Blur Mirror Quotes

Places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.

If communication cannot achieve consensus, we must live with the broken pieces of unfulfilled expectations and recognize the failure of dialogue, trust, and reciprocity. In the meantime, let us identify the cracks and breaches in the blurred mirror of the past and build a new canvas of hope and clarity. ("Poste Restante")

Sometimes our mind is like the equivalent of a funhouse mirror, distorting and contorting and blurring our lives and our potential.

There are times to listen to the people that believe in you during those days you don't believe in yourself. Sometimes you look in the mirror and it's fogged up; the person looking back a blurred image, but those folks that know you and love you see the real you. Sometimes you have to trust the ones that are there for you in your darkest times to find out how much light exists in you. God bless you.

He shut the door behind him and came to lean against one of the bedposts, watching her at the vainity table. He had shrugged off his jacket and undone his tie. His dark hair was mussed and in the slighlty blurred mirror, he looked no different to Tessa than he had when he was seventeen.

We're all wanting something, though; most of us replacing what we really want with skin, which works until you wake up and the mirror is a blur of time twisting around the throat.

Andrew's bare feet were silent against the carpet, but Neil saw a blur of colors on the fogged-up mirror and turned. Andrew studied his chest with a bored look, but the fingers he pressed to Neil's scars were a heavy and lingering weight. Neil waited to see if he had anything to say, but Andrew hadn't spoken to anyone since they checked out of the hotel in Baltimore. Neil doubted the others had noticed, since Andrew rarely talked to even Kevin or Nicky now that he was sober, but Neil wasn't used to the silent treatment. "Hey," Neil said, just to make Andrew look up at him. Neil leaned in to kiss him, needing to know if Andrew would lean away or push him back. Instead Andrew opened his mouth to Neil without hesitation and slid his hand up Neil's chest to his throat.

Slowly what she composed with the new day was her own focus, to bring together body and mind. This was made with an effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of her self the night before were difficult to reassemble. She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day. The eyebrow pencil was no mere charcoal emphasis on blond eyebrows, but a design necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry. Make up and powder were not simply applied to heighten a porcelain texture, to efface the uneven swellings caused by sleep, but to smooth out the sharp furrows designed by nightmares, to reform the contours and blurred surfaces of the cheeks, to erase the contradictions and conflicts which strained the clarity of the face’s lines, disturbing the purity of its forms. She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile. Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair, and costume, for a fissure through which to explode. What she saw in the mirror now was a flushed, clear-eyed face, smiling, smooth, beautiful. The multiple acts of composure and artifice had merely dissolved her anxieties; now that she felt prepared to meet the day, her true beauty emerged which had been frayed and marred by anxiety.

The sky is realest: the sky cannot Be touched and in the mirror it cannot Be touched. He is enchanted. The rare azur Is flawless; happily blurred blue is no whit Less exquisite than blue unblurred. And what He misses he would never know was there.

Usually you can only catch the Sasquatch blur of your own legendary moments in the side mirrors.

Writing is a blurred mirror. Sometimes we work harder to see how we are reflected, but often we avert our gaze from the shadowy image.

None of us are the same, Anne. Some days I hardly recognise myself in the mirror. It's not my face that has changed; it's the way I see the world. I've seen things that have permanently altered me. I've done things that have distorted my vision. I've crossed lines and tried to find them again, only to discover that all my lines have disappeared. And without lines, everything blurs together [...] But when I look at you, I still see Anne [...] Your lines are sharp and clean. The faces around you are faded and dull - they've been faded and dull for years now - but you ... you are perfectly clear.

She stood with her back to the antique upright mirror where her image, silhouetted by the slight slice of moonlight that filtered through thin curtains, was a nebulous blur.  She brought a smell with her, like that of upturned old earth, and he breathed deeply as he sat up in bed and drank her strange allure. 

My mother died at eighty-three, of cancer, in pain, her spleen enlarged so that her body was misshapen. Is that the person I see when I think of her? Sometimes. I wish it were not. It is a true image, yet it blurs, it clouds, a truer image. It is one memory among fifty years of memories of my mother. It is the last in time. Beneath it, behind it is a deeper, complex, ever-changing image, made from imagination, hearsay, photographs, memories. I see a little red-haired child in the mountains of Colorado, a sad-faced, delicate college girl, a kind, smiling young mother, a brilliantly intellectual woman, a peerless flirt, a serious artist, a splendid cook—I see her rocking, weeding, writing, laughing — I see the turquoise bracelets on her delicate, freckled arm — I see, for a moment, all that at once, I glimpse what no mirror can reflect, the spirit flashing out across the years, beautiful. That must be what the great artists see and paint. That must be why the tired, aged faces in Rembrandt’s portraits give us such delight: they show us beauty not skin-deep but life-deep.

The firelight stirs, a candle flame bows and blurs. He remembers riding with Gregory across the downs, under a silver sky: the light without shadow, like the light at the beginning of the world.

The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance.

Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed. It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook. It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor. The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one. As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude. There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images. Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly... Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle. Nanny grinned. 'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over.

This is my understanding of writing: to write in order to disappear, so that life is revealed to me, without me, my face at last more blurred than the whiteness of the paper, bereft of reflection. A world where one can forget oneself. Not a mirror, but a stone.

One answer turned up in the violent video games the two were obsessed with playing. Graphic effects realistic enough to blur the line between fantasy and reality allow these kill-for-thrill games to be used to break down a person’s aversion to killing. At the time of the massacre, Doom, the game favored by one of the mass murderers, was being adapted by the Marine Corps for its own training purposes.

The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance. He

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset, There must be one (which, I am not sure) That I by now have walked for the last time Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws, Sets up a secret and unwavering scale for all the shadows, dreams, and forms Woven into the texture of this life. If there is a limit to all things and a measure And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness, Who will tell us to whom in this house We without knowing it have said farewell? Through the dawning window night withdraws And among the stacked books which throw Irregular shadows on the dim table, There must be one which I will never read. There is in the South more than one worn gate, With its cement urns and planted cactus, Which is already forbidden to my entry, Inaccessible, as in a lithograph. There is a door you have closed forever And some mirror is expecting you in vain; To you the crossroads seem wide open, Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus. There is among all your memories one Which has now been lost beyond recall. You will not be seen going down to that fountain Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon. You will never recapture what the Persian Said in his language woven with birds and roses, When, in the sunset, before the light disperses, You wish to give words to unforgettable things. And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake, All that vast yesterday over which today I bend? They will be as lost as Carthage, Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt. At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent Murmur of crowds milling and fading away; They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by; Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

show. I have wondered if we’re entering a period in which the line between valuing a woman in the face of mistreatment and valuing her because of that mistreatment is blurring; if the legitimate need to defend women from unfair criticism has morphed into an illegitimate need to defend women from criticism categorically; if it’s become possible to praise a woman specifically because she is criticized—for that featureless fact alone.

Confusion is like a delusion, it's like dust covering the mirror of your real potentials and identity followed by your true belief system by turning it out into negative one which makes your self-image blur so you feel low and dull to perform anything bigger, somehow it kills the fruits of all your efforts unexpectedly, it has an ability to blow the flame of your passion..... there are a lot of sources you will find around, stay away from anyone who makes you confuse, anything, person, ideology or belief any source that makes you feel like that, stay away from it, leave it and live your real life.” – Mohsin Ali Shauk

Crossover' is a word scientists use to describe dolphins' soaring over seas, their traveling so free and fast, so high-spirited and almost effervescent that their sleek bodies barely skim the waves. The suggestion of splashes from tail and pectoral leaves a luminous wake across the water. For these crossover miles, the dolphins, like their human terrestrial mammal kin, belong more to the element of air than the sea.... Held in [the dolphins'] fluid embrace, I pulled my arms close against my sides and our communal speed increased... Racing around the lagoon, I opened my eyes again to see nothing but an emerald underwater blur. And then I remembered what I had either forgotten long ago or never quite fully realized. This feeling of being carried along by other animals was familiar. Animals had carried me all my life. I was a crossover--carried along in the generous and instructive slipstream of other species. And I had always navigated my life with them in mind, going between the human and animal worlds--a crossover myself. By including animals in my life I was always engaging with the Other, imagining the animal mind and life. For almost half a century, my bond with animals had shaped my character and revealed the world to me. At every turning point in my life an animal had mirrored or influenced my fate. Mine was not simply a life with other animals, but a life because of animals. It had been this way since my beginning, born on a forest lookout station in the High Sierras, surrounded by millions of acres of wilderness and many more animals than humans. Since infancy, the first faces I imprinted, the first faces I ever really loved, were animal.

Their reflections merged together, rippling on the dark surface of the mirror that recorded only the intermittent pale blurs of their faces and the gracious, rocking-chair, three-hour rhythm of their bodies, spinning between the waltzing walls. Laughing, breathless, they whirled to the invisible rhetoric of a hundred violins. The patches of candlelight illuminated only their feet for odd moments, and then they were back, dancing in darkness again. They neared the extravagant climax of the dance. ‘Da – dee dee da – dee da! dum, dum!’ But when the time came for parting and bowing and curtseying to one another, Honeybuzzard instead convulsively crushed his partner in a fierce embrace, pressing his sweating face deeply into the other’s shoulder, straining bruising fingers into neck and back, wet mouth fastened on his throat, clinging as if he would never let go until the round world toppled into the sun and the last bell-tower rang midnight and everything was extinguished.

He found Rhy standing in the middle of his room, his back to Kell as he considered himself in a full-length mirror. From this angle, Kell couldn’t see Rhy’s face, and for a moment, a memory surged into his mind, of Rhy waiting for him to wake—only it hadn’t been Rhy, of course, but Astrid wearing his skin, and they were in Rhy’s chambers then, not his. But for an instant the details blurred and he found himself searching Rhy for any pendants or charms, searching his floor for blood, before the past crumbled back into memory. “About time,” said Rhy, and Kell was secretly relieved when the voice that came from Rhy’s lips was undoubtedly his brother’s. “What brings you to my room?” he asked, relief bleeding into annoyance. “Adventure. Intrigue. Brotherly concern. Or,” continued the prince lazily, “perhaps I’m just giving your mirror something to look at besides your constant pout.” Kell frowned, and Rhy smiled. “Ah, there it is! That famous scowl.” “I don’t scowl,” grumbled Kell. Rhy shot a conspiratorial look at his own reflection. Kell sighed and tossed his coat onto the nearest couch before heading for the alcove off his chamber.

In the past, people were vaguely fearful of photographs, believing the camera's exact reproduction of their own image would steal their souls. Not only did these images survive for much longer than their subjects, they were also endowed with an aura of magic the subjects lacked. A superstition, but one whose traces can still be felt today. People sense that the photograph captures an uncanny moment in the interstices of reality, enhancing reality's eeriness, the root of which is unknown, and fixing that moment in place like a death mask. Photography differs from the art of painting in that capturing or exposing such a moment happens neither at the will of the photographer nor the one who is photographed. What is photographed is a ghost moment, clothed in matter. Photography is the dream of comprehensive meaning. Each object has parts of itself that are invisible. This territory, which neither the photographer nor the subject can govern, constitutes the secret kept by the object. Unrelated to the intention of either photographer or subject, within the magic of photography dwells a still, quiet shock. Try to imagine our house one day when we ourselves are no more. Somewhere in that house is the ghost of us, which will pass alone in front of a blind mirror, revealing our own blurred image.

A shudder went through me at the thought of what I should still learn in this hour. How awry, altered and distorted everything and everyone was in these mirrors, how mockingly and unattainably did the face of truth hide itself behind all these reports, counter-reports and legends! What was still truth? What was still credible? And what would remain when I also learned about myself, about my own character and history from the knowledge stored in these archives? I must be prepared for anything. Suddenly I could bear the uncertainty and suspense no longer. I hastened to the section Chattorum res gestas, looked for my sub-division and number and stood in front of the part marked with my name. This was a niche, and when I drew the thin curtains aside I saw that it contained nothing written. It contained nothing but a figure, an old and worn-looking model made from wood or wax, in pale colours. It appeared to be a kind of deity or barbaric idol. At first glance it was entirely incomprehensible to me. It was a figure that really consisted of two; it had a common back. I stared at it for a while, disappointed and surprised. Then I noticed a candle in a metal candlestick fixed to the wall of the niche. A match-box lay there. I lit the candle and the strange double figure was now brightly illuminated. Only slowly did it dawn upon me. Only slowly and gradually did I begin to suspect and then perceive what it was intended to represent. It represented a figure which was myself, and this likeness of myself was unpleasantly weak and half-real; it had blurred features, and in its whole expression there was something unstable, weak, dying or wishing to die, and looked rather like a piece of sculpture which could be called "Transitoriness" or "Decay," or something similar. On the other hand, the other figure which was joined to mine to make one, was strong in colour and form, and just as I began to realise whom it resembled, namely, the servant and President Leo, I discovered a second candle in the wall and lit this also. I now saw the double figure representing Leo and myself, not only becoming clearer and each image more alike, but I also saw that the surface of the figures was transparent and that one could look inside as one can look through the glass of a bottle or vase. Inside the figures I saw something moving, slowly, extremely slowly, in the same way that a snake moves which has fallen asleep. Something was taking place there, something like a very slow, smooth but continuous flowing or melting; indeed, something melted or poured across from my image to that of Leo's. I perceived that my image was in the process of adding to and flowing into Leo's, nourishing and strengthening it. It seemed that, in time, all the substance from one image would flow into the other and only one would remain: Leo. He must grow, I must disappear. As I stood there and looked and tried to understand what I saw, I recalled a short conversation that I had once had with Leo during the festive days at Bremgarten. We had talked about the creations of poetry being more vivid and real than the poets themselves. The candles burned low and went out. I was overcome by an infinite weariness and desire to sleep, and I turned away to find a place where I could lie down and sleep.

Mindy runs to the DVD player and delicately places the disk in the holder and presses play. “Will you sit in this chair, please, Princess Mindy?” I ask, bowing deeply at the waist. Mindy giggles as she replies, ”I guess so.” After Mindy sits down, I take a wide-tooth comb and start gently combing out her tangles. Mindy starts vibrating with excitement as she blurts, “Mr. Jeff, you’re gonna fix my hair fancy, ain’t you?” “We’ll see if a certain Princess can hold still long enough for me to finish,” I tease. Immediately, Mindy becomes as still as a stone statue. After a couple of minutes, I have to say, “Mindy, sweetheart, it’s okay to breathe. I just can’t have you bouncing, because I’m afraid it will cause me to pull your hair.” Mindy slumps down in her chair just slightly. “Okay Mr. Jeff, I was ascared you was gonna stop,” she whispers, her chin quivering. I adopt a very fake, very over-the-top French accent and say, “Oh no, Monsieur Jeff must complete Princess Mindy’s look to make the Kingdom happy. Mindy erupts with the first belly laugh I’ve heard all day as she responds, “Okay, I’ll try to be still, but it’s hard ‘cause I have the wiggles real bad.” I pat her on the shoulder and chuckle as I say, “Just try your best, sweetheart. That’s all anyone can ask.” Kiera comes screeching around the corner in a blur, plunks her purse on the table, and says breathlessly, “Geez-O-Pete, I can’t believe I’m late for the makeover. I love makeovers.” Kiera digs through her purse and produces two bottles of nail polish and nail kit. “It’s time for your mani/pedi ma’am. Would you prefer Pink Pearl or Frosted Creamsicle? Mindy raises her hand like a schoolchild and Kiera calls on her like a pupil, “I want Frosted Cream toes please,” Mindy answers. “Your wish is my command, my dear,” Kiera responds with a grin. For the next few minutes, Mindy gets the spa treatment of her life as I carefully French braid her hair into pigtails. As a special treat, I purchased some ribbons from the gift shop and I’m weaving them into her hair. I tuck a yellow rose behind her ear. I don my French accent as I declare, “Monsieur Jeffery pronounces Princess Mindy finished and fit to rule the kingdom.” Kiera hands Mindy a new tube of grape ChapStick from her purse, “Hold on, a true princess never reigns with chapped lips,” she says. Mindy giggles as she responds, “You’re silly, Miss Kiera. Nobody in my kingdom is going to care if my lips are shiny.” Kiera’s laugh sounds like wind chimes as she covers her face with her hands as she confesses, “Okay, you busted me. I just like to use it because it tastes yummy.” “Okay, I want some, please,” Mindy decides. Kiera is putting the last minute touches on her as Mindy is scrambling to stand on Kiera’s thighs so she can get a better look in the mirror. When I reach out to steady her, she grabs my hand in a death grip. I glance down at her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is opening and closing like a fish. I shoot Kiera a worried glance, but she merely shrugs. “Holy Sh — !” Mindy stops short when she sees Kiera’s expression. “Mr. Jeff is an angel for reals because he turned me into one. Look at my hair Miss Kiera, there are magic ribbons in it! I’m perfect. I can be anything I want to be.” Spontaneously, we all join together in a group hug. I kiss the top of her head as I agree, “Yes, Mindy, you are amazing and the sky is the limit for you.

Then Janie’s baby voice rose above the din. “Ma-ma!” My steps halted. So did my heart. The plaintive cry filled every crevice of my being. “Ma-ma!” The caterwauling ceased. I turned. Ollie’s horror-stricken face told me I’d heard right. Gripping the handle of my suitcase and clenching my teeth, I tried to hold in my own keening. Janie dropped to her pudgy knees in the middle of the road. “Ma-ma!” She fell on her face in the dirt and sobbed. My gaze rose past her to Frank, who stood at the top of the steps. His horror seemed to mirror my own. I’d thought by leaving I’d alleviate his suffering, but it seemed I’d only deepened it. He made his way across the yard, his eyes fixed on mine. He passed his frozen children as if they were merely trees in a human forest and stopped in front of me, so close I could smell Ol’ Bob on his shirt. I tilted my head back, looked into his face. My heart bumped against my chest, though I’d felt sure it had stopped beating altogether. His arms reached for me, then fell back to his side. “Please, Rebekah. Please stay. They need you. I told you that.” “I can’t.” My vision blurred as I shook my head. His thumb caught a tear on my cheek, wiped it dry. I glanced at Janie, still lying heartbroken in the dirt. I ached to go to her, but I didn’t want to make things worse. Ollie seemed to read my thoughts. She picked up her sister, but her attention remained on me. I looked back at Frank. “Can’t you see? I’m giving you your life back. Your whole life. Your house. Your family.” I tasted the salt of my tears. He grabbed my shoulders. “But don’t you understand, Rebekah? I can’t have my whole life back. When I left for the war, I knew nothing would ever be the same. And it isn’t. Clara is gone. I have to make a new life now.” He sucked in a deep breath. “And I want to make it with you.” “Me? Are you saying . . . ” I held my breath, holding the words inside me, afraid they’d meet the air and burst like a soap bubble. His lips curled into a smile that chased every trace of gray from his eyes. “Marry me?

Confusion is like a delusion, it's like dust covering the mirror of your real potentials and identity followed by your true belief system by turning it out into negative one which makes your self-image blur so you feel low and dull to perform anything bigger, somehow it kills the fruits of all your efforts unexpectedly, it has an ability to blow the flame of your passion..... there are a lot of sources you will find around, stay away from anyone who makes you confuse, anything, person, ideology or belief any source that makes you feel like that, stay away from it, leave it and live your real life.

Once I saw the Crab Nebula through a powerful telescope. The nebula is the expanding debris of an exploded star, a wreath of shredded star-stuff eight light-years wide and 5000 light-years away. What I saw in the telescope was hardly more than a blur of light, more like a smudge of dust on the mirror of the scope than the shards of a dying star. But seeing through a telescope is 50 percent vision and 50 percent imagination. In the blur of light I could easily imagine the outrushing shock wave, the expanding envelope of high-energy radiation, the torn filaments of gas, the crushed and pulsing remnant of the skeletal star. I stood for a quarter of an hour with my eye glued to the eyepiece of the scope. I felt a powerful sensation of energy unleashed, of an old building collapsing onto its foundations in a roar of dust at the precise direction of a demolition expert. As I watched the Crab Nebula, I felt as if I should be wearing earplugs, like an artilleryman or the fellow who operates a jackhammer. But there was no sound.

The two men spoke again, but their words blurred in my head and became little more than a buzzing sound. I watched as the first man went into the hall. He was leaving us, pulling off his mask as he reached the front door. He didn’t know I’d seen him, reflected in the hall mirror. I realised that seeing his face, knowing I would recognise him again anywhere, could be the end for me. I looked down quickly, hoping neither man had caught my eyes, watching, recording the chiselled features and the slightly hooked nose, knowing my fear had imprinted every detail into

the mirror above the bureau—a flushed blurred face. I had learned to look quickly away from that face for so often I hated what I saw.

In drag, the concept of “realness” doesn’t necessarily mean what you might think. For many drag artists, realness isn’t about trying to “pass”—to blend in with the crowd without notice—but rather about standing out and apart. By disrupting and shining a light on our assumptions, drag realness can expose that what is most real is in the in-between, in the blurring itself, in tearing up the playbook of gender. The realness of drag is that it heightens, dramatizes, and deviates in order to reveal—it holds up a mirror to us, showing us the gender baggage we inherit and inviting us to discard our conventions.

As sometimes happened following a visit to Kent, the city had a chill to it that went beyond a sense of the air outside. Though Maisie loved her flat in Pimlico, there was a warmth to her father's cottage, to being at Chelstone, that made her feel cocooned and safe. And she felt wanted. That flat was hers to do with as she wished, and to do exactly as she pleased within those walls, but sometimes she felt it still held within it the stark just-moved-in feeling that signaled the difference between a house and a home. Of course, it still was not fully furnished, and there were no ornaments displayed - a vase, perhaps, that a visitor might comment upon and the hostess would say, "Oh, that was a gift, let me tell you about it..." There were no stories attached to the flat - but how could there be, when she was always alone in her home. There were no family photographs, no small framed portraits on the mantelpiece over the fire in the sitting room as there were at her father's house. She thought the flat would be all the better for some photographs, not only to serve as reminders of those who were loved, or reflections of happy times spent in company, but to act as mirrors, where she might see the affection with which she was held by those dear to her. A mirror in which she could see her connections. ... Most of the time, thought, she was not lonely, just on her own, an unmarried woman of independent means, even when the extent of the means - or lack thereof - sometimes gave her cause to remain awake at night. She knew the worries that came to the fore at night were the ones you had to pay attention to, for they blurred reasoned thought, sucked clarity from any consideration of one's situation, and could lead a mind around in circles, leaving one drained and ill-tempered. And if there was no one close with whom to discuss those concerns, they grew in importance in the imagination, whether were rooted in good sense or not. ... She wondered if one could take leave of one's senses, even if one had no previous occasions of mental incapacity, simply by being isolated from others. Is that what pushed the man over the edge of all measured thought? Were his thoughts so distilled, without the calibrating effect of a normal life led among others, that he ceased to recognize the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, or between having a voice and losing it? And if that were so, might an ordinary woman living alone with her memories, with her work, with the walls of her flat drawing in upon her, be at some risk of not seeing the world as it is?

I am grappling with fullness and emptiness and the unnameable something that could change everything. I am thinking of spells chosen, not cast, of polarity, of clear mirrors. I wonder at how the body can brace itself and choose surrender all at once. I contemplate the way Ink bleeds through from one page to the next, and how all the stories do this really, the way the lines of my tattoo soften into my skin over time. The way all lines blur in the end. I hold the language and complexity and sovereignty of my yes. I imagine the spaces where sacred and tender and profane and primal meet and dance. The intimacy that exists between us and how it takes me by surprise every single time. I dream of the way a future want can also feel like a memory lived, where the body inexplicably knows what it has not yet experienced. Of the way that the doing and the undoing of me are sometimes the very same thing. Of the hunger of my skin and my holy pleasure and the turning inward and the space where they collide. Of lighting seeking ground. Of the first taste of coffee in the morning and the way my body unfolds into it. Of the infinities of her and how and where I might one day find and taste them. How sometimes, when I dive into the root of what my lonely feels like, it is just that the light is so beautiful here, and I want someone else to feel it with me. Do you feel it? Tell me you do. Please. Tell me you do.

PIECES OF LIGHT I see the art of each heart reflecting the mirror that the world put it in front of - for so long that the lines so once so clear became hate for everything we see - blurring out the real; Seeing a thousand lights reflecting one's own means nothing anymore, now that we live by the one offered by the world; The price of being a small part of everyone's standard is being praised so, we may break into one single piece.

COLOURS IN THE MIRROR One day my pride will outlive myself and whatever remains of its colours will be remembered by others - for I was always my true self. I live too little for things that make me dream & care too much for fears that sleep in between the fine lines of my weary mind - so write me gentle words, for it may break. My diversity should not be a mistake but a celebration of identity & guiding light to others who ache to leave the numbness of »pretending-to-be«. We are not broken mirrors that hurt the world by showing our true reflection; we are merely hearts used to rejection - yet, their words will only blur but not break our shine.

Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it. It is, as Ruskin says, “not merely unnoticed, but in the full clear sense of the word, unseen.” If Tinker Mountain erupted, I’d be likely to notice. But if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present…when I see this way I analyze and pry. I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head. Some days when the mist covers the mountains, when the muskrats won’t show and the microscope’s mirror shatters, I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife, claw a rent in the top, peep, and if I must, fall. But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. It was sunny one evening last summer at Tinker Creek; the sun was low in the sky, upstream. I was sitting on the sycamore log bridge with the sunset at my back, watching the shiners the size of minnows who were feeding over the muddy bottom…again and again, one fish, then another, turned for a split second and flash! the sun shot out from its silver side. I couldn’t watch for it. It was always just happening somewhere else…so I blurred my eyes and gazed towards the brim of my hat and saw a new world. I saw the pale white circles roll up, roll up like the world’s turning, mute and perfect, and I saw the linear flashes, gleaming silver, like stars being born at random down a rolling scroll of time. Something broke and something opened. I filled up like a new wineskin. I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water. I was the lip of a fountain the creek filled forever; I was ether, the leaf in the zephyr; I was flesh-flake, feather, bone. When I see this way, I see truly.

If you’re like most people, a string of nerve-racking incidents keeps you in fight-or-flight response—and out of homeostasis—a large part of the time. Maybe the car cutting you off is the only actual life-threatening situation you encounter all day, but the traffic on the way to work, the pressure of preparing for a big presentation, the argument you had with your spouse, the credit-card bill that came in the mail, the crashing of your computer hard drive, and the new gray hair you noticed in the mirror keep the stress hormones circulating in your body on a near-constant basis. Between remembering stressful experiences from the past and anticipating stressful situations coming up in your future, all these repetitive short-term stresses blur together into long-term stress. Welcome to the 21st-century version of living in survival mode. In fight-or-flight mode, life-sustaining energy is mobilized so that the body can either run or fight. But when there isn’t a return to homeostasis (because you keep perceiving a threat), vital energy is lost in the system. You have less energy in your internal environment for cell growth and repair, long-term building projects on a cellular level, and healing when that energy is being channeled elsewhere. The cells shut down, they no longer communicate with one another, and they become “selfish.” It’s not time for routine maintenance (let alone for making improvements); it’s time for defense. It’s every cell for itself, so the collective community of cells working together becomes fractured. The immune and endocrine systems (among others) become weakened as genes in those related cells are compromised when informational signals from outside the cells are turned off. It’s like living in a country where 98 percent of the resources go toward defense, and nothing is left for schools, libraries, road building and repair, communication systems, growing of food, and so on. Roads develop potholes that aren’t fixed. Schools suffer budget cuts, so students wind up learning less. Social welfare programs that took care of the poor and the elderly have to close down. And there’s not enough food to feed the masses. Not surprisingly, then, long-term stress has been linked to anxiety, depression, digestive problems, memory loss, insomnia, hypertension, heart disease, strokes, cancer, ulcers, rheumatoid arthritis, colds, flu, aging acceleration, allergies, body pain, chronic fatigue, infertility, impotence, asthma, hormonal issues, skin rashes, hair loss, muscle spasms, and diabetes, to name just a few conditions (all of which, by the way, are the result of epigenetic changes). No organism in nature is designed to withstand the effects of long-term stress.

As the lines on the palm and forehead … turned darker and thicker, as he matured along the highs and lows of life-wave, the hazy and blurred phrases shook off the dust of time and dried the moisture of pain, thus being vivid like an image on a carved glass. The incidences in his life ahead sharpened the blunt edges of diamond and the hitherto blurred prophecies found meaning… found reflection… like that in a mirror.

The retreating tide had transformed the wet sands into a curving silver mirror that reflected the colours that flooded the pale sea and pearly sky in waves of wonder. The far islands had lost their look of shimmering transparency and become silhouettes of violet velvet against the opal sea, and a dimness had crept over the flaming green of the jungle-clad hills; softening and blurring it wiht a blue, grape-like bloom.

Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance.

Usually, you can only catch the Sasquatch blur of your own legendary moments in the side mirrors.

BECOMING AWARE OF THE AURA Tell someone else to stand in front of a plain white or softly colored wall about 30 cm away. Stand at least 2–3 meters (6–10ft) apart, and aim at the wall above your head or shoulders. (Don't look at the person; otherwise, it won't work.) You can see a line about 1–2 cm (½ in) long around the body that looks lighter than the rest. A thin line that looks like it's been traced with a pencil will clearly define it. This is an aura shield, a person's energy field. Try to soften your focus a little if you have trouble detecting the aura. Perhaps a little close your pupils. Or try the room's lighter or darker corner. An alternative method is to stretch and look at the fingertips on a white or softly colored backdrop. A slightly blurred but lighter line can be observed, this time around them about 2–3 mm (a fraction of an inch). Fascinating though it is, it's not necessary to study Reiki to see the aura. When we put our hands in a Reiki treatment around a person, we will still be mindful of the aura. Yet starting it's a fun way. We appear to see the final component of the aura in the test, which is one of seven. The further a substance away from the body is, the waves are stronger and weaker. The outermost layer stretches from the front and back of the body to 1–2 meters (approximately 6ft) and from the edges to about half a meter (1½ft). (Imagine how many people are on a crowded underground train in your aura!) But the atmosphere is also evolving–and increasing with personal development. The rule seems to follow: small ego= large aura. The physical body and the aura The auric particles envelop the physical body in dense rings, but they also interpenetrate one another, with the best being the innermost (hence the simplest to see) and the outermost. This ensures the seventh layer's vibrational frequency covers the whole body–and passes through it completely. And finally, what happens in the aura can manifest in the physical body. To sum up, we definitely have more than what greets us in the mirror. We are a rather large energy ball that vibrates at different levels and holds a lot of information and potential.

When she woke up, she didn’t know how long it had been since she fainted. Her head hurt and her eyes were blurred. Someone was holding her into his arms and calling her by name, eager and anxious. Every time she was about to fall asleep, he will shake her, chanting strange spells into her ears, while pressing his hand on the back of her heart. “Don’t sleep.” She heard the brother whispering into her ear, “Wake up!

In England Have My Bones, he describes Buckinghamshire in a similar way – through what it is not. His county lacks outstanding qualities, beauty and historical significance, and so it avoids the attention of the world. It is safe. When White goes on to explain how Buckinghamshire ‘concealed its individuality in order to preserve it’ but is ‘secretly exuberant in its private way’ you realise that he is writing about his own character. More disguises. The mirror works both ways. The lines between the man and landscape blur. When White writes of his love for the countryside, at heart he is writing about a hope that he might be able to love himself.

I have wondered if we're entering a period in which the line between valuing a woman in the face of mistreatment and valuing her because of that mistreatment is blurring; if the legitimate need to defend women from unfair criticism has morphed into an illegitimate need to defend women from criticism categorically; if it's become possible to praise a woman specifically because she is criticized for that featureless fact alone.

the sun shines down upon us, the lucky ones...you're the radiant autumn leaves, so bright and vibrant, so vivid and ablaze with warming colors...i am your reflection in the river, only just a bit darker, and hazy opaque, and slightly blurred, more cooled by the waters (but still burning for you)...but we're complimentary mirrors to each other, such beautiful simplicity, two incomplete parts of the perfect whole, we are together one the same...one love in the glowing light

I leaned my forehead against the mirror, feeling the cold, sleek surface against my skin. This close to the mirror, I couldn’t make myself out. I was just one big blur. Was that what I was going to do for the rest of my life? Hide forever behind my mask of makeup? Veil myself like I was too hideous for public viewing? I hated all those layers of makeup then, the weight of the foundation and powder and moisturizer. I was breathing harder than if I had gone snowshoeing for two, three hours. My hands gripped the sink, the edge cutting into my palm. My face was nothing but a cartographic lie, told to placate my father, who could stand nothing less than perfection. A lie to assure my mother that I had every chance for the happiness that she was denied.

[..] If love returns us our reflection, then solitude is like being denied the use of a mirror, and allowing one’s imagination to make what it will of a cut or spot we know we have on our face. Whatever the damage, at least the mirror returns us a sense of ourselves, gives us a clear outline with which we may answer the boundless of our imagination. Because a sense of who we are is not self-generated, fuzziness accompanied Chloe in the desert, the outlines of her character blurring away from the focus of others, her imagination taking hold of her and expanding her into a monstrous create, swollen with the paranoias and delusions it may engender.

Some days I hardly recognize myself in the mirror. It’s not my face that has changed; it’s the way I see the world. I’ve seen things that have permanently altered me. I’ve done things that have distorted my vision. I’ve crossed lines and tried to find them again, only to discover that all my lines have disappeared. And without lines, everything blurs together.

Through the peephole I see a pot of anxious lilies held by the bellboy who is scared of birds (“Good morning,” he says, fearfully). I open the door, dig through my pockets for a dollar. “I’ll find my wallet.” I pass in front of the hallway mirror and catch sight of my mussed hair and blurred face. My hair. My face. The wallet slips my grasp and lands on the carpet. I test my arms and legs, enjoying the lightness. It’s as if I’ve been relieved of my skin and am a spirit. I reach, bend, lunge.

No living creature lives without mistakes, Leo.” As it spoke, the flightsuit played videos in the visor, showing diapered babies sitting down hard as they learned to walk, tiger cubs rolling with each other and a blur of dozens of different moments captured from Earth. Everything man and Explorer creates is designed from mistakes, learned and corrected, to improve subsequent designs. I am the product of millions of mistakes, adjustments made to original concepts and plans.” The images in the visor displayed bridges swaying wildly, buildings crumbling to the ground, the blackened interior of a space capsule through a charred open door. “Every device you've ever used-so familiar you may have never considered their creation. Every device is the product of mistakes, hundreds or thousands of previous mistakes. You see the results, but you do not see the mistakes.” The flightsuit paused. “You see yourself in the mirror and see the results, and you do not see the millions of shaping events that made you. You survived these challenges. There are millions more shaping events ahead of you. You have not yet survived these, and so they feel dangerous and uncertain. If you were able to precisely recall, at will, the feelings of fear and uncertainty you experienced in the past or the moments you long ago overcame and survived would you discourage your past self from trying?

These portraits were extraordinary enough, but dominating the whole room was a painting the like of which I’d never seen before, of a small girl, perhaps four or five years old, encased in a stiff satin dress as wide as a table at the hips, very strange on a child. Las Meninas, it was called, which means The Maids of Honour, and sure enough the princess was surrounded by courtiers, a nun, a finely dressed female dwarf and a small boy, or perhaps he was another dwarf, prodding a dog with his foot. To the left, a painter with a comically Spanish moustache – a likeness, I supposed, of Velázquez himself – stood in front of a huge canvas, facing out as if he was painting not the little girl but the viewer, specifically me, Douglas Timothy Petersen, the illusion so convincing that I wanted to crane around the canvas to see what he’d made of my nose. A mirror on the back wall showed two other figures, the girl’s parents I guessed, Mariana and Philip IV, the large-chinned gentleman on the wall to my left. Despite being distant and blurred, it seemed that they were the true subject of the artist’s portrait, but nevertheless the artist, the little girl, the female dwarf all seemed to stare out of the painting at me with such level intensity that I began to feel rather self-conscious, and confused, too, as to how a painting could have so many subjects: the little princess, the ladies in waiting, the artist, the royal couple, and me. It was as disorientating as the moment when you step between two mirrors and see infinite versions of yourself stretching into, well, infinity. Clearly there was ‘a lot going on’ in this painting too, and I’d return with Albie soon.