Mirror Image by Phillip Hoyle

I want to see myself as I really am and present that in my stories, memoirs, and fictions. 

(My reaction to a line in Stendhal’s The Red and the Black)


A distortion is always present when I assess myself. It’s easiest to see when I gaze in the mirror where the part in my hair on the left appears to be on the right. For the truth of me, I might as well be looking at my image in a carnival mirror. Then the distortion would be maximized. My head might look huge, my legs extra long, and my middle skinny, or in the mirror next to it my head might look like a pin, my torso nearly missing, my legs fat as watermelons, my feet tiny as a baby’s. What’s the truth in these images? Only something to be made fun of. I suppose as a male I could keep moving from mirror to mirror in the side show until I find the one that would maximize my hips and their appendage, turning me into the world’s most hung man. But of course I would not be deluded into believing what I saw there. I’d easily recognize the truth and falsehood of that image. So, what’s the truth in the mirror? It seems an important question. 

I know the question was important in my childhood and teen years for in the bathroom mirror I gauged my growing and maturing. Like a critic I evaluated my changes, comparing them occasionally with the photos from school that provided rather accurate annual points of comparison. I looked for changes but usually noticed the pimples or how skinny I seemed or how my muscles had little shape except for those that defined my legs. I looked closely and proudly at my few new hairs and wondered how furry I might become. I turned this way and that searching for new profiles of my fast-changing body. I watched and thought and wondered at the new feelings, the complications of relationships, and the essence of me. 

I recall the day in my mid-twenties when I looked at myself in the mirror all dressed ready to go to work. That day I realized that I dressed so much like my father as to be scary. That day I also reaffirmed my dedication never to let fat gather beneath my beltline, and I meant it. But in my mid-fifties, I realized I had lost my dedication to that goal or had lost my ability to keep it. I was just too much like my dad. I wonder if the emerging imago of a cicada ever looks back at its drying shell there on the bark of the elm tree it has climbed. 

I still look in the mirror these many years later. I think I could forego the experience if it weren’t for my need to shave. Sometimes I don’t especially like what I see: smaller muscle size, sagging skin, and the like. But often as a teenager I didn’t like what I saw. Perhaps in this way I haven’t changed. I still observe myself, my development. I still study my life and the way I look in it and the way I look at it. 

So I wonder. If the image in a mirror can be so misleading, how inaccurate is any other assessment? Am I prone to believe what others tell me, others who may have something to gain in fooling me? Am I too much like the king in his new clothes, unready for the truth-telling of the uninitiated child who loudly said that the king had no clothes? It’s really not difficult to become so self-deluded. After all even the physical mirror image is inaccurate. As a result I wonder, beyond looks, whose image do I most reflect?

I am somewhat like my father in that I have been crazy about music and deeply dedicated to the church. Eventually I dressed similarly to him—neat but not manipulated by fads or being fancy. Like him I developed a great tolerance of people and openness to them. I too have a heart for the disadvantaged and grew to be at least modestly visually artistic. Like him I seem over-ready to volunteer, even when I know better.

I am somewhat like my mother in that I became a creative planner of educational process, see humor easily, and love to laugh. We both displayed an odd sense of logic and a great tolerance for difference. Like her I too came to think in terms of others’ needs before my own and displayed a high sense of self-confidence.

Seeing young teenaged me in a cowboy hat, one man said I looked just like one of my grandfathers, the one who wore a Stetson. I wondered if his observation was true or simply the impact of seeing me in the hat! Perhaps the assessor had recognized a facial expression he had appreciated in my grandfather. Who knows? I wasn’t an actor and so hadn’t looked at my mood-related expressions. Still I was pleased to be identified with my then-deceased grandpa who had let me ride with him on the tractor, made me gifts, and took me fishing and hunting. I was pleased to be developing somewhat in his image! 

For the past thirteen years I have been working on my image, not to improve it, not to believe it, not to change it, but rather to describe it through memoir and fiction. I’ve run through many notebooks and thrown away many expended ballpoint pens in that task and am still at a loss to grasp so many of my truths. I realize that my perspective is distorted. To find the truth of my life seems impossible. Still I tell my stories hoping that at least someone will be entertained, someone else may gain insight into his or her own experience, yet another may be encouraged to keep living with hope. Memory after distorted memory, story after inaccurate story, experience after not-yet-understood experience I write, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Slowly I am gaining shreds of insight, but I’m most pleased that my stories entertain me! Perhaps they will cause my grand kids to laugh or to wonder or to look lovingly at their own lives.

Denver, 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot