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Mirrors and self-reflection...
Oct. 30th, 2003 01:23 amMind is a jumble tonight, emotions caught somewhere between depression and a sense of urgency as if I don’t do something soon I’ll be sucked down by the weight of my own inertia and counter-weights.
Have been reading lots of interesting stuff on the internet lately. From a Buddhist scholar to MC ESCHER essay, and what I’ve realized is I’m living in a world of counter-points and counter-images. According to Ryieu’s post on the ATPO board, there are 132 Buddhist hells, but Hell from the Buddhist point of view is what the damned make it. If you believe you are damned? You are damned. Makes me wonder if it is true, that this is the only life we have and since time is a cycle, a snake literally eating its own tail or a widening gyre spiraling in on itself – perhaps we are doomed to cycle back in ourselves, reliving the same choices over and over until somehow we work our way outside the loops like some bewildered weather man caught in PA on Ground Hog Day.
I’m reminded of a Toltec Wisdom book written by Don Miguel Ruiz, called the Four Agreements, which was all the rage a few years back. According to Ruiz – “what others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream”. So are we but mirrors for others reflections and are others mirrors for our own? Are we basically just sharing each other’s dreams of existence?
In case anyone is curious, I was already thinking about this before I watched tonight’s episode of Angel tonight, about how we relate to art by often projecting ourselves upon it – so what we see may in fact be distorted by what we are. Even our own definition of ourselves can be distorted through the looking glasses of our friends’ opinions, literature, and culture until we are no longer sure where their projection ends and ours begins. Is our writing reflective of who we read? If we read James Joyce instead of John Grisham would we be a better or worse writer? Or in Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy’s case – is their art reflective of the comics they read or are the comics reflective of their art? In asking such questions, do we endanger ourselves by becoming like the Wicked Queen in Snow White, constantly asking a series of mirrors who we are and hoping to find a sort of validation through their answers?
The writers of Angel the Series often reference or use mirror images to describe their characters’ dilemmas. In fact as someone mentioned recently on a list serve I frequent, Ats may in fact be a mirror world in more ways than one. The memory wipes, including depending on your definition the time reversal in IWRY, and later the literal wipe in Home, essentially create alternate realities or mirror dimensions, like the former dimension yet oddly different. Just as walking through portals lead the characters to parallel universes or hells. The trip to Pylea in S2 was called literally Through the Looking Glass. Cordelia in Tomorrow – sits talking to herself as if she were talking to a mirror. Angel, a master of self-reflection, finds himself projecting his own reflections on all who surround him and having those reflections of himself reflected back on him, until he is caught in a mirrored loop of constant reflections, yet is ironically unable to look in the glass himself. He, like the Queen in Snow White, is stuck asking the mirror what he looks like as opposed to being able to see for himself. His inability to gaze in that mirror, requires him to use his friends as mirrors – to catch his own reflection. Yet even in their eyes he is divided – two images, one that lurks in the mirror behind their eyes, the one he fears that he really is. The subconscious part he denies, which is all bottled up inside. Making me wonder if there is such a thing as too much self-reflection, leading one to be unable to see beyond the reflections themselves.
In tonight’s episode Party Animal, 5.5 ..(detailed spoilers for the episode follow) ( Read more... )
Have been reading lots of interesting stuff on the internet lately. From a Buddhist scholar to MC ESCHER essay, and what I’ve realized is I’m living in a world of counter-points and counter-images. According to Ryieu’s post on the ATPO board, there are 132 Buddhist hells, but Hell from the Buddhist point of view is what the damned make it. If you believe you are damned? You are damned. Makes me wonder if it is true, that this is the only life we have and since time is a cycle, a snake literally eating its own tail or a widening gyre spiraling in on itself – perhaps we are doomed to cycle back in ourselves, reliving the same choices over and over until somehow we work our way outside the loops like some bewildered weather man caught in PA on Ground Hog Day.
I’m reminded of a Toltec Wisdom book written by Don Miguel Ruiz, called the Four Agreements, which was all the rage a few years back. According to Ruiz – “what others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream”. So are we but mirrors for others reflections and are others mirrors for our own? Are we basically just sharing each other’s dreams of existence?
In case anyone is curious, I was already thinking about this before I watched tonight’s episode of Angel tonight, about how we relate to art by often projecting ourselves upon it – so what we see may in fact be distorted by what we are. Even our own definition of ourselves can be distorted through the looking glasses of our friends’ opinions, literature, and culture until we are no longer sure where their projection ends and ours begins. Is our writing reflective of who we read? If we read James Joyce instead of John Grisham would we be a better or worse writer? Or in Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy’s case – is their art reflective of the comics they read or are the comics reflective of their art? In asking such questions, do we endanger ourselves by becoming like the Wicked Queen in Snow White, constantly asking a series of mirrors who we are and hoping to find a sort of validation through their answers?
The writers of Angel the Series often reference or use mirror images to describe their characters’ dilemmas. In fact as someone mentioned recently on a list serve I frequent, Ats may in fact be a mirror world in more ways than one. The memory wipes, including depending on your definition the time reversal in IWRY, and later the literal wipe in Home, essentially create alternate realities or mirror dimensions, like the former dimension yet oddly different. Just as walking through portals lead the characters to parallel universes or hells. The trip to Pylea in S2 was called literally Through the Looking Glass. Cordelia in Tomorrow – sits talking to herself as if she were talking to a mirror. Angel, a master of self-reflection, finds himself projecting his own reflections on all who surround him and having those reflections of himself reflected back on him, until he is caught in a mirrored loop of constant reflections, yet is ironically unable to look in the glass himself. He, like the Queen in Snow White, is stuck asking the mirror what he looks like as opposed to being able to see for himself. His inability to gaze in that mirror, requires him to use his friends as mirrors – to catch his own reflection. Yet even in their eyes he is divided – two images, one that lurks in the mirror behind their eyes, the one he fears that he really is. The subconscious part he denies, which is all bottled up inside. Making me wonder if there is such a thing as too much self-reflection, leading one to be unable to see beyond the reflections themselves.
In tonight’s episode Party Animal, 5.5 ..(detailed spoilers for the episode follow) ( Read more... )
