Reflection

2004-02-01 - 2:06 a.m.

I can't believe I'm actually going to write this, and even as I type I have that feeling that this should really be one of those secrets that I take to my grave, or at least to senility, but I'm going to write it and just hope that my reputation survives the revelation. Here goes...

I flex while looking at myself in the mirror.

Yep, it's true. The Magus is following in the steps of Narcissus himself, and every other day or so spends a few minutes trying to fall in love with his reflection.

I'm pretty darn sure that I'm not the only person who does this, but the act itself seems so silly when you think about it. I'm pretty sure that I look mighty ridiculous examining my biceps (what I have of them), checking out the size of my shoulders (what I have of them), bouncing my pecs (what I have of...you get where I'm going with these parenthetical comments, I assume), but ridiculous or not, it's not something I'm going to stop.

While at the gym today, I weighed myself and came to 233 pounds, with my gym clothes and sneakers on, which is about 20 pounds lighter than I was this time two years ago. I'm wearing 36"-waisted jeans, which is over half-a-foot less wide than I was wearing in 2002. I guess I now qualify as a member of that group of people who have undergone a relatively radical change in appearance in a relatively short period of time.

Which is why I spend so much time looking at myself in the damn mirror. I'm refamiliarising myself with my body, trying to figure out what my body is, all of a sudden. I have to really, really look, sometimes, to see that I'm no longer "fat." I think I could get away with "chubby", or even "husky", but I don't think I even come close to "fat." (Random grammar moment: I'm reading this paragraph and realising that I'm being inconsistent with my use of punctuation and quotation marks...not that that's anything unusual, but I just couldn't decide whether I wanted punctuation inside or outside of the quotation marks. Because of my decision, I'm just gonna leave 'em as-is.)

In fact, I now have these very bizarre moments where I look at my reflection (these moments are usually corner-of-the-eye moments) and see someone who, for lack of a better word, is relatively slim.

I'm still not sure how to deal with this new appearance, one that's still undergoing radical change, or how this appearance works with the rest of the world. I already know that I'm pretty much oblivious to people checking me out (if indeed there are people checking me out, a possibility I've never been very confident about), and apparently if you lose a lot of weight gradually, over time, no one will ever comment on it...so who I am hasn't changed.

Not that I want to change, much. In general, I'm pretty happy with who I am. I like being someone who can see the absurd in things, who isn't afraid to be weird every now and then, who thinks about things beyond himself (not very apparent in this entry, alas), who's comfortable sitting alone in a crowded room. But, I think it might be nice, maybe, to experience the confidence that my appearance lends itself to. 6', 230lbs, dark, bristly beard...I practically look like a WWE wrestler (one of the ones that come out to lose to the Big Names), biker, or pirate (minus the wacky wardrobes those professions require). I sure as Hell don't feel like one.

All of the whining aside, though, I guess I'm thankful that I have such a wide range of appearance available to me. It's almost a sort of miracle that I can go from being pleasantly plump to relatively svelte, from bookish geek to growling beast, and back again, and all I have to do is make a few changes to my lifestyle and be patient. It's almost a miracle how we all have the ability to change like this, to explore our physical form, to manipulate it practically at will.

So, maybe I'm not being narcissistic by looking at myself, maybe I'm just allowing myself to experience the miracle of change!

Cheers,

The Magus

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