There have been times when I looked in the mirror, and I wasn’t entirely sure about the person looking back at me.
I have a look which sends my husband into paroxysms of fear. He calls it: “Crazy Girl.” I do know what it looks like, because I once made the look to myself in the mirror, and subsequently had to go and have a stiff brandy to get over the experience.
The look is just that: a pastiche of someone unhinged. I have always possessed the ability to act in that very method-actingy kind of way: do one’s research thoroughly, and then simply become the person one wishes to portray. Move into their skin, so to speak. Be The Ball, as Chevy Chase once advised during a round of golf.
I can’t claim to have researched my subject very well when it comes to Crazy Girl. I simply combine all that is out of control and Machiavellian with a little twist of unearthly dissembling, and cause it to emerge chiefly through the eyes.
My husband refuses to have the look in the house. If he is ever under the mistaken impression that I am about to do it he backs away, as if to put as much room between himself and this lawless psychopath as possible.
Needless to say, the children have never seen it, although Maddie is very keen to see it once. I have said that on her sixteenth birthday, a full two years after she has had her ears pierced, I will perform The Look for her.
It’s a classic trick of that sadly overworked genre, the horror film: you take a bathroom cabinet. In a moment of calm in an otherwise hair-raising roller coaster ride, you send the heroine in to have a glass of water, or wash her face, to compose herself.
That bathroom mirror moment is unwittingly a split second or two of sanctuary for the majority of us. It is a time to check out the eyebrows, rationalise heavily the crow’s-feet, wonder at the passing of time. It does not take long: it is not a makeup session or a facial: rather, it is a pause, a second to commune with the person looking back.
Which is why, of course, horror movie makers hijack that precious pause so mercilessly. Open the bathroom cabinet, close the bathroom cabinet, and there suddenly looking back, reflected in the mirror, is an intruder, or indeed a different person altogether.
I have written before of my time at Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham. It is an outrageously gothic place, put together in the mid 18th century by Horace Walpole, a son of Britain’s first prime minister. It is the result of a magpie collecting all that glitters. Walpole collected eclectically, a huge horde of everything which fitted into his vision of a gothic mansion.
I was one of thousands of students who used it before it was reawakened in a lavish £9 million makeover: in its former reincarnation as a training college for teachers.
Not for one moment in my hectic quest for a teaching certificate, did I pause to appreciate its full florid stature.
But I recollect it, the bones of that bastion of the gothic; it is impossible not to remember the panelling, the dark wood carving, the stained glass and the coquettishly arched doorways, the playful spiral staircases.
And, indeed, the mirrors.
There is one room, and I could not tell you where it is without a return visit. That room has a huge, floor to ceiling mirror taking up the entirety of one of the end walls.
A visitor opens the door, and while to his left an oak panelled gallery stretches out, the mirror towers on the wall to his right.
A story used to circulate about that mirror, and I have no idea of its provenance or indeed its quality. But I was told the story as I stood staring at my reflection in its vast height, and my teaching-student-reflection was looking back.
On one day of the year, it is said, on a specified date, if one comes to this room and looks into the mirror, one will see another’s reflection gazing out from the serene old glass.
It is rumoured to be a woman dressed for the ballroom; but of course, while I love these stories I would never stay to find out. I prefer to keep my reflections to myself.
The nineteenth century craze for magic and magicians gave rise to a wave of mirror illusionists, who thought to trick us as to exactly who was looking back. And, indeed, whether there was anything to look back from at all.
The greatest of these, it is generally thought, was John Henry Pepper.
A London academic, Pepper had a chemistry degree and quickly rose to be a professor, and subsequently Director of the The Royal Polytechnic – a sort of permanent science fair, and a precursor of Westminster University.
But it was really an inventor, Henry Dircks, who came up with an idea which would transform special effects, first in theatres, and then in film making.
It is performed thus: someone stands offstage, and a bright light is projected on them. This lit image reflects off a hidden mirror, onto the visible stage. The reflection can be made to look, not back at the subject, but out into an auditorium of hundreds.
Dircks took his phantasmagoria to the Royal Polytechnic, and Pepper convinced the theatre men it was achievable. It was first used during a scene of Charles Dickens’ The Haunted Man, at the Adelphi Theatre, to instant acclaim.
It became instantly known as “Pepper’s Ghost’.
A reflection, not of the skills of the inventor, but the ability of an academic to convince money men of the power of looking back.
The entity who looks back from a mirror holds fascination for us: amongst the trappings of the theatre; in fantastical stories; and in that quiet moment of pause, just man and his reflection.
Time has etched its lines on she who looks back at me. In quiet moments I wonder at the change, and how time has flown with winged feet.
But something else looks back too: something unique. A spirit, an essence, not subject to age. It can entertain, and terrify, and console, and befriend.
And the one who looks back at me has that in common with myriad reflections, looking out from endless mirrors, across a world of humanity.
Kate Shrewsday 
I too have a look like that, but mine is Demented Hag On Steroids.
Very good take on this week’s theme, clever girl.
One day, Cindy, when no-one else in the blogosphere is looking, I’d like to see Demented Hag On Steroids. So good to meet a fellow psychopath.
I guess we won’t get to see a photo of “Crazy Girl” in a post anytime soon…
“A spirit, an essence, not subject to age”, yes, there is something about us that transcends any moment in time, any physical feature. How quickly, too, we can get a ‘sense’ of a person even in a very brief period of time. Oh we are such interesting creatures!
Yes we are Zoe, and how your posts have been showing it this week! Taking on alternative personalities for fun has been such an adventure!
Sometimes when I’ve looked into the mirror it has been cracked and shattered. Then I wonder, perhaps I am looking from the surfaces of eyes that are actually the locus of the shatter and cracks. And then I get out of it and remind myself that the only time I need a mirror is when shaving and the rest of the time stick to windows and eliminate all the metaphysical nonsense. But then there are two sides of a window and that must mean…..
Windows and mirrors, Carl, such close relations…did Picasso have similar lines of enquiry, I wonder? Your words remind me immediately and urgently of some of his paintings.
I do enjoy a nice bit of metaphysics on a Sunday….
Thank you for this insightful, thought-provoking “looking back.” I find mirrors fascinating – I have blogged before (if some time ago; or wait, perhaps those writings never made it past my journal, and perhaps for obvious reasons 🙂 – oh well). Anyway, I have gone on at length somewhere of seeing different versions of self in my mirror at home – anywhere from a rather lovely-looking middle-aged woman to an old hag. And there was one time where I looked in the mirror completely startled and thinking: Who are you? Seriously. At my doctor’s office, once, I looked in the same mirror I always do and saw a woman, ageless, perfect, along the lines of your “[a] spirit, an essence, not subject to age.” I have my theories about what this might mean, but I think I have rather overused my guest space here 🙂 – guess I’ll have to do my own blog…
One can never overuse one’s guest space here; you’re all far too insightful and eloquent. What an absolutely amazing comment, Ruth, and what an experience to have glimpsed one’s ageless perfect self, without having to use any internal filter! I look forward to that blog.
It seems that the penultimate sentence in the penultimate paragraph has caught the attention of your readers. It did me:
“A spirit, an essence, not subject to age.”
When I stop thought, that spiritual essence shines through . . . ageless, untarnished, and unvarnished. The who I really am. 🙂
You put that beautifully, Nancy. Thank you 🙂
I also meant to comment on your Crazy Girl. Such fun to think of your daughter waiting until her 16th birthday to view your unhinged pastiche. 😉
If I’m still posting all those years ahead, I’ll capture the moment…..
I really like this thought. It is so much more honest and true. Indeed, that essence is who we all really are inside.
If I look in the mirror, looking back at me is often someone I don’t recognise. Who is this woman who came and took my place, she is me inside, but outside she changed
It’s true: time does that, doesn’t it? I remember a scene from Moonstruck where the main character walks into an off license where the couple in charge are having a row. In anger, the woman asks, “what do you see when you look at me?” And he replies, suddenly wreathed in smiles, “the girl I married”. Those who love us see the essence and the changes are embellishments on that. Look at Mick Jagger: still as magnetic as all those years ago.
Unless, of course, Sidey, you are not a Jagger fan…
You have given me a lot to think about. I don’t know how I feel about that entirely, but I know this type of thinking is good for my soul.
I have a feeling a cuddle with Shiva might aid the thinking process. Even though he smells like a barnyard, Mac puts everything in perspective for me 🙂
Sometimes when I catch myself unawares I realise how like my mother I have become. And how old!
Still the same you though….I become more like my father 😀 Make of that what you will….
Lovely post, Kate. And so true. I’m at that age, though, when my reflection is in soft focus – reading glasses needed, but not used! I’d love to know what invites the Crazy Girl to make an appearance, or is she on call? 🙂
Sunshine
I love the idea of deciding against reading glasses, Sunshine.
Crazy Girl hasn’t been around for a while, but her memory lives on. She used to appear during conversations between Phil and I when we were much younger, and minus kids. It was usually a jocular conversation about ghosts or horror films that brought it on, I seem to recall. It was just rather satisfying to see him terrified: and I can’t seem to conjure up any remorse from anywhere. Although, as I say, I no longer practice.
I read with glasses on, but keep them OFF when considering my reflection! xx
Aha. You caught me looking in a mirror, didn’t you?
I arise each day and eventually look into the mirror, hair in a disarray, no makeup on, though I wear little of it, sleep still crowding my eyes, and I most always say “hi Mom” and smile, for there she is, every day, looking back at me.
Lovely post.
What a lovely thought 🙂 It’s not just us looking back: but those who shaped and loved us. As I say, I look in the mirror and my Dad looks back. Now it is impossible to avoid this picture of a mannish Kate Shrewsday walking around like one of the Monty Python pepperpots.
Great post!
Thanks Tok 🙂
you’re on a roll, ladybird…
Sent here by nrhatch and so glad I came..love this post!
Welcome, Chris. I’m glad you came, too!
My mother told me that aging had little effect on her until one morning, in her 70th year, she could not believe who she saw. Mine came a little earlier which spurred me into allowing that essence out. I want it to be my make-up, wardrobe and ability to remove people’s glasses – reading or otherwise. There’s great beautify in peace.
I’ve enjoyed your comments on other blogs long enough. It’s time to add you to my list of subscribed blogs to read. I respect and appreciate your polished turn of phrase. Many thanks.
Thank you, Souldipper, for that comment. You are right. Inner peace shines out. It is lovely to see you as I potter around the blogosphere: I look forward to getting to know you a little better.