FOUR

From the Journals of Sheriff Friendly

[Late Autumn, 2005]

If I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize myself. What stares back – what seems to stare back at me – may be any number of things, but it is not myself, not quite. It is surprising how quickly one can get used to this. I might almost say I take comfort in the unfamiliarity.

There might be something just a little off about some detail: I know, for instance, that my eyebrows were not that brushy thick just yesterday morning; or that old acne scar is now on the wrong side of my forehead. Perhaps my eyes are a different color, gray instead of blue; or gray-blue instead of only gray, or whatever. Perhaps a much older man is there, gaping back at me, what few wisps of hair remaining scalpside turned so utterly white, nose and inner ears inexplicably shaggy, while his tired eyes stare sadly, knowingly back through wrinkled flesh, bruisedlooking augen sacks so far exaggerated from my current-aged state. I would not know that hollow face; I would not know those bones, nor yet that degree of sorrow. I can believe it, both, and not believe it. Sometimes an entirely different person is there, bearing no resemblance to me at all. I smile, and the red-haired woman in nurse’s smock behind the specked glass grins back, after a twitch – confused, a little, perhaps, but pleasant enough. She is the one I may rather myself be than I who am myself; or maybe there is no connection. But there she is. Or I’ll find a raccoon, gleaming feral-eyed, intelligent enough, so far as creatures go. Yet his scrabbling little paws could not hold nor work a pen, for as much as they can hold, and I resent the change. The creature chatters at me and I hiss back, showing him/her/it my teeth.

These transformations are the result of an interference pattern established The interference pattern established between these differing images – my own (baseline, assumed) and that presented (alterity) in the window mirror glass – can be read as language – moreover, a specific message – what the space between the two, their meanings implied or intrinsic, or both, amount to. This is the communication from the object (and why have I never found a name for it?) to the person (self), or through the medium of the person (the self) and directed or intended toward some other, who may or may not also be (the self), etc. –