Silly old bear

"The first of my father's illusions was 

that bears could survive the life lived by human beings ..."

-- John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

Miniature wood mannequin in a bear mask 12-26-13

"We invent what we love, and what we fear."

-- John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

Pour me

"Looking back you realize that a very special person

passed briefly through your life  -- and it was you.

It's not too late to find that person again."

-- Robert  Brault

Metal pour spout from a box of sugar  9-9-13

"A face stared up at her from the mirror beside her hand.

Was that really what she looked like?

Was that really what she looked like, all sharp lines and huge silver-grey eyes?

... those extraordinary eyes ...

what memories lived in them that she could not share?"

-- P.C. Hodgell, God Stalk

"Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face ...

People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors

as they appear to their friends.

I have no friends."

-- Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

"Gussie, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror."

-- P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

Dark circles

“Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?”

-- Bill Watterson

Self portrait 6-21-13

“The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be 

and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have."

-- Francesca Lia Block, Pink Smog

“... the abyss you stare into and that stares back at you is your reflection in the mirror --

we all have it -- that shadow self -- that dark heart ...”

-- John Geddes, A Familiar Rain 

Mandala me

“If her own life was that carefully described pencil line, 

she knew it all at once that the two ends were drawing close together. 

I have come full circle, she told herself, and wondered what had happened to all the years. 

It was a question, which from time to time, caused her some anxiety 

and left her fretting with a dreadful sense of waste.”

-- Rosamunde Pilcher

Self portrait 5-8-13

“I have begun to wonder where I came from. 

The person I am now, this fumbling, stumbling supplicant ... 

was I built on the foundations of my old life, 

or did I rise from the grave a blank slate? 

How much of me is inherited, 

and how much is my own creation?”

-- Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

“Learning without reflection is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous.”

-- Confucius