image

I've been noticing that a lot of bars around Boise, at least the ones I go to, have lots of mirrors. The Neurolux is covered in them, but short people might not be able to see themselves because they're up pretty high on the wall. Pengilly's and the Cactus Bar also have mirrors directly behind the bar. Interestingly, the bar is where most of the loners sit. When I go into a bar by myself, I usually sit at the bar. And I get distracted by my image. I catch myself trying to see my face and shoulders from different angles. What do I look like when I'm drinking? I'm not sure if this is vanity or curiosity.

I sat down next to a man at a bar and ordered a Miller High Life. I wondered about how the type of beer you drink reflects your personality. Then the man next to me asked me if I wanted to hear a joke. I said sure. I'm not sure what it was: the joke itself, the delivery, or the general melancholic attitude of the man that made it not funny. I couldn't even force out a fake laugh, and he quickly said he had a better one. Same reaction. Do the jokes we tell also reflect something about our personalities?

I changed the subject, and I asked if he'd do an experiment with me. Someone recently introduced me to an interesting activity called a Blind Contour. You look at yourself in a mirror and try to draw yourself without looking at the paper and without the pen leaving the paper. Most of the time, something a bit Picasso or Miroesque ends up on the page. I told the man about this, and after some convincing, he said he'd try it. And he did, but he could not, really could not, not look at the page. And he constantly picked the pen up off of the page. And he kept apologizing and saying "this doesn't look like me." I told him that wasn't the point, but he kept obsessing about how the picture didn't look like him at all. I doubt it's supposed to.

A burly guy in a Broncos hat on my left leaned over and said he could do a much better job on his. He also warned me about the other man saying, "I suppose it ain't any of my business, and I guess it's a lifestyle, but you be careful with that guy. He's a little, uh...you know what I'm sayin'?" Yeah, I got it. I'll be careful. So I handed him the paper and he began drawing. The concentration and dilligence displayed far exceeded the success of the final product. Like a hippo playing chess. But that's not the point. You draw what you draw. And I could tell the second man was disappointed that his didn't "look better" than the first's. I'm still curious about each man's individual reaction. Any thoughts?

People keep asking, "What's the point?"

This exercise in self reflection may seem vain, but I'm learning something from it. I've figured out that I don't mind doing self-promotion, as long as it's for some project or cause that extends outside myself. It's as if I can make myself the other by objectifying my image, by attempting to make my image art.

The images are simply tools for building something that extends beyond myself.

I've decided I don't like my tendency to project my mood onto other people. It just turns them into mirrors. And all mirrors do is mutely mouth back what I've already thought and am in the process of saying.

I hate it when I discover that I have the same tendencies of people I despise because of those tendencies.

My self-absorption folds in, folds on top of itself when I am busy. I forget about my friends, or I think about them but don't do anything. This is not how I want to live my life.

I have figured out that I create myself through what other people say I am. I am more fragile than I want to admit. A few broken mirrors, and my life could implode.

Damn this masking tape on my glasses

I had some interesting experiences this weekend, the first of which included accidentally breaking a contact lens in half. Because I have very bad eyesight, I wear rigid, permanent contacts that cannot be easily replaced. I only have one pair. As a result, I had to wear my glasses, which happen to be broken and held together with tape. A black Sharpie helped to disguise the tape.

Before coloring the tape, I was worried about being in public with my "nerd glasses" on. Besides that, they were cheap glasses, and the plastic coating on the lenses is beginning to shrink or something. There are strange scratches all over their surfaces, and these cracks resemble the cracked mud of a desert that had been heavily rained on, then left to dry.

These glasses change my appearance from what I have deemed to be "me." Somehow, the me with glasses isn't really me, and people react differently to me when I wear my glasses. Perhaps this is because I seldom wear them in public, and people are surprised I wear glasses. Other people say they make me "look smarter" or "look more like a professor" or "look more serious." Really though, I'm the same as I ever was, maybe a bit more self-conscious. As a result, I get more curious about looking at myself in the mirror. Because of the lenses in my glasses, my eyes appear to shrink when I put them on. I had never noticed this before until a significant other point it out and told me she didn't like how I looked with my glasses on. Did this one little comment forever doom me to not liking my glasses? Or it is just the stupid masking tape holding them together?

So, my question is: Why do subtle changes in how we decorate ourselves affect how we perceive ourselves? Why do the same subtle changes affect how others perceive us? And why does it only take one little comment from someone else to change our self-image?

Which is the real me? Am I always playing a character? Be patient.

1 Hour Reflection #1: Matt Damon, James Van Der Beek, and a stripper

I decided that it might be interesting to stare at myself in the mirror for an hour straight, just to see what might pop up in my mind. Generally, I tried to stay focused on physical things, but inevitably, my mind wandered to James Van Der Beek and Matt Damon. I did not take notes as I was doing this. I wanted to really spend an entire hour simply looking at my own reflection. Since I just finished, I have to say that the most surprising thing about the experience was how quickly the hour went by. It was like I was in some sort of trance, and all of the sudden, it was over. It made me wonder how many other times I am simply lost in my own thoughts, and I lose track of what’s going on around me.

One of the first things I noticed was how asymmetrical my face is. My nose curves slightly to my right. My left eyebrow has a little section of it that stands straight up, forming a small tuft of hair that the right does not have. Despite the fact I’ve never had braces, a case could be made that I need them. The frontmost tooth on my right overlaps the one just to its left. Others stick out further than I can tell when I look at my face straight on. Even the lines in my forehead crease differently above my right eye than my left. It appears that my left pupil is slightly more open than the right. I don’t know if this is just because of the lighting, but a friend recently told me that one pupil is bigger than the other. Maybe her suggestion created the awareness or false awareness. The hair in my nose is longer in my left nostril than in the right. I wasn’t aware of a small tuft of white, translucent peachfuzz growing out of my left ear. I have a slight cowlick on the left front of my hair, hair that is gradually turning grey, more on the right temple than the left. This hair, despite the constant “your hair is so thick” comments by the women who cut my hair, is (I swear it) thinning. My smile tilts up to my left more than I realized. The folds of skin around my eyes are getting looser and flappier. So I’ve figured out that I have a crooked face. Overall, I think I’m ok with that. Very few people shrink away in horror when they see me coming.

I wonder if my perception of myself is really based on my own observations or a collection of what others have told me. Another thing I noticed while investing an hour in curious vanity was that I find myself much more attractive from straight on than I do from the side. Straight on, I appear to have a fairly defined jawline, while from the side, the beginnings of a double chin create a fairly smooth slope from my Adam’s apple to just under my chin. For some reason, I thought of Matt Damon.

Years ago, I used to think that if there was any famous actor that I most resembled, it would be Matt Damon. Those of you who know me probably would disagree, and I do, too…now. These thoughts of Matt Damon somehow led to thoughts of a stripper I saw on two separate occasions, about 6 or 7 years ago. What’s the connection between Matt Damon and the stripper? Nothing really. But it reminded me of what the stripper told me: “You look like that guy from Dawson’s Creek.” Well, I suppose that is a compliment, so long at it’s James Van Der Beek. But I have never seen an episode, so maybe it was someone else. But I knew that James was on the show, so I said, “You mean James Van Der Beek? Really? Thanks, I guess he’s an attractive guy.” I proceeded to give her 20 more dollars.

About 6 months later, I visited the same friend in the same town and we went to the same strip club and I ended up talking to the same stripper. And of course, she told me the same thing. Even other parts of her “speech” were identical to the previous visit. I figured out what was going on. I have brown hair, and so does James Van Der Beek. Strip clubs are dark, and strippers want money. So, I look like James Van Der Beek. Interestingly, I thought that there has to be other male characters on Dawson’s Creek. I wonder how I would have responded if she’d said, “You look like that guy on the Lord of the Rings.” Which character would I have pulled out of my mind at that point?

Here's a picture of me and me in the mirror

When did you first recognize yourself?

Comment on this quote #1

In Japan, "The mirror is the soul of a woman just as the sword is the soul of the Samuri."

Weird experiences with mirrors.

We're interested in mirrors and how they contribute to self-perception. Have you ever had a profound experience with a mirror? Have you ever seen something in your reflection that surprised you in either a good or bad way? Have you ever not recognized your own reflection? My cohorts and I at Freeflect will be doing some experiments--I suppose you can call them reflections--with mirrors over the next couple of months. We will post our experiences as we have them. We hope to create a forum for self-reflection and an examination of the self through this blog and the insight of its readers and contributors.

We want this to be a place where everyone can freely bounce ideas about self-worth, self-perception, or anything related to the history of mirrors and the idea of reflection.

Poems, short stories, reflections (of course), random thoughts, brainstorms, quotes...pretty much anything that relates to the idea of reflection is welcome here.