When the Mirrors Bend (A short story)

To hummingbirds.

A todos los colibries.

“It is not the sociologist’s job to decide in the actor’s stead what groups are making up the world and which agencies are making them act. Her job is to build the artificial experiment -a report, a story, a narrative, an account- where this diversity might be deployed to the full. Even though it seems so odd at first, the same is true of scale: it is no the sociologist’s business to decide whether any given interaction is ‘micro’ while some other one would be ‘middle-range’ or ‘macro’.” (Bruno Latour in Reassembling the Social)

“The expression “phenomenology” signifies primarily a concept of method. It does not characterize the “what” of the objects of philosophical research in terms of their content but the “how” of such research. The more genuinely effective a concept of method is and the more comprehensively it determines the fundamental conduct of a science, the more originally it is rooted in confrontation with the things themselves and the farther away it moves from what we call a technical device-of which there are many in the theoretical disciplines.” (Martin Heidegger in Being and Time)

“We might recall here the slightly dizzying characterization of deconstruction as ‘[putting] into practice a vigilant but... general use of quotation marks.’” (Jacques Derrida in Some Statements and Truisms About Neo-Logisms, New-Isms, Postisms, Parasitisms and Other Small Seismisms)

“The moment when that which is glorified in the work is the work, when the work ceases in some way to have been made, to refer back to someone who made it, but gathers all the essence of the work in the fact that now there is a work ¾ a beginning and initial decision ¾ this moment which cancels the author is also the moment when, as the book opens to itself, the reading finds its origin in this opening.” (Maurice Blanchot in The Space of Literature

Preface.

“I am” Henk; but Henk is not “me”. He departed long ago to exist on his own. He developed during the process and eventually became an entity by itself; and it is this dialectic mechanism between presence and being what the present tries to address from its central core. As we will encounter in several times during the course of this exercise, Henk experiences the tension between being and being within the margins of language; and between being and beingfrom experience, emotions, intuition, and relationality, all constrained as well by the discursive exercises that language instigates. In this sense, the text could be presented as auto-deconstructible, since it can be challenge from within its own margins: the ontological inauguration of existence: “Henk”. These shouldn’t discourage us from the experience of its final outcome: the “impossible end” only presented from within the tension and struggle of being.

This short story is presented for the master seminar “On Human and Non-Human” conducted by dr. J.A. Harbers. It assumes Bruno Latour’s perspective in the book Reassembling the Social, but tries to deal, as I had showed elsewhere, with the metaphysical assumption that Actor-Network-Theory renders to the human actor. It follows Sabine Melchior-Bonnet in the book The Mirror: A History, but encounters eventually with Heideggerian, Derridean and Butlerian notions that are used to bring into perspective issues from within the text’s contexts. I thank the “Greeks” for their patient listening, sharing and support in this, much longer than expected, enterprise, and to all the human and non-human actors that share their mirror experiences with “me”.

I

They both woke up at the same time and looked at each other. She kissed him in the forehead while he was kissing her in the chest. He was still moving his arms around stretching his body the moment she stood up and walk naked all across the wooden floor that creaked like crickets. He was looking at her and she knew it. Without hesitating she stood in front of the mirror that was standing just before the bathroom door: it was two meters high and seventy centimeters width; its frame was attached to an axis that allows to change it vertical angle whereas the axis was attached to two triangular shaped bases that rest on the floor. She arranged her hair and with her pinkies removed the tiny little greenish clusters in the corners of her eyes. She did a general check up of her body changing the inclination of the mirror so she could see her lower extremities; she turned around and inspected her hips and ass, thighs and calves. Everything was looking normal. Apparently nothing had changed from the day before.

He saw the whole reflecting process while still lying on the bed all covered to the neck, «Who is she looking at? Is the mirror replying to her in this mute and deaf dialogue? It seems to be a simple interaction but certainly many meanings are involved» he thought looking at the sealing resting with his hands behind the head, frightened by the obviousness of the questions converging in his mind.

She was taking a bath; he could hear how the water splashed in her back and the shampoo foam felt from her head. He came all the way from the bed just to see it. The mirror was framed with a repetitive pattern made of metal embossing. On it’s left was the bathroom door, on it’s right was a bookshelf with books on all levels except the top one that was reserved for make up, creams, perfumes and earrings. He remembered his friend’s bathroom where everything was obsessively ordered in a shelf located in between a small mirror and the sink: shaving cream, razor, cologne, electric toothbrush, trimming machine, q-tips, dental floss, cream, soap, and many other stuff. He thought about altars and church tables where different things where arrange beneath a statue or an image in very particular ways. From this point of view, his friend’s bathroom seemed to be kind of a sanctuary. «But who was the idol?» he thought.

Henk looked at himself in the mirror and noticed how difficult it was to get a whole view of his face without loosing the specific features of it. He noticed how when trying to enlarge the segments he was paying attention to, the details were lost. As long as he focused on his eye, mouth, nose or small areas, he was able to perceive the small details of each one of them; but when trying to pay attention to the face as a whole, the details were lost and he could only perceive the very general characteristics of it.

She came out of the bathroom with one towel wrapped around her body and another towel wrapped around her head like a turban. Looking at her along with her two white gold earrings that shone like pearls when the sunlight coming from the window refracted on them, he remembered the famous Dutch Jan Vermeer’s and his Het Meisje met de Parel. He hugged and kissed her, and just when she was going to take off the towel wrapped around her curved pink and white body and laid down in the bed with him, the Martinitoren, standing in the background behind the window above the bed header, shook its bells announcing it was time to constrain themselves again to the vicissitudes of a new day: a new itinerary to fulfill[2]. The watch on her wrist sparkled like a shackle attached to the weight of time. He got dressed and witnessed the pandemonium sited on the bed enjoying every time her face shown radiant after looking herself in the mirror; it was as if the speculum and her were having a very intimate dialogue. The mirror was saying something to her and its opinion was relevant. She looked in the mirror four times in different moments during the seven minutes she spend getting ready for leaving. She looked at her watch every time she looked at herself in the mirror. They went out and hugged towards each other, kissed and say good-bye. It was the end of the winter and the streets where still grey and blue. She unlocked her bicycle’s lock and eventually got lost in the streets of Groningen’s center.

Henk was walking up the Poelestraat in the direction of the Grote Markt but could not stop thinking about the silvered reflecting surface. He wondered why everybody, him included, looked at mirrors? «Why do we keep them eagerly in houses, offices and bathrooms? Why do we framed them and hang them?» thought before jumping across a small puddle of melted snow. Noticing his reflection on the window of a shop, he came to realize that he was looking at himself without even thinking about it; he was just doing it spontaneously and unaware. People looking at the shop’s windows eventually came to notice their reflection; it appeared as if they were having a conversation with that otherness: they fix their jackets, move their hair, noticed their profile and the curves it made, some tried to look their backs or their shoes; some others got closer to the windows to look at the shop’s interior, to eventually go back and find their face in front of them: some smile, others look and did strange faces, others didn’t seemed to notice it.

He was walking through the Poelestraat when suddenly looked up and saw the dummies of a shop all dressed with the latest trends of fashion. But the dummies, instead of having heads, had an oval framed mirror, so if you positioned your body in the right place beneath the big windows, you could see the reflection of your face along with the dummy’s body, as if you were wearing that particular outfit, «was he looking at another him?» he wondered. Since he didn’t have a mirror in his room and there were no mirrors in the shared bathrooms of the old hospital he lived in, all this mirror experiences and reflections were for him actually something unusual to think about. He thought about how those “automatic” conducts in our every day life seemed to be the hardest to noticed and to think about; his eyes suddenly shone. -It is maybe because we are so used to do them that we forget about how deep and entrenched they are in our experiences and conducts, and we forget how they contribute in shaping our psychological and philosophical judgments- he said out loud.

He did saw his reflection on the windows when walking on the streets, especially those filled with shops like the Poelestraat, the Herestraat or other similar streets that took you into the center of town and had big windows where you could see the reflection of your whole body. Interactions with our “duplications” were more frequent than he had imagine; mirror-specular-images were not reduced to bathrooms, bedrooms, offices, fitting rooms, or strictly speaking to mirrors. Windows, metal surfaces or even ponds around the city could be used for the same reflecting purpose. But «Why do we reflect? And why do we choose mirrors as our favorite surface to do so?» he thought while looking at the big tower that took away the idyllic morning him and his girlfriend were having that winter’s sunny day: the Martinitoren announced fifteen minutes to midday.

The first thing he could think about was the plausible physical explanation of the phenomena, which actually sound more like a discussion after remembering Richard Feynman’s “The Strange Theory of Light and Matter”. He thought that so far, the best explanation about reflection he could find would be resumed as follows: light is made of particles. Or as Feynman would say, those particles are like raindrops, where each little drop of light is called a photon[3]. If all light is from the same color, then all the “drops” we call photons have the same size. (Even though the human eye can perceive colors, it can only perceive a very small range of them, just like our auditive system. We can only perceive one part of the whole spectrum of sounds and colors. There are many sounds and colors that are unknown to us) Anyway, when light encounters a surface, are the particular properties of that surface, and not a property of the material, which determines how the light will be reflected. Thus reflection is a “surface property”. Mirrors and glasses, just like the ones he was looking at the interior of the optic located on the corner of the Poelestraat and the Oosterstraat, reflect light, however they do it in slightly different ways. Mirrors with a reflecting coating, given the particular properties of silver or aluminum, reflect more light than glass.

He remembered the clusters of mosquitoes moving together ensemble from one of his trips to the provinces during the summer: when he tried to dissolved the cloud of mosquitoes moving his hand or throwing something to it, the mosquitoes will change the shape of the cluster from an “spherical” shape to an “elliptical” one. When a photon hits a silver or aluminum atom in a mirror, the shape of the orbit the electrons are describing around the nucleus of the atom of silver or aluminum changes, like the mosquitoes cluster when he moved his hand through it. (If you think about the mosquitoes as being the atom’s electrons that are surrounding the center of the cluster where the atom’s nucleus would be located). His hand hitting the mosquitoes’ cluster was like the photon hitting the electrons moving around the atom. In order for the electrons that are moving around the atom’s nucleus (mosquitoes cluster) to recover their natural orbits once they have being hit and the energy of the photon transmitted to them (hand hitting the mosquitoes cluster), the energy transmitted must be expelled back. Thus the photon or photons that made change the atom’s orbit are thrown back, and last but not least, are thrown back with the same inclination, with the same angle they had hit the surface of the mirror.

Glass behaves slightly different. In the glass, as in the mirror, a photon will change the way the electrons are moving around the atom nucleus because of the energy exchanged, and in order for those electrons to come to their natural state, the energy must be ejected; however, glass contains a fewer amount of atoms that behaves like the silver or aluminum ones in the mirror. Thus, a bigger amount of energy that is not reflected flows through the glass. Light is partially reflected from the surface of glass, as Feynman would say[4].

That is why many things were happening at the same time while he was standing outside the optic and looking at the window: he was looking at his reflection on the optic’s window, he was looking through the window at the different models of frames they had, and he was able to look through his glasses: the window, the frames inside the shop and his friend reflecting in the window coming from the other side of the street shouting his name with unusual excitement. They were happy to see each other again.

II

While he could found a plausible explanation about the physical properties of mirrors and glasses, it seemed that the most difficult part of the whole story still unsolved: «Why do we look at ourselves in mirrors?» he thought while clumsily stretching his hand to his friend and saying hello with his mind still occupied with the psychological and philosophical aspects of the question about the mirrors. His friend was talking about his trip to Amsterdam and his beautiful girlfriend, the nice weekend they have had and a crazy story about a Rembrandt painting, which had a very long name but used to be called “The Night Watch”[5], which had first been attacked with a knife in 1975 by a guy named Wilhelmus de Rij, and fifteen years later thrown acid to by another man. Even though his friend was still narrating the events of the weekend, he dragged and pushed him in front of a mirror at the inside of the optic.

-What are you doing?- his friend asked just when the automatic doors of the shop were opening.

-Can you tell me what do you see?- he said standing on a side so his friend couldn’t see him through the reflection of the mirror.

-What? What I see of what?

-What you see when you look at yourself?

-The same that you see, I mean what for?- said sounding a little bit angry.

-O come-on play the game with me and tell me what do you see- said with a slightly taste of disappointment.

-I see me! I see my reflection.

-I know you see your reflection, but what is your reflection made of? I mean, what do you see in your reflection? How do you see yourself?- asked while perceiving the change on his friend face and how suddenly he seemed to be disoriented by the question.

The man, who was trying frames next to them, sketched a little smile while he looked himself wearing an Italian red and black metal frame that seemed too small given the size of his nose.

-Well, I see a good-looking guy, with black hair, who is not fat but could be thinner; wearing a black jacket- said his friend while pointing his gaze into the mirror.

-So you would say that that makes you be you?- Ask without hesitation.

His friend stood looking in the mirror for a while. You could see he was trying to find the right answer. (I think he was feeling a little bit evaluated.)

-Yes and no- Answered after a couple of minutes that felt like ten. Henk kept and held to the silence and didn’t emit a sound waiting for his friend to express what he was thinking.

-Yes because I am wearing a black jacket, and I do have black hair, and I am good-looking- said laughing. They both laughed.

-And “no”, Why? My humble friend- Asked, smiling.

-“No” because I am more than what I’m looking at right now. I am also looking at myself and seeing other things. Those things that I am also looking at are things that I give for granted when I answer to your question, because explaining them would take a very long time. For example: the context I grew up with, I think, played an important role on shaping who I am. My family raced me in the best conditions available, which is important for the mind to develop and be strong in order to deal with difficulties. My country provided me with a peaceful environment in order for me to grow up, to play and to socialize. It provided me with an education, even if I don’t agree on what that education consist of.

-But when you say: “provided me”, who is “me”? Who is this “am” you are talking about?

-“Me” is a human with a body and mind that is called by a name.

-And if I tell you that you are just a word, I mean the word that is used to name you, what would you say?

-I would say that I am something more- said looking at him and turning his face again towards the mirror.

-What “more”?- he replied sounding a little bit confused.

-Well, the characteristics of my personality, my memories, my knowledge and my intelligence what ever that might be, and as I said before, my appearance- he said with confidence.

Seemed like the whole “mirror-thing” was a little bit more complex than he had imagine. It was more than just a hanged piece of glass with a reflecting coat behind it. It give the appearance that many elements were gathering at the same time the moment some one stood in front of a mirror.

«What is that that mirrors do to people? How do we interact with them? Or, do they interact with us?» he thought looking around the optic where two young Chinese friends were looking their reflection while one of them was trying different frames discussing about it in something that probably was Mandarin. His friend kept looking at his own reflection. They left the optic and walked together for a while. They arrange a meeting on Saturday to talk about his friend’s trip to Amsterdam and the mirrors.

He saw his friend walking all along the Grote Markt until loosing sight of him just before going into the Waagplein.

While his friend was heading home, he desperately needed to find an answer in relation to what was happening in his mind since the moment he was awake that morning. «Why do reflections seemed to be everywhere and play such an important role in our life’s?» He thought while heading to the central library.

«I might be able to see my face reflected on a pond of water, however the pond or any other liquid source, could not be positioned vertically. Water cannot be fixed vertically to allow us reflect on it. The moment someone found something that could be carried around that could be used as a reflecting-movable-source, something might had changed since the reflection was not longer restricted to the horizontal plane by the properties of water or other liquids. Thus, if this was right, the mirror, and its predecessors, might have helped modifying the perception we have of ourselves! If the mirror is a relevant non-human actor of our contemporary society, what role it has being playing on it? Which is its history?»

His thinking was going backwards and forward in time. Certainly there was a time where no mirrors were available, and those entities walking on the earth, for example the Homo sapiens or the Homo sapiens sapiens that was living 200,000 years ago on the surface of the earth, didn’t have such thing as modern mirrors. However we cannot deny the fact that they might have seen their reflection on a pond, river or lake, or even on a volcanic crystal. «When did all this mirror thing started?»

He spent some time in front of one of the central libraries’ computers. There wasn’t much stuff going on about mirrors in the library. He was surprise to find only one book in the big libraries’ catalogue that was related to mirrors and their history. «Amazing! Mirrors are part of our daily routines! We have very strong relations with reflections… so many mirrors… and just one book!» he thought with his eyes wide open. That particular book was located in the library of the faculty of Art’s.

III

He opened the door of the piano café, (that was the way he and his friends used to call the bar located on the left corner of the Folkingestraat just before the Vismarkt), and felt the warming atmosphere while heading to the place he usually sat down. There was a long table with good light where you could read, and if you were lucky, listen to some live decent music played on a white piano. He used to go there especially for the apple tart. If you order it warm with whip cream on its side, and add a warme chocolademelk to the situation, the pleasure of reading was almost equal to the pleasure of eating one piece of cake with cream at a time. He was holding with his left hand the book The Mirror: A History written by Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, letting his right hand transport the cake from the plate into his mouth. He was flowing through the pages as he was flowing with the tart.

Ancient mirrors, from the ones used during the ancient and the classic periods in Greece to the Romans, were made of metal, were circular and around ten and twenty centimeters in diameter.[6] They were used mainly in three different ways: as pocket mirrors, as grooming mirrors that were held by slaves before their master’s face, and “as stationary mirrors propped on a three-legged stand, which often depicted a feminine or masculine silhouette.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 11) As the time went by and new technologies were created, more refined mirrors were made of silver, and more rarely of gold. Romans invented new shapes producing square or rectangular mirrors. Among the wealthiest, mirrors were as big as the entire body. And in exceptional cases, even the walls of apartments were sometimes inlaid with mirrors. “Eventually servants themselves acquired mirrors, and silver surpassed bronze as the preferred metal”. (Ibidem) Given the difficulties encountered in the production and “the poor quality of the results, metallic mirrors were preferred over glass for many years to come.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 13)

As long as the production of a flat, thin and clear glass, and the appliance of a thin layer of hot metal to it, without breaking it by thermal shock, the production of glass mirrors did not surpassed the ten centimeters.

The story of glass mirrors during the middle Ages can be resumed as trying to acquire a clearer and thinner type of glass without many positive results. Glassmakers during this period were “more successful at producing colored glass and jewelry stones than clear glass.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 13) It was going to be until the second half of the seventeenth century that the blown glass techniques were going to be perfection in order for another types of mirrors to be produced. Before that, mirrors were small and irregular, and because of the blowing glass technique, convex.

Melchior-Bonnet’s ideas allowed him to differentiate between the two portraits and the differences in the mirrors used by the artists: first, the Flemish Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait[7], where a convex mirror, actually bigger that the ones that could be produced at that time, steps in between the two central characters, reminding us of their backs, a side that would be denied to the viewer if it wasn’t for the convexed mirror position; and second, the Spanish Diego Velazquez’ Las Meninas[8], where is actually the viewer who stands in the place of a flat, clear and undistorted glass mirror. «Lets see, 1656 minus 1434, that is… two hundred twenty-two years step in-between the second and the first portraits» thought while drinking some of the now koud chocolademelk.

Before the sixteenth century, glass mirrors were considered a luxury object. They “became widespread in châteaux, then in bourgeois homes in cities, and eventually were sold at major fairs. But they did not replace the larger and more easily handled steel mirrors that were used daily.” (Melchoir-Bonnet 2001: 16) These silvered glass mirrors produced an imperfect and distorting image: “one sees someone else there rather more tan oneself,” noted a contemporary cited by Melchior-Bonnet. (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 17)

It was during the sixteenth century that the use of glass mirrors spread among the aristocracy. However they still were rare, and only gradually replaced the metal mirror “which almost completely disappear from estate inventories in the last third of the seventeenth century.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 25) After 1630 the popularity of mirrors start increasing. “The presence of mirrors could not therefore be linked only to one’s level of resources, but rather to one’s lifestyle and to the pull of attraction to aristocratic models.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 29) After the first half of the seventeenth century, “mirrors would reach all social classes: from low-wage workers (such as vinegar makers and cigarettes makers) to bourgeois tailors, furniture’s salespeople, and advisors to the king.[9] (Ibidem)

The monopoly of mirrors was going to be held by Venetia until the gradual decay of their industry around 1685. The fight between France and Venice for the control over the glass mirror production is rich in anecdotes. It even came to be a matter of nationalism that had strong economical connotations.

According to Melchoir-Bonnet “the source of philosophical meditation on the mirror image in western culture is Plato.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 102) It was during the classical period in Greece that “the reflected image lost its magical aspect and acquired its status as mere replica or semblance.” (Ibidem) As she states, before Plato “the reflection was an animated and living form, a double luring Narcissus from the bottom of a pool”[10], (Ibidem) it was surrounded with magical and mythical attributes: like “looking at one’s reflection could invite death because the reflection captured the soul.”(Ibidem) This phrase in the book ended with an endnote that grabbed his attention the moment he went all the way into the last pages to find out that some information was set aside by the author from the main text. Even when she, Melchior-Bonnet, explained along the first third of the book how the main production of mirrors was disputed in-between France and Venice[11], and how through the development of new technologies, as well disputed between the two countries, the increasing demands that were extending from the cities into the countryside could be fulfilled, Melchior-Bonnet had send all the way back into the book the fact that those ideas, (like “looking at one’s reflection could invite dead because the reflection captured the soul”), “persisted in the French provinces at the beginning of the twentieth century, when at the time of a death, mirrors were veiled and vessels filled with water were covered, for fear that the soul of the deceased might be captured in the reflection.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 283)

Beside the temporal distance between the ancient Greek period and the twentieth century, his interest in the footnote came from the association that Melchior-Bonnet was doing about the ancient understanding of mirrors and the people from the city (especially the bourgeoisie) and the provinces (farmers and workers), at the end of the twentieth century. Melchior-Bonnet was saying in relation to: “the reflection was an animated and living form, a double luring Narcissus from the bottom of a pool”: “His confusion is not as strange as it may appear to us, as numerous folklore traditions contain similar stories.” (Mlechior-Bonnet 2001: 102) «But who is us? And why “confusion?» He thought. First, she was attributing to the ancient period in Greece the characteristic of “confusion” because they had associate dead and the imprisonment of the soul with reflection. And second, she was condemning the persistency of such beliefs in the French provinces at the beginning of the twentieth century. «As if “us” were looking at things from a distance: objectively and without confusion. It sounds as if she was trying to say: “the confusion held by the people of the French provinces at the beginning of the twentieth century, is strange to us, because we live in modernity and truth.”» he thought turning his head to the window.

«I mean, if my family has been believing something for a number of generations, can someone say that I had been persistently confused because my family has not adapted to other types of believes? It sounds as if Melchior-Bonnet is saying that people in the French provinces at the end of the twentieth century was ignorant because they didn’t know that the trends on the knowledge about mirrors had changed since the classical Greek period» He even ended up verbalizing the last words in such a way that the guy sited in the closest chair was looking at him smiling.

Melchior-Bonnet was pointing out how “in a series of estate inventories of peasants in Normandy dating from 1700 to 1735, not a single mirror is mentioned.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 92) As well she noticed Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw when he makes an observation about rural England and sais: “a young schoolteacher who has always lived in the country arrives to serve as governess in a manor house and is stunned by the discovery of her own head-to-toe reflection in a mirror armoire.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 93) She was arguing, even when she was not explicitly saying it, how the different interactions that the city’s bourgeoisie and country side’s farmers and workers, had with mirrors, was a relevant issue in relation to the mirrors’ uses. It was a matter of different elements interconnected what made the glass mirrors’ popularity increased as the time went by.

Even when he was tempted to believe that the position of glass mirrors had been mainly a matter of material means was a matter of many more things than just money, what made glass mirrors to become so popular. He was imagining it as a collection of spider webs inter connected between each other. «It was a network of events where many actors were involved that made the mirrors to become so used. Certainly the “Sun King” and the bourgeois circles that followed him, had exercise certain kind of influences in their servants. However, there were many low waged workers who didn’t have direct interactions with the rich circles. Perhaps there were many more things that made the glass mirror so popular» He thought looking at the clock that was hanging across the hall. He was feeling tired. It was time to go home.

He stepped into the cold humid night and walked all the way back to his girlfriends house. His footsteps remain on the moisture as he crossed through the center of the town. There was light on his girlfriend’s window, but for a very strange reason he didn’t felt like knocking on her door. He felt coldly frazzled by life’s lies. He dried the bike’s seat with his sleeve and unlocked the chain that was attached to a small dark-green fence. He was driving back home on a dream made of cold dark white memories. He felt the loneliness of western individualism. Why didn’t he knock on her door? Why didn’t he hug her? He went to bed alone and fall asleep eventually while looking into the darkness of the sky.

IV

He clumsily dragged his body out of bed and walked across the floor stumbling with all the books and papers around. Sat down in front of his wooden desk and spread his arms around stretching his body. While yawning, he opened the backpack and took out the book. From the window next to his desk the sky was nothing more than clouds. It was going to be a cold day in Groningen. He was reading again.

Given the high prices of mirrors it seemed that they had been historically reserved for those who could afford them, as Melchior-Bonnet’s citation of Seneca[12] talking about the wealthy Roman women could be presumed to show. But as the quality of glass mirrors improved and new technologies allow their production to be more efficient their price eventually decreased. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to make these two assertions alone.

One similar event seemed to have happened at two different moments. During the Roman Empire and according to Melchior-Bonnet, servants eventually acquired mirrors. That means, that at first, mirrors were held by the wealthiest, but eventually became a popular used artifact that could be afforded by many. As said before, the Romans modified the composition of the bronze alloy, and eventually silver surpassed bronze as the preferred metal for the production of mirrors. This happened for a reason: the reflection was clearer and brighter. The same happened with glass mirrors. First they belonged to the wealthiest, but eventually they became used by the population in general. And as the technologies made the glass clearer and homogenous, and the coating techniques were perfection, better mirrors were produced. Thus, more efficient techniques meant that bigger mirrors could be made.

As said before, “within the aristocracy, the crystal mirror only gradually replaced the metal mirror which completely disappeared from estate inventories in the last third of the seventeenth century” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 25), and this happened, perhaps not as evident as it could be, because glass mirrors provided a better reflecting surface: smoother, clearer and shiniest. And even when Melchior-Bonnet argued that during the seventeenth century “the presence of mirrors could not therefore be linked only to one’s level of resources, but rather to one’s lifestyle and to the pull of attraction to aristocratic model” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 29), in the words “lifestyle” and “aristocratic model” were many meanings entrenched.

«It would be easier for me to relate the popularity of mirrors to a dominant model, to a standard endorse by the “aristocratic model”. However, lifestyle refers not only to an economical disposition, but also to uses and costumes which are located in different contexts. Lets see, if people in rural societies at the end of the eighteen century in France, “rarely look at themselves, and the mirror, by whatever name or style (miroué, mirail, miraou, mirei, mirette, mirelaid, or mirochon) possessed a poor reputation among them” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 92), it was, perhaps, because the body was seen in a different way. The excess adornment of the body, in rural spaces, might have been an obstacle to perform the tasks demanded by the rural conditions. It was not only a matter of wealth, luxury and status to have a mirror; it was as well a matter of praxis. But to whom it was practical to look often in a mirror? I could even almost, and wrongly, say that mirrors had being around specially because we look on them, like people in the streets, or my girlfriend in the mornings or even me when I shave, (which doesn’t happen very often). But who is “we”? Who am I considering, and who am I letting out when I utter the pronoun ¾“we”¾?» said to himself while looking at the sun that was striving to rich the garden from in-between the yellow and grey clouds that were flying in the windy sky.

As Jean Baudrillard refers to the success of mirrors in the nineteenth century: “It’s an opulent object which affords the self-indulgent bourgeois individual the opportunity to exercise his privilege -to reproduce his own image and revel in his possessions… It is no coincidence that the century of Louis XIV is epitomized by the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles […].” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 96)

He remembered being stood there, in the middle of the big hall where the chandeliers and the mirrors reflected and refracted the light of the sun that came through the windows of the Versailles palace[13]. The space was full of light, but it was as well full of space. The mirrors, arranged in a continuous way, created the experience of extension. It was a visual illusion: the hall in itself was big; if you stood looking down through the windows to the endless gardens, the sensation of distance was immediate; however, if you turned around, the mirrors were creating a similar experience. It was as if there was space in the mirrors themselves: a felling of profundity invaded the eyes. The Hall of Mirrors at Versailles represents in its exuberance and excess, perhaps, why mirrors conquered urban interiors: “because they offered what such places lacked the most ¾space […] “They are the first luxury that frugality will allow itself; placed between two living rooms, they form one of the most gracious arrangements of modern apartments.”” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 97)

Thus, historically, the use of mirrors has not only being connected to a matter of wealth and status, but to practical issues related to our every day conducts and traditions. If mirrors in rural areas were, and maybe are, not as popular as in urban areas is, perhaps, because caring for a self-image, or appreciating ones own reflection in urban conditions have different connotations.

“After 1850, sodium sulfate was use for making glass and, at the end of the century, silver replaced mercury in the silvering process. With these developments, a mirror could be made and delivered in six days instead of eighteen.” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, p. 97) As technologies developed, the use of mirrors spread from luxury hotels, cafes, casinos and theaters, to every household and among the “whole” society. With mass production, the prices of mirrors eventually decreased and were affordable by almost every one. Nowadays the mirror not only belong to closed spaces of intimacy, “it also occupies the street, the glass walls of apartment buildings, the general space of the city. […] As the British painter and photographer David Hockney states: “If we consider life without the mirror, we are only considering it half-way.” Or as Melchior-Bonnet refrases it: “if we consider ourselves without the mirror, we are only considering ourselves half-way”. We must remain before our mirror to discover our dual self.” (Melchior- Bonnet: 2001, 98)

He closed the book abruptly. You could see, from a distance, that he was upset. Hank grabbed his head in a gesture of confusion, looked around and open the curtains that he has kept closed since the morning. The atmosphere was heavy, the air was humid and there was a strange static flow in the air. -No changes what so ever?- He uttered talking to the window while looking at his reflection. «No… I’m not different than yesterday; my face is the same than yesterday and the day before yesterday. For how long my face has being the same? Has it change at all? …Pictures… Where are my pictures? … How can I trace my self without pictures? And if this face that I’m looking at is like a picture… Why doesn’t it allowed me to trace “myself” in a historical way? I cannot remember having another face… Why is it that I cannot perceive it changing?» Delusion. Might have thought it was sort of a delusional composition of himself. The delusion of no change: no self-change. Still his mind was changing. He was different than yesterday. But the contingency of mind and body was present, right in front of him: his mental reflection was changing, but his physical reflection wasn’t. A dichotomy: where inclusion finds the source for its own delusion.

«How a visual perception can match the coherence of a conscious agreement? I know that I’m changing, I can “reflect” -grrr… this word again- …Reflect… I can acquire a conscious understanding of what does it mean, at least for me, to change. I know that thoughts are changing. I can contemplate and trace back with the use of memory to realize that thoughts have changed, my identity is changing; from yesterday till now, many thought had been modifying on how I think about “myself”. Still my image is the same than yesterday, it is as if it was frozen. Myself…? » But this last word sounded to him as irresolvable. Derrida might have called it an “undecidable”: a term that does not fit comfortably into either of the two poles of a binary opposition. Image and consciousness, “supplement” in the Derridean sense, each other[14]. You could see the air in his face changing from disagreement into confusion. It was the type of bewilderment that leads to cold disillusion, like when something has being taken away from you: it had been snatch away from him. “Reflection”: on a mirror and of the mind: can the meaning of the second live without the meaning of the first one and vice versa?

He battled. He went walking down the corridor, came downstairs till he found the red “mushroom” that opened the doors to reach the exterior of the oud ziekenhuis, he push it and stepped outside. He walked. His feet were cold and his hands red. He was wearing a long black coat that went all the way to his knees. Then he started walking again. He was off-track. He had lost himself.

V

He came back later that night; poured water into the broiler and made tea. He couldn’t sleep. Not now. He went back to his desk and try to “solve” the “impossible”: «…myself? ...» He thought again.

“To know oneself, as the Delphic principle invites us to do, is to retreat from the sensory appearance of the common mirror ¾reflection, appearance, shadow, or phantasm¾ to one’s own soul. Man, according to Plato, must care for the soul that constitutes his essence. Like the eye, the soul must have a reflection in order to see itself.” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 106) For Alcibiades, in opposition to Cratylus mirror of self-reflection in Plato’s dialogue, the true mirror, loyal, constant, alive, is the one presented by the lover or friend who offers his eyes and his own soul as mirrors. “Socrates and Alcibiades constitute living mirrors for each other, mirrors in which they discover much more than the mirror image of Cratylus could have told them.” (Ibidem)

And is perhaps in this same manner where the condemnation of Narcissus, by Nemesis, rests. Narcissus fault is not acknowledging Echo’s love. When seated next to the pond Narcissus finds itself tied to his own reflection, in love of himself; Nemesis punished Narcissus “for having refused the mediation of the other [Echo] in the construction of the self.” (Ibidem, my emphasis)

He couldn’t find a reliable and contextual analogy to both ideas. His present context seemed to be the other way around. He was thinking about the windows and advertisings that were displayed in the stores. He had been looking, since he arrived to Groningen, the ads next to the busses’ stop. For him, portraying man and women dress up with trendy cloths, rather than looking for the mediation of the other in the construction of the self, persuaded self-recognition, just like Cratylus’ mirror, “where only a replica appears ¾a substitute for his forms and colors, but lacking both vice and thought.” (Ibidem)

-I like myself, it doesn’t matter if you don’t like this dress, I feel comfortable with myself, I want to feel beautiful for myself, it is for me, not for you. I like how I look in the mirror- He remembered few days ago, when his girlfriend, while preparing for going out to have dinner in a traditional Dutch restaurant, ask him if he liked how she look in the flowered dress she was wearing. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the dress, but that it was a present from her last boyfriend; and he was well aware about how he felt, and tried to make sense out of it. When he replied to her question: “I like more your old skirt, but maybe it is because I feel neglected. Maybe I’m feeling rejected. Wearing that dress, instead of the skirt we bought together makes me feel a little bit awkward. But that is something I have to work on. I think you are always beautiful” Nevertheless, she answered back what we already know.

Hanks girlfriend’s argument was confusing to him.

«From one point of view Nemesis could be read as the regulatory standards that keep and fit subjects into the norm: a trend becomes as such because it finds its legitimizations in the public spaces. The more something is repeated the more it becomes accepted: how could we explain mediatic-succes if it was not for its structure of repeatability, or what Derrida calls iterability? “The structure of the mark consists in the fact that it is ‘iterable’” (Royle: 2003), that is why an image becomes integrated into the subject’s experiences; “the war against terror”, “terrorist”, “Marlboro”, “Coca-Cola”, “McDonalds”, ““beautiness””, “ugliness”, “maleness”, “femaleness”, exercise their persuasive strategies through their re-representation into the subjects every day life experiences. But when Ana was looking at herself in the mirror, whom was the “other” mediating in the construction of herself? Was I? Even when she was trying to discredit my opinion? Or it was, precisely because of being put aside, that I was the mediating other? Maybe the other was present in its imaginary form? Maybe both? Could there be a Cratylus mirror? I mean, we can make sense of a reflection because the meanings are already present; they just became integrated around an image that is never define conclusively, but is always constructed and redefined in the act: as a resonating echo. Why do we think that our bodies have physical limits or borders? If the “other” cannot be grasped, what is supposed to be mediating the construction of the self? Perhaps it is just a sounding “Echo” that stretches its temporal limits creating new soundscapes and voicescapes: new languagescapes.»

He kept thinking about Ana and the flowered dress, and the grey skirt and his confrontation behind the metaphor of not being wear. He thought that Ana wanted to “wear”, metaphorically, his ex boyfriend, but she didn’t want to “wear him that night. Hank thought that she wanted to have her ex boyfriend figure present in the context. And certainly he didn’t like the idea: «Lover’s eyes comfort, however, they more often confront», he thought and kept reading.

Saint Augustine captures the relation between the specular image and the spiritual literature of the Middle Ages. For Saint Augustine, “every man participates in divine resemblance. The human spirit, if it does become lost in the illusion of the mirror image, a false creation of the material world is capable of receiving the light of God and of reflecting his beauty. At the same time, the true mirror in which man should contemplate himself is that of the Holy Scriptures” (Ibidem). The Bible tells the truth and exercise already the act of transformation: “It shine will show you what you are. If you see yourself besmirched, you displace yourself and already are finding a way to make your self handsome. By admitting this to yourself, you will learn how to make yourself more attractive” (Ibidem).

But the medieval mirror offered man a model to govern his outward behavior as well. The mirror shows man what he was and what he ought to be. “Thus the mirror legitimately served to qualify the very ancient moral genre, wherein clerics would set forth the ideal, admirable model of the perfect Christian prince, in which young people could discover as in a mirror the countenance [the look or expression of the face] that ought to be theirs” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 114).

Henk was reading two mirrors. «And they seemed to be both, the biblical and the specular, artifacts of mediation, they are Latourian mediators!» he thought while holding his cup high above his head in a triumphal movement. «However, if both mirrors transform, translate, distort, and modify the meanings they are carrying with: what exactly are they carrying? What exactly are they transforming, translating, distorting or modifying? Is there something implicit that has been given for granted? Or are both mirrors the source and locus of the perpetual reproduction of certain ontology?» This time his cup went down.

Both mirrors presuppose a given subject, who, even by being submitted to the exercise of change, stands before the mirror as “being”, either assumed already metaphysically or re-created in the same specular moment, which is the same. The glass mirror conditions the Bible itself as a mirror, for how can the meanings of the second exercise reflection without the meanings that the first one endorses? In this way, the Bible assumes, as well, “being”, metaphysically.

«If stand before the mirror, the “I”, as pronoun, exists only if the concept of “being”. The “I” cannot exist, or “be”, if it is not already “am”; but to say: -“I am”- locates precisely the dichotomy as assumption, it does not exercise the distinction between “I” and “am”: but how can the distinction be done if it has already being “conjugated”? When Augustine declares: “it shine will show you what you are”, thus, the only exercise the Holy Scriptures can procure is that of transformation, since “are” has already “being” given. If otherwise, the Bible could be understood as containing certain therapeutics[15], since it would assist the subject in its construction; instead, it set up the demarcations, the contingencies for an exercise of comparison, were a higher and Holy standard executes its power from a dominant disposition; then the subject should, or must, modify “itself”, in accordance and with the purpose of matching the decreed standard. There seems to be a circularity in these act of interpretation: “I” and “am”, as “I am”: a hermeneutic circularity. How can “I” recognized and judge some specific factor (“I” and “am”) in a situation without a general sense of the situation overall (“I am” an already given ontology), and yet how can “I” have this overall sense without somehow first asserting its parts? In order to make the first step, “I” needs to assume the very thing “I” wants to explain. How to start?[16]»

He was reading aloud in the silence of the early next day’s light, -“The mirror, a tool by which to “know thyself”, invited man to not mistake himself for God, to avoid pride by knowing his limits, and to improve himself. His was thus not a passive mirror of imitation but an active mirror of transformation.”- (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 106) -It sounds delusional to me- he uttered; «how can decreed “imitation and modification” can considered to be “active transformation”?» He thought while standing to extend his legs. The freezing morning dewed outside the windows was creating a layer that blurred his reflection. He could not see “himself” before going to bed.

VI

He woke up again. The light, bended by the green and magenta colored glass on the upper windows, arrived to his eyes bringing the unmistakable warm of the sun. After endless days of gray skies and rain, the sun was shining again in Helpman.

While Hank was looking at the mirror’s gradual modifications, Melchior-Bonnet was showing him the metamorphosis and transitions it took before and through the sixteenth century: “praise of the mirror went hand in hand with faith in the eminence of man. […] “Invented in order to know that which our gaze cannot see”, it showed him [man] his face and eyes, window to the soul (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 157). As well “Socrate’s warning was often invoke to legitimate the use of the mirror: a loyal witness in which every one could examine his soul and discern in it an exhortation to virtue. The mirror of “Know thyself” provided a basic code of conduct, and in the tradition of the ancient philosophers, it affirmed a healthy love of the self” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 135). “The distance from the moral mirror to the mundance one used for daily grooming became so small that an amalgamation of the two often occurred” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 137). “In the seventeenth century, the ideal of honnêteté [honesty], an amalgam of integrity, courtesy, and politeness, was built on the dual purpose of the mirror, a tool of social adaptation and a tentative appropriator of the intimate. The two functions were interrelated, and from the tension between them was born one of the first experience of the self” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 139).

The tension that arise from the social adaptation: the submission to the social code, and the intimate: the individuality or unrestrained behaviors, tried to be overcome by the idea of le naturel, or natural grace. However, “The mirror […] was not yet an instrument of individual rights even if it allowed the possibility of a solitary interaction with the self. The feeling of selfhood that the mirror awakened was a conflictual one of modesty or shame, consciousness of the body and of one’s appearance under the watchful eye of another” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 140, my emphasis).

The quest of the subject, as reflection, was limited by the socio-cultural prohibitions; nevertheless, “vanity” was at the top of the scale denounced as “the illusion of an introspection obscured by pride, of a self that is nothing but dust, of a painting that exposes itself as illusory. The eighteenth century discovered, on the contrary, that there is a power of creative illusion capable of opening a theatrical space of play between the too-real and the not-real-enough, and that the glistening of reflections, ruses, and the disguises of “appearing”, or even the work of imitation, can inform the human being about what he is just as much as three-dimensional representation” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 174, my emphasis).

But this was different from his girlfriend’s interactions with the mirror. For her it didn’t seem to be about the condemnation of vanity as “the illusion of an introspection obscured by pride”; nor about the “creative illusion capable of opening a theatrical space of play between the too-real and the not-real-enough.” That three-dimensional representation was “her”, it was not the opening of a theatrical space, but an ontological assumption: the fulfillment of a given disposition. It was a performance, but not in the Butlerian sense about contesting the very notions of the subject. As Butler states: “that the gendered body is performative suggest that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (Butler: 2007, 136); for his girlfriend it was the other way around: “she was”, in its essential form, the introjections of the acts she performed in front of the mirror: “she was” that same reflection “herself” in its ontological assumed constitution. As Melchior-Bonnet points out: “just as identity defined itself as gradual evolution, the mirror image became identity incarnate. This relationship did not remain entirely superficial because it brought about an awareness of organic fluctuations like gaining weight, losing weight, standing up straight, and transforming one’s silhouette. As they became larger and more broadly available, mirrors wrought a new consciousness of the body, as documented by the sensualist philosophy of the Enlightenment.” (Ibidem)

-But how far can the margins of a mirror been stretched?- He uttered.

«Is it as if the margins of the text were trying to stretch out, just like the margins of the mirror. Seems as if Melchior-Bonnet would like to take the mirror as the reduction of a phenomenological interaction that is much more complex than reflections. When she claims that “sensory information played the driving role in the elaboration of the subject”, she is saying, indeed, that this elaboration is mainly sensorial. But sensory information becomes integrated, and maybe Butler would agree with me, from the fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and certain discursive means: because their expression pertains to the order of language. The perception of a reflection, as the elaboration of the subject, assumes that the subject is an effect of that “self” reflection: as if we could locate an origin in its genealogical configuration. When Melchior-Bonnet states that “[t]he body was the vessel of each person’s singularity, which fashion, with its new aesthetic example, expressed in its own way”, she seems to be trying to find an argument to justify that: it was “due to the mirror, [that] a human being’s singularity and sincerity became part of his overall appearance” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 175), as if the margins of a mirror could be stretched to encapsulate acts, gestures and desire: language. But language was long before performing and reflecting its styles on the subject’s body surfaces. The acts that constitute the subject’s singularity are in its supplementarity, absent; since they hadn’t revealed the organizing principle of identity as a cause. They happen to be there, with their supplements. It follows that identity is supplemented, in its most Derridean sense. But not exclusively because of the mirror, but from a cluster of elements that when combined, eventually found in the mirror a vehicle for transformation and transfiguration; but for “exclusion” as well, since that is the logic of the supplement: the elements that are “excluded” are intrinsically related to that same transformation»

-The fact that they are not taken into account, as an “impossible” presence, doesn’t state that they don’t play the same significant role as those things implicitly stated- He expressed in the solitudes of the room.

It was clear to him that Melchior-Bonnet was providing a historical understanding of the mirror, and that in a given moment in history, the relation people had acquired with mirrors could be described in a certain way; like when she says: “sensory information played the driving role in the elaboration of the subject”. However, Hank was concern about two things: to attribute a reductionist explanation like Melchior-Bonnet seemed to be doing; but as well, to fall into a universalistic conclusion where every different historical moment can be made to fit into.

After filling up the “moka” with coffee, he ran into the kitchen to put it on the fire. And while holding the small espresso-orange-cup with his left hand and a cigarette with his right one, he felt confronted again. The idea, which rushed into his head colliding with the meaning of “I”, rushed the burning coffee into his mouth colliding with his tongue. Hank used to cover the mirrors, some times with towels and others with old plastic bags, all with the purpose of avoiding his own appearance. He believed that with the eventual oblivion of his image, his external sense of “self”, an inner and hidden nature could be revealed. He thought that, by losing the continuity that the apparent unchangeable perception of his reflection sustain, he might be able to find a sense of “self” that didn’t came from a hallucinatory stance. As the same reductionist stance that Melchior-Bonnet decided to stress in her quest.

«Indeed mirrors are flat. That was the purpose of developing new techniques in the fabrication of glass and coating: to acquire a better source of reflection: an undistorted likeness. But why had I tried to eradicate this image? As if I was trying to purify my soul from the seventh deadly sin. How could I have thought that through its erasure an inner “self” would emerge? As if the denial of the outside would unveil a hidden-inside-me: from image to imagination! If it has being present all this time! “[I am], essentially, that nexus of practices, assumptions, prejudices, habits and traditions that make up the everyday experiences and actions in which [I] find [myself]: ‘One is what one does’ (Clark: 2002, 27).»

Melchior-Bonnet was referring to the eighteenth century French novelist Pierre de Marivaux to describe the same assumption: “Identity takes a step from the outside to the inside, a glean with possibilities, supporting intimate feelings only previously revealed through the gaze of others” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 176).

“The subject musters his strengths so as to live within his reflection, but the reflection doesn’t necessarily becomes artificial by overinvesting in the image: the subject disappears behind the character he produces and take pleasure from himself as he would from realized fiction” (Melchior-Bonnet: 2001, 177).

VII

His phone was ringing and the name Ana was appearing in the screen; from the desperate vibrations in his hand he answered.

-Are you ok? You just disappeared for the last three days, why didn’t you call me?

-I have being reading a book about mirrors that is very interesting. It is beautiful as well. Did you know that mirrors were…?

-But why you didn’t call me, at least you could have said you were reading, or thinking, or disappearing, but it’s being a while since we last sleep together.

-Sorry… We can eat together this evening? Maybe we can do something afterwards: mmm… what about going for a walk?

-Your place or mine?

-I think it would be good for me to leave my cave; I had been stuck here long enough now. Your place. I cook!

-Ok see you at six.

-Kus…

-Yes, see you later¾ she answered with a tedious tone of voice.

He didn’t rush. After that period of time, which felt like months, he had change. A lot you could say. All these mirrors and all the thinking had made him come to certain unexpected conclusions about his relation with Ana. It was interesting for Hank to look at how things get mixed together and became altered from unexpected reasons. -How can mirrors make me change so much?- He said while walking to the shower at the end of the corridor. «The water, what a marvelous element! As soft as kind to the body…» he thought when it splashed onto his head. He didn’t take a shower for the last four days and he was feeling kind of sticky.

He biked to the big market. But some major event was happening right over the paving stones of the Vismarkt: a big fair; perhaps celebrating the entrance of the awaited summer. After some walking trying to find his favorite market stall, he bought mushrooms, zomer posteline, rucola, garlic and fresh pasta. The menu: pasta met paddenstole with a lot of garlic, and vers sla.

He arrived to her house and wait for a while sited on one of the benches that have a view to the canal. He felt the air and the sun. Ana arrived precisely one minute before the hands of her clock divided it in exactly two portions of the same size. They hug and kiss each other; but you could feel the distance standing in-between their bodies. They both felt weird. She opened a beer and took off the cork of a red wine bottle. He drank water: he didn’t drink alcoholic beverages. The dinner was nice, but with a shallow conversation about her everyday life. Her coming and going to school and her PhD research about water in underdeveloped countries. Just chatting nothing more. They left her house and walk to the Vismarkt. She felt like going into the bumping cars game, they both took a car and bounce again everyone and each other; maybe hitting each other was more than just a game; a metaphor to overcome their distance: angry joining you could say. They were walking around when suddenly a funhouse appeared in front of them. ¾Bended mirrors!¾ He shouted at her while grabbing her hand running towards it. He had thought about it before: what would have happened if instead of having flat clear mirrors, we have bended and distorting ones? How would it be if we look at our self in a different way every time we look into a mirror? It was a question he had posed to himself when he was reading about the development of flat glass, and how the flat mirrors dethrone the convex ones; and how the different technologies were striving to acquire an irrefutable source of reflection. They have to go in.

-Come-on Ana hurry up there are mirrors inside!

-Yes I’m coming, I’m coming- said while laughing with him.

He was feeling exited. Looking at all this people making faces and laughing and acting strange in front of sources of reflection that were not the usual ones, opened to him a new way for looking at mirrors. He was stepping in, carefully, into this new Latourian panorama: “through which optics is it projected?”[17]

-Ana, why do they laugh? What makes people laugh? Why is these advertised as if it was funny? I’m looking at a monster in front of me, who is that? Look how my face looks like if it was melting down! And what about my legs? They look so long and fragile!

-Look! There are two me’s in front of me! My legs are all curled!

-Hey look at that women, she doesn’t seems to be laughing, actually she seems quit annoyed. She looks like a donnut!

-And what about that child, he looks very surprised. Look, he is running away to his mother!

-That girl is laughing!

-I’m not!

After some time of walking around the mirrors and seeing at each others reflections and the people around them, at least something was clear to him: people was reacting; maybe, because it was not what those people used to see in they’re every day’s life. Something new was experienced every time they looked at their distorted image. Why it was so confronting “to look at “you” in a different way”? “Who were they looking at”? “Were they looking at “themselves””? Or were they looking at somebody else? What was it? “Another “you””? A “different “me””?

-That is not me! I’m sure about that!¾ She shouted when she was looking the image of a girl that resembled her but it was rounded like a ball.

-But then who is that person you are looking at?

-I don’t know. Her face has certain elements that resemble mines, but look! That is not me: my ears are not that big.

-And how do you know that?

-How do I know what?

-Yes, that you are not her?¾ He said while pointing with his index finger to the mirror, as if he was trying to confirm that she was her.

-Because I have seen myself before, and that is not me! Is obvious!¾ She said while pointing as well to the mirror that made her look spherical, perhaps trying to confirm that she was not her.

«Is all this arbitrary or what? What if it was the other way around: bended mirrors in our every day’s life and flat mirrors in the laughing house? Yes, but I know she doesn’t look like that reflection. I can tell her she is not like that; however, for that to happen an interaction must be established between her and me. We would need to communicate in order for us to come to an agreement. And why should she believe me? Why should she believe that I’m telling the truth? And indeed, “if looking at “myself”” trough the interaction of a bended mirror, “how could I know that “I don’t look like that””? Would I believe her if she tells me I don’t? Which would be the standard to reflect on?»

-I see my legs, and I can see my arms, my chest and my belly. I can see my shoulders and part of my back; if I was more flexible I could even see more. I know they do not resemble the portrayed image of a bended mirror, and in that way it would be disrupting to have the perception of a reflection that moves exactly like me, but do not resemble what I see when looking at my own body. Still my face, without the interaction of a reflecting surface, would be unknown to me: that would be very difficult if we only have bended mirrors. I don’t know about that. However there is water you know, and eventually we could come to agree that the image reflected on a water surface resembles more than that depicted on a bended mirror, of course if the water is not moving, otherwise it would be very similar- She said.

-Yes I see your point. However, it is because this things are so much given for granted, that they open a new dilemma: how would it be for us to perceive a different reflection of our face? Imagine: how would it be for you, if every morning you wake up and look at yourself in that big mirror that is standing next to your bathroom’s door, you look at your face, and your face is different that the day before? New day new face! Or even better: imagine that for every different context where a mirror is involved, the reflection of your face is different? How would that be?

-I have no idea, but seems like there wouldn’t be a sense of continuity in between one context and the other. I think it would be harder for me to perceive myself as not changing in each different situation. If I see my reflection before leaving home and I find that it is different in my working place, then different at the dancing class, and different again when I leave the swimming pool, I might think that I am constantly changing. Perhaps I could even come to think that changing is something that just happens in every different context. But isn’t that the way the so-called identity works? You always tell me that identity is not fixed and is changing constantly; and that there is no need for us trying to act in the same way for each different situation because identity is plastic. Isn’t that what you always say? And sometime you even say that there is no identity, and you come with all those things about ontology and “being” as metaphysically assumed. I know them by memory. And by the way, why you keep repeating those things all the time? Why is all that so important for you?

-Are you hungry? Maybe we can buy some hand-made stroopwafles or an ice cream. Come-on lets just buy both!

-You are avoiding it again: Cheater!

They ate them both: for her chocolate and for him vanilla. They came back to her house and slept together, as Patti Smith sings: because the night belongs to lovers.

VIII

She left early in the morning when he was still asleep. He felt her mouth kissing his cheek and forehead with careful tenderness before hearing the door closing downstairs. He didn’t felt like waking up and stay inside the blankets feeling as if he was inside a cocoon till it was almost midday. He felt how the delusions he have had about his relation with Ana were gone the moment they came close together again that night. They just needed to start again, to see the vulnerable in each other’s eyes; they needed to laugh.

The idea of continuity was still present the moment he left the blankets and stood against his girlfriend’s mirror again. He got dressed and drove with his bike all the way to Haren: he liked to see the big old houses that were next to the road, and at least, just for a bit, taste the sweetness of Groningen’s countryside and imagine that mirrors were not as popular as they were in the city: maybe like at the beginning of the twentieth century in the French provinces. After one hour of pedaling he was sited on his desk again; however, this time he was trying to see the connections between the brain and the mirror.

«When neuroscientists say that the brain is plastic, they mean that the brain can change its configurations: that in a way it can be rewired. If I think about it, this property of the brain is perhaps an evolutionary adaptation, from the process of natural selection that allowed the Homo sapiens’ long walk starting in Africa between eighty thousand and sixty thousand years ago. That the brain is plastic means that it is built to change in response to experience; it implies that when certain groups of neurons fire together, that is, they produce a simultaneous interaction, and those neurons keep repeatedly firing together, the association between those groups of neurons becomes stronger: they create a pattern. Neurons in brain maps develop strong connections to one another when they are activated at the same moment in time. However this means, as well, that breaking up those maps becomes harder, since those neurons become, through repetition, better “attached” to each other. And if brain plasticity is inversely proportional to age, that might be why as the time goes by my grandfather becomes more stubborn: because it becomes more difficult for him to modify his brain maps.»

He took Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue out of the box and after turning it around looked at his reflection. The resistance that Davis exercised through his new modality, chord progression and improvisation, were more than an unconscious metaphor of his face projecting over the silvered surface of the Blue. It was as if Davis’ breaking up with the ‘hard bop’ had set up the preambles for him to understand the discontinuity, in terms of reflection, that could be achieved if it was submitted to the process of time. He remembered his trips to pristine beaches were mirrors couldn’t be found. And how, at a certain moment in time, the characteristics of his face were forgotten: as if mirrors served the purpose of recalling it. The blurred image that the CD gave him was enough for him to realize that the details were no longer present. Even if that morning he had looked at himself, the specificities were no longer available; he had to see them again in order for them to be present one more time.

«Looking at the mirror happens as a learning process, which from a neuroplastic point of view, implies that neurons in brain maps develop stronger connections each time they react simultaneously: each time I look into the mirror sensory information actualizes and the maps become closely related. The more I look into the mirror, the stronger the connections of the neurons in those maps becomes. Yes, the more I look, the more they activate together at the same moment in time and strengthen their connections. If some one looks into the mirror when waking up, after taking a shower, before leaving home, at the bathrooms during the day, before going out in the evening and while brushing the teeth at night, the neurons in those maps must be pretty well attached to one another and to the image they perceive. However if the mirror is not use those connections should become weaker as the time goes by. How long would it take to forget my face?» thought while still holding the Kind of Blue with his hand.

«Sometimes I see myself in the mirror when I’m happy, sad, angry, depress, exited, even sometimes Ana and I see our reflection together; I see my reflection after we had a discussion, or after getting some negative feedback on a paper. If all this emotions are associated with the same image, and that image is perceived as not changing, no wonders why our identities struggle. They are entrenched into a perception that is asked to change constantly but doesn’t seem to be changing! No wonder why we have identity crisis’s!»

He remembered the last time Ana cut her hair. She used to have it long; it went all the way down half of her back. That morning she had an appointment at the salon because she said she needed a change. After some talking she agreed he could joint her. She was sited in front of the mirror when Jan Carlo, her hairdresser, started cutting it abruptly. Without warning six inches of hair were gone, and all of a sudden half of her thick blond hair was lying on the ground. Her face was all blushed, it was almost red, she didn’t know how to react. She had told Jan Carlo she needed a change, but JC took it to literal. She wanted to say something but she couldn’t, she was babbling words trying to form a sentence without any success. She was so angry. She started talking about it only when they arrive to her room and she looked at herself.

-Look what JC did with my hair! What was I thinking?

-But you said you wanted a change, it looks really nice.

-I don’t like it at all: my face looks so rounded! Look how it curves at the end; this new trend of cutting it in layers doesn’t fit me at all. How is the back? Does it looks well?

-Pretty ok- said while going to pick up the mirror of her neighbor ¾Look. See it for yourself.

-Grrr… Why did I do it?

After a week she didn’t dislike it, and after two she already liked it. One month after she was thankful with JC for having taken away all that hair and happy for having change her style. It was just a matter of time. Perhaps her brain maps were rewiring and eventually developed a new perception. She saw herself normal again. The perception of herself became normalized once again.

«First she didn’t recognize herself, however, after a while she was “herself” again. At first she thought she was not normal, but after a while she saw at her reflection as if nothing had changed. The mirror had allowed her to fit all those things she thinks she is with her new image. The mirror and the neuroplastic properties of her brain had allowed her to locate those elements again in a confined region: the body. And what about Jan Carlo? JC is much more than a hairdresser: he is an “identitydresser”! How much would he need to cut for an identity to loose its ontological status? How many different types of JC’s would be needed to do so? “Genderdressers”? “Classdressers”? “Religiondressers? “Nationalitydressers”? Culturaldressers? I would go to an Existencialdresser if it were alive!»

«However, it would be misleading not to take into consideration the entrance and foreclosure of the Other in the process. The mirror presents and makes available the location on a surface the enclosures of identity; and in fact it is open when the reflection appears to us, thus it happens at the same moment in time: reflection and attribution happens simultaneously. But the mediation of the Other becomes present as well, since otherwise, there would be nothing that could be attributed to that perception: reflection. Then how the attribution happens? Through its iteration: through its constant reflecting presentation. The mediation of the mirror foreclose the entrance of the Other by its re-representation on the surface of a body; and do so by strengthening the neuronal connections between brain maps, given the reflection’s iterability: its repetition in different contexts.»

-But how could an ontology be circumscribed to the subject’s margins if it wasn’t by the mediation of the mirror?

«If mirrors were curved and different to each other, the margins of the subject would become blurred, and in this way, neurons in brain maps wouldn’t develop stronger connections to each other, since the image presented would not be iterable; then, the circumscription that the Other endorsees would impact rather a different surface each time a reflection is presented to the “subject”: but to whom each different reflection could be attributed? To a new “ontology”? To a subject without ontology?»

-May be a new beginning is awaiting just when the mirrors bend.

Bibliography.

§ Butler, J. (2007). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

§ Clark, T. (2002). Martin Heidegger. New York: Routledge.

§ Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. London: Penguin Books.

§ Feynman, R. (1985). QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

§ Feynman, R. et.al. (2006). Feynman Lectures on Physics. San Francisco: Pearson.

§ Latour, B. (2007). Reassembling the Social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

§ Melchior-Bonnet, S. (2001). The Mirror: A History. New York: Routledge.

§ Royle, N. (2003). Jacques Derrida. New York: Routledge.

Notes.

[1] See image number 1 in the appendix. [2] See image number 2 in the appendix. [3] For him it was important to emphasize the fact that according to Richard Feynman in The Strange Theory of Light and Matter light behaves like particles, not as a wave like he was taught in high school. For an introduction into light, electromagnetic radiation and reflection see Feynman, R. et.al.: 2006: chapter 26. [4] For a further discussion on light and how it behaves on thin and thick glasses, and matters related to light see: Feynman, R.: 1985. [5] See image number 3 in the appendix. [6] See image number 4 in the appendix. [7] See image number 5 in the appendix. [8] See image number 6 in the appendix. [9] It is easy to encounter in Melchior-Bonnet’s text certain misleading details regarding events and their meaning. For example, the author says later in the text: “an expensive and rare object reserved for a small elite under the reign of Louis XIV, the mirror could be found in more than 70 percent of Parisian homes one hundred years later, as well as in substantial number of homes in the provinces.” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 85) Which could mean that as the time went by, mirrors were wide spread, perhaps because their price eventually reduced, or were better known by the population. As she mentions: “After 1650, the mirror was even more widespread and could be found in two out of three Parisian inventories.” (Melchoir-Bonnet 2001: 29) However, she states further in the same paragraph, that “there were some distinguished Parisian bourgeois families ¾the parliamentary prosecutor, the general inspector, the king’s stableman, and a master tailor¾ who did not possessed any mirrors even though they had high incomes and possessed other luxury items like tapestries and silver. One possible explanation may be a preference for paintings; mirrors were still quite small in comparison.” (Ibidem) This means that there might had been other events, besides their cost, which made the glass mirrors to be so popular. [10] See image number 7 in the appendix. [11] Venice and the region of the Veneto became part of the newly created Kingdom of Italy in 1886. Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Venice in 1797, and on 1798 became Austrian territory. Nevertheless, in 1805 Venice became part of Bonaparte’s Kingdom of Italy; but after his defeat in 1814, became Austrian again until the Third Italian War of Independence in 1886. [12] “For a single one of these mirrors of chiseled silver or gold, inlaid with gems, women are capable of spending an amount equal to the dowry the State once offered to poor generals’ daughters!” (Melchior-Bonnet 2001: 11) [13] See image number 8 in the appendix. [14] For a further discussion see: Royle, N.: 2003, chapters: “Supplement” and “Différance”. [15] From the Greek θεραπεία: the treatment of a disease. At stake here is the metaphysical assumption of “therapeutics”: to conceive that there is problem in the first place. Hans uses “therapeutics” here in the psychoanalytical sense: that which refers to a further understanding in the constitution of the subject itself. For a further discussion on “therapy” see Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: §132 and §133. [16] For a further discussion see: Clark: 2002, chapter “The limits of the theoretical”. [17] For a further discussion on the notion of panorama see Latour: 2007, 183-190.