Found Objects: Myself
October 3, 2025
“One day you’re gonna have to face / the deep, dark truthful mirror,” Elvis Costello sings. “And it’s gonna tell you things that I still / love you too much to say.” I used to think that was a perfect breakup song to give someone, but I have begun to think about what it could mean if “I” was the self singing to itself.
So, sure, I am game. But I made the mistake recently, one dark night when the house was quiet and no one else was around but my ancient cat, of taking that metaphorically.
“Show me what you want to show me,” I told my psychological shadow as I lay on my couch and put myself into a pre-sleep, waking-dream state. “Let’s have it.”
Yeesh, I thought, sitting up. And that despite “doing the work”—that “uniquely annoying phrase”—all my life as a writer and a walking-around person. (“[P]rotect yourself wanderer / with the road that is walking too, Rilke says.) All right then. The work continues.
Meantime, I realized, I have been sitting in the same spot in my living room for years, literally facing the same Chinese altar table against the same wall of mirrors. That must mean something, too. The mirrors were collected from Facebook Marketplace, one by one, three dollars at a time, and are different shapes, sizes, colors, and patterns. With the help of floor lamps they reflect the bookshelves covering the opposite wall and make the room doubly bookish.
This spot is where I always work, often eat, and sometimes nap. The view never varies, except for the weather out the windows. But the light is really too weak to read print easily, and the sofa cushion is collapsing from exhaustion. What if…how invigorating…I sat on the other end of the couch? I have lived here six years.
Now I no longer looked at shadowy reflections on the wall of my cave, but at the things themselves. There were my books, as visitors see them for the first time; art by friends and strangers; ceramic tchotchkes; carvings by my father of Native American and Mongol wise men, which all looked like him; masks and figures collected from trips; literary and musical matrushka dolls; the clock on a shelf that I no longer even hear ticking.
I looked and looked. It was like looking at another part of myself.
