Saturday 9 January 2010

My Face

I almost get a surprise when I look in the mirror in the morning - "Oh, it's you again..." I say to my reflection, "...still there then?"

By now I've got to know myself pretty well and have grown accustomed to the gradual changes and wrinkles appearing. Well, I have been living in my face for a long time as proved by my backward twin.

Fortunatley I am still friends with this other face looking back with the same expression revealing the emotion of the moment.

Occasionally I fall out with my two dimensional doppleganger and sometimes with good reason. My reflection has no conscience, which may be fortunate (for him) he just tells it as it is.

Mask by mask, grimace by grimace, he will copy in perfect time my visual image.What a mimic! If I grow a hair - he grows one. If I put on glasses - so does he.

If I envy my transposed double it is becasue he only has to reflect any pain and can disappear when I leave. However, he can laugh at me as I laugh back. He has his uses - when I shave he pulls all the right bits for scraping.

Facial expressions are catching - smile at the mirror and it smiles back - smile at other people and you may infect their emotions. Normally I have control over the image facing me - a power that means I can pretend and make this other me look grim or glad. And sometimes I get some dirty looks.

Often, I really don't want to see him (he does not have that choice) but vanity or curiosity prevails.

When I cut my hair at the back I use another mirror to see the back of my head and the strange thing is that the doubles double is still the wrong way round. All the movements I make with hands are backwards in the face mirror but correct in the double mirror and then the movements have to be reversed to match reality - what is weird is that the real life left-to-right is very hard to perform as we are used to looking and performing backwards.

Im leaving now, with a smile and hope he's smiling when I return. You can have one too.

Tony Dickins

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