mirrors; twilight

[helenic]

New journal layout, because I quickly get bored of the sight of my own face. If I wanted to look at myself every time I came online I'd put a mirror on top of my computer, although I've always had an irrational fear of the things. There's something about the way they reflect you in reverse that seems sinister, somehow, so you can never know quite what you look like - except in photographs, which usually resemble you even less. At my grandparents' house there's a full-length mirror at the bottom of the stairs, so that as you descend you slowly come into view from the feet up. I remember I used to be terrified of it, struck by the awful dread that what I saw in the mirror wouldn't actually be me but something else, some unnameable thing staring back at me.

Laura told me once that the space inbetween two facing mirrors is a magical field, that strange distortion of light that reflects into infinity, but to me Pratchett's idea always seemed closer to the truth - the endlessly repeating field doesn't so much generate power as consume it, suck out life from the air and the soul from your reflection. That seems oddly relevant to me now, thinking about distorted body image and mirror-obsession, but for once that's got nothing to do it; I just don't think I'll ever be comfortable around them, especially when they're in a room and not being used. I hate the idea of them staring into space, ready to catch your image as you walk past.

The layout is something I made a couple of months ago for a writing site that never went online. Iain and I were walking back from the college gym at dusk sometime in May, and as I looked up through the trees by Lensfield Road the sky was that same neon shade and the moon was perfectly luminous, suspended between the leafy silhouettes of trees. I didn't manage to get a photo because the light had changed by the time I'd fetched my camera, but this image from photonica gets pretty close.

The Latin is from Ovid's Amores, book II, and could be translated:

     Yet you had sworn that you would ever be my companion -
          by me and by your eyes, those stars of mine!
     The words of women, lighter than falling leaves,
          go all for naught, swept away by the whim of wind and wave.


I've got my reading list for next term and it's ridiculously long - nigh on thirty texts in all, and I have no idea how I'm going to get hold of them. Hopefully I can get through some of the Greek by October - I've got the Loeb of the Iliad already, which should keep me going. I miss it, all of it. I wish summer would hurry up and end.

Comments

[tiane.livejournal.com]

i never stand between mirrors if i can help it. partly pratchett, partly i think i'll get lost. i'll forget which is real.. and the wrong one will walk out. who knows what she's like?? *shivers*

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I always used to say that if there were two of me I would be the evil one, because I hated to think that the mirror of this world wasn't any better. This version has to be the mistake - it can't be the best it gets.

For me the most horrible idea was that the thing in the mirror was flat - soul-less, two-dimensional, empty. Like the faeries in very, very old english stories that are beautiful women from the front, but the ancient and rotten trunks of trees when viewed from behind. The question is, would anyone even notice?

The mirror thing is clever, but by FAR the best thing about Witched Abroad is Greebo. That cat makes a sex-god pirate of a man, fuck. In fact he'd probably be played by Johnny Depp, dreadlocks, eyeliner and all. x

[ionic.livejournal.com]

The layout looks good, and the text suits it. Me likes. :)

As for the mirror thing, I can completely sympathize - I have a really hard time sleeping in a room with mirrors, but when I'm awake they make me more secure because I can see behind me. (I'm odd) - but good luck with the books.

[tiane.livejournal.com]

no, i like the mirrors. i've always had a thing with them.. i used to get lost in the mirror maze on purpose..

but greebo was a huuunk, wasn't he!!

what's your favourite discworld book?? mine's lords and ladies.. elves are terrific. they beget terror

[kungfuchaos.livejournal.com]

the layout looks great!

when i was a kid, i used to play with mirrors, setting up rays of light from the windows to light up the dark corners of my house. i grew attached to them and was convinced that the "space" behind a mirror housed another world, similar to this one. whenever things got bad or upsetting, i comforted myself with the thought that, if i really wanted to, i could step through the mirror and join that new world. things never quite got that bad though :-)

xx!

[libellum.livejournal.com]

my nana's old house (other grandparents from the ones I mentioned in the entry) had a deluxe, carpeted bathroom with one of those walk-in baths, you know, with one half of the room raised a couple of steps and it sunk into the floor (god I loved that bath), and behind a section of wall where the toilet was there was a counter for powders and things, and on either side of that little "corridor" were two HUGE mirrors, facing each other perfectly. I could stand between them for hours, utterly enthralled. It was sinister, I'm not sure why. I'm always fascinated by other people's bathrooms though.

As for my favourite DW book ... hrmm ... it would HAVE to have Sam Vimes in, I think. He's just so fucking cool. Either Feet of Clay, which was kind of depressing but so goddamn clever, or The Fifth Elephant. I like his detective novels best. I used to be a witches fan - Lords and Ladies were my favourites for a while and I LOVE Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax, but Magrat and Agnes annoy the hell outa me and no-one beats Vimes' cigar-smoking, swearing, growling, Humphrey Bogart cool.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Thankyou! The more I look at this layout the more I like it, I think it's my best yet. Maybe I should have saved it to use on my domain but I already have a backlog of layouts I've never used and in all likelihood it would just have never got online.

I remember a friend of mine told me a horror story she'd read about a Thing that came out of mirrors if they were left exposed in the moonlight. For about a year she insisted on covering all the mirrors in her room with cloths before she went to bed, else she couldn't sleep.

For me the worst thing is catching sight of my reflection unexpectedly when I didn't realise there was a mirror there. I hate that. I know what you mean about wanting to see behind you though, I can't ever have my back to an open door. Paranoia rocks my world. Yeah sure.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Mirrors upset me too - both from a prosaic point of view (I hate the risk of catching a glimpse of myself unprepared - I don't want to know what I really look like) and from a more irrational one. All of those urban legends involving mirrors terrify me; I have a horror of looking in a mirror and finding something terrible behind me (or in place of me - even worse!). I used to have difficulties sleeping in rooms with exposed mirrors, though I have had to get over that, as my current bedroom has three large mirrors (two of which face one another) and there's no way that I could move them out or cover them up. Anyway, a covered mirror creeps me out even more.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

thankyou lovely!

I always found the mirror-world more scary than appealing. Like I wrote above, I couldn't ever quite get over the idea that it was flat, soul-less. A mockery of this world rather than an extension of it. I wonder why we're so fascinated with mirrors? There's huge amounts of superstition and folklore about them. It's fascinating once you start to think about it.

Hope work goes well. I'll give you a call tonight. x

[libellum.livejournal.com]

All of those urban legends involving mirrors terrify me; I have a horror of looking in a mirror and finding something terrible behind me (or in place of me - even worse!)

yes; absolutely. I wrote the last few replies to comments before I saw this but it's all so true. Odd that so many of us have this complex. It can't be because of the urban legends because I had it before I knew them, and anyway, whoever came up with them must have had a problem with mirrors too. Perhaps the human psyche is just distressed by them on some basic level - something about the way they bend light unnaturally, or the way they distort perspective, or something. I doubt it's supernatural but it's interesting nonetheless.

[kungfuchaos.livejournal.com]

maybe it's something to do with the fact that mirrors show you things that aren't really there. or that they're the only way we're able to vew ourselves as other see us. who knows?

you say they're soulless... but i always felt a little differently about it. vampires can't be seen in mirrors, and they're soulless beings. mirrors are used in pa kua to ward off the effects of negative ch'i and evil spirits. i think they're a positive symbol, not something to be afraid of.

although after the optics course in physics next year, i may have different things to say on the subject :-)

love! xx

[verte.livejournal.com]

I want to read some Ovid so badly, but really can't without translation. Do you think he translates well?

One of your icons really gave me a shock: the one of you looking down at the camera - not flattering of you, I don't think - mostly because facially you look almost exactly as I percieve myself to look. I studied it for a good five minutes.

Anyway. Hope you're ok and work's bearable.

xxx

[libellum.livejournal.com]

it depends on which bit of ovid, really. I mean, the poetic stuff does translate excellently - this bit works especially well in english - but most of ovid is only poetic as an aside. He's fundamentally ironic, subtle, smug, and too damn clever for his own good, simultaneously satirising and paying homage to Greek and Hellenistic poetry, contemporary latin literature, politics, art, society, any sort of ideal, and himself. The layers of it are bloody annoying even in latin and could never work in english, the puns and references are too many and too complex.

That said, every so often he writes a damn good bit of poetry just to prove he can, and it's always worth taking out of context :) Get hold of a loeb of the Metamorphoses, it's good to be able to glance at the latin when you come across a line you like.

I keep meaning to delete all the icons of me. I don't know why I made them. I have such an odd sense of my own body image I have no idea what photos are good of me and what aren't. I treat them as if they were of someone else and use them to represent a mood rather than what I look like, but I suppose that's so self-indulgent it doesn't really work for anyone else :)

xxxx

[citra.livejournal.com]

i love those deep lucent twilit skies

[libellum.livejournal.com]

me too. they've always been one of my favourite things, that blue that's almost neon. although the word "lucent" is almost as good. xx