the mirror

1.27.07

Tonight I had a little conversation with myself. I stood in front of my mirror and asked myself who I saw. Attempting to play a little trick on myself, I decided to imagine that this person I was looking at in the mirror I had never once seen before. For anyone wanting to attempt this trick on there own, I will warn that it required a couple of trips to the mirror. During this first trip, the person looking back at me was very familiar to me. In fact, she was so familiar, that I found myself looking very closely at her face. I decided that picking the teeny, weeny deposits of sleep out of her eyes, itching her forehead, scrunching her nose, and picking her teeth clean probably wouldn’t be the first things I would do to a complete stranger.

Before the next trip to the mirror, I decided to turn on all the lights in the house just so I could get the full effect of color and light on this “stranger” I was looking at in the mirror. This time I grabbed my trusty little mirror from under my bathroom sink so I could get the full-scale reflection of the person I was looking at, from booty to poochy. Shoulders back, check. Head straight ahead, check. Stomach in, check. Head moderately cocked, lips slightly curved to form a smile, eyebrows lifted; check, check, check. And then, I began pulling at the waist of her butt-sagging, black fleece pants, attempting to bring some lift to them. Her nostrils gave a slight flare as I noticed the hole on the front of her pants from a little hot “kiln” accident a month prior. I complimented her vibrant, sage-green wool sweater (thanks to local thrift store,) and laughed at her bright red, longhaired slippers protruding from under her pant legs.

On the third trip, I hid behind the corner of the mirror, attempted to clear my mind of all pre-images of myself, counted to three, and then walked out (with little mirror in hand) and stood in front of the mirror. I looked at the woman before me. She stood confidently. She enjoyed her long, red, black and brown dreads, wildly hugging her shoulders and back. She was hip, funky, and smiled a lot. She was comfortable in her not-so-perfect clothes and actually seemed to like herself in them. The curves of her face were gentle, encircling kind eyes that spoke knowingly of joy and pain. The creases around her mouth and eyebrows were deepened by 26 years of laughter and tears.

I liked her. I was intrigued with her and wanted to know more about her. I wanted to take her out for coffee and hear her laugh and sigh and speak of experiences, of ideas and dreams. I wanted to watch her work her magic on the potters’ wheel and create pieces of art out of mud. I wanted to eat breakfast with her and talk about her dreams from the night before. I wanted to drink a glass of iced water (with hints of lime juice and vanilla mixed in) with her while she talked aloud and typed away on her computer. I wanted to be her friend. And I could tell she wanted to be mine.

Dreams

I wonder about my dreams. And not about the dreams I have when I’m sleeping at night. I wonder about the “fond hopes” I carry within my heart. And fond they are. And deep they are. And yet, how futile they seem too. How distant and dormant do they burrow themselves within my being.

And I wonder how to unlock them? How do I open their eyes and look at them without feeling sadness within? How do I begin to nurture and care for them as babies without fearing that I will lose them as I have lost so many dreams before?

Dreams feel sometimes as close as your skin. They are warm and soft and a part of your being. They free you to expose yourself to the world, to soak in the sunshine, to resist the elements of rain, dirt and wind. They make you want to live and risk and love. And yet, dreams can be pierced, wounded. They can cause the insides of you to bleed and ache. Dreams are so vulnerable.

I fear that by unlocking these dreams, by exposing them to air, I will ultimately fail them. I will ultimately not know how to nurture them, how to care for them. Why is fear such a strong lock? How can fear weave and wrap itself around everything that is true and real and make it seem like a mirage, like something that does not exist nor will ever exist?

I wonder if living ones dreams is far less of an arrival point as it is a course. I wonder if my dreams haven’t already been unlocked. I think they have. And I think I am nurturing them. It’s just not exactly in the way that I had expected caring for them would look like.

Maybe I didn’t think they really would be as close as my skin. I didn’t think they would be so vulnerable. So easily wounded and affected by the elements of life: Of relationships, of experiences, of living and breathing on this side of Eternity.

Solomon had a way of wording these realities so poignantly:

There is a time for everything…
I have seen the burden God has laid on men.
He has made everything beautiful in it’s time.
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; and yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-11