It's berry season at last! I found a mulberry tree and am going strawberry picking tomorrow.
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Life is a bizarre act. I am reminded of this every time I look in the mirror. What looks back always, always surprises me. I like to look in it everyday, not out of vanity or insecurity, but to try and relate the internal with the external. All day, I walk around as myself, and the stories I make up in my head. Then I look in the mirror and see someone completely unrelated to any of my personal experiences of existing (outside of others' reactions to me). I would never be able to guess what I look like by being in my head. I've heard of people being surprised by their aging faces in the mirror--wrinkles, gray hairs. Was there a time when their reflection *didn't* surprise them? Many people's identities are wrapped up in their images, especially if they learned to get approval that way. Good-looking people are thought of as fortunate, but attachment to that identity seems so unlucky!

When we do start to connect our image with ourselves? I remember taking my baby sister to the mirror and showing her her reflection, trying to figure out what she was thinking. Did she understand this is what people saw her as? At first she looked puzzled. Her gaze would go to me, and the me in the mirror, and then herself. When she finally laughed, I guessed that she understood. What's funnier than reality? That's why there are all those stories of enlightened monks being goofballs.

I'm going to take a hot bath, one of the simplest and greatest luxuries. I can't believe how lucky I am.