Ways of Seeing

Windows, Mirrors, and Reflections

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window. - Alice Munro

"The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled." - John Berger

Mirrors have been the subject of ancient myths, folktales, literature, and superstitions for centuries. They are often used as a metaphor for insight into one's self.

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful
The eye of a little god, four-cornered. - Sylvia Plath

In Greek mythology, Narcissus, looking into a pool of water, did not understand that he saw his own reflection, and fell in love with himself.

"I became startled by the extraordinary difference between something whose surface is completely invisible which only makes itself present by virtue of what it reflects, and a window, which doesn't make itself apparent at all..."- Jonathan Miller