Watching (But First Recognizing) Yourself

[Image: “Screened,” by a Flickr user who identifies him/herself only as “new 1lluminati”; used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!).]

From whiskey river:

But I also know of yet another life. I know and want it and devour it ferociously. It’s a life of magical violence. It’s mysterious and bewitching. In it snakes entwine while the stars tremble. Drops of water drip in the phosphorescent darkness of the cave. In that dark the flowers intertwine in a humid fairy garden. And I am the sorceress of that silent bacchanal. I feel defeated by my own corruptibility. And I see that I am intrinsically bad. It’s only out of pure kindness that I am good. Defeated by myself. Who lead me along the paths of the salamander, the spirit who rules the fire and lives within it. And I give myself as an offering to the dead. I weave spells on the solstice, spectre of an exorcised dragon.

(Clarice Lispector [source])

…and:

Here is the best true story on giving I know, and it was told by Jack Kornfield of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre. An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight.

The next day he went to his parents and said he was willing to donate the blood. So they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both of them were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put in the girl’s IV. The boy lay on his gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. Then the boy opened his eyes and asked, “How soon until I start to die?”

(Anne Lamott [source])

…and:

The more you think, the faster you cut your own throat. What is there to think about? It always ends up the same way. In your mind there is a bolted door. You have to work hard not to go near that door. Parties, lovers, career, charity, babies, who cares what it is, so long as you avoid the door. There are times, when I am on my own, fixing a drink, walking upstairs, when I see the door waiting for me. I have to stop myself pulling the bolt and turning the handle. Why? On the other side of the door is a mirror, and I will have to see myself. I’m not afraid of what I am. I’m afraid I will see what I am not.

(Jeanette Winterson [source])

Not from whiskey river:

The Tawdry Masks of Women

Every bus ride is theater, giddy schoolgirls trying on
the tawdry masks of women, flirting with my nephew,

red and green lights, shop windows piled high, gold
glistered skeletal mannequins in slips of iridescent silk.

At night in the wind blowing over the Pont Marie I hear
Camille Claudel crying from the walls of her studio,

and two days before Christmas Elliot and I stand
miraculously alone before La Gioconde, follow her eyes,

cracked surface of her skin like softest sand before the deep
water of her mouth, and later standing in the cold

our Buddhist gardienne Nadine tells me in rapid-fire French
that in all things she tries to remain neutral, neutre, neutre,

neutre, the only word finally I understand in the barrage
tumbling out of her mouth like a waterfall, but I can’t be

neutral, passion welling up in my heart for the exhausted maids,
dapper men in berets, the madwoman on the PC bus,

screaming, Salope, salope, as she descends at the Pont d’Ivry
and everyone on the bus looking at each other, Whore?

Who’s the whore here? or the chic older woman, leather pants
baggy on her skinny shanks, reading a battered paperback

Rimbaud as we take the bus to see Pasolini’s Canterbury Tales,
the master himself as Chaucer, spinning his ribald stories

of human folly, each one a mirror, and when I see myself
in bus windows or store glass, the shock never wears off,

for I recognize myself and see a stranger at the same time,
because the minutes are racing by at the speed of light,

and I am saying goodbye to Paris, to everyone, myself
most of all, watching her disappear down the rue Jeanne d’Arc,

and what can she possibly be thinking as she walks
to the movies in the middle of this afternoon of her life?

(Barbara Hamby [source])

…and:

Postcards

When was the last time you mailed a postcard?

My mother kept the ones I sent her. My sister mailed them back

to me after my mother died. I had forgotten I had written

so many small notes to my mother. The price of stamps

kept changing. I was always mentioning on the back of cards

I was having a good time. I can remember the first time

I lied to my mother. It was something small maybe the size

of a postcard. I went somewhere I was not supposed to go.

I told my mother I was at the library but I was with Judy

that afternoon. Her small hand inside my hand.

I was beginning to feel something I knew I would never write

home about.

(E. Ethelbert Miller [source])