Seen from the doorway, that face in the mirror looks like a finished thing, clear and rigid and as sure of itself as a passport photograph. Everything in it has found its place, the eyes, the line of the mouth, the expression we have already composed and rehearsed for the day, and nothing in it seems able to break; and so it is with everything else we see in our daily life. The fear has a shape and a weight, and follows us from room to room like a piece of furniture we cannot sell; the joy sits in a pocket like a smooth stone, to be touched when nobody is looking; the problem stands in front of us like a building and, some mornings, rises taller than we are, so that the whole day is lived in its shadow. From the doorway, from afar, all of them have edges, and all of them look as though they were made of something.
Then we take three steps towards the mirror, and the detail takes over. At a hand’s breadth there is no face any more, only an eyelash, a pore, the wet rim of an iris, a thin…