I vacillate between obsessively staring at and pinching my falling face to imagine if surgery can save it or avoiding mirrors altogether and being thankful my vision (and my husband’s) isn’t as sharp as it used to be. Gravity may be what holds us on the planet but it’s also dragging our bodies down to earth. We saw the flick Black Swan yesterday, revealing the great insecurity and short shelf life of  ballerinas and the sheer amount of time they spend staring at themselves in studio mirrors. I found myself fixating on the older ballerina Beth who was destroyed by the limelight moving on as well as by the tortured relationship Natalie Portman,the prima ballerina, had with her reflection. The looking glass doesn’t just reflect, it distorts and affects.

I don’t have a pithy solution to this daily mirror, mirror on the wall conflict we face with our faces.   Guess I’ll  continue to manually  imagine a professional nip and tuck or avoid and duck so long as this fleshly body continues on its gravitational journey. Where am I headed? South, apparently!