I certainly hope mirrors don't collect the images that appear on them in some sort of pitiful archive of sad, tired, defeated faces, bizarre self-hating contemplations of revulsion, prolonged displays of desperate narcissistic preening, embarrassing one-sided "up and at 'em" pep talks and frightening pathological monologues a la Travis Bickle. People look into mirrors in the morning more than any other time, and people are not only at their craziest in the morning but they look awful too. If you've been asleep you look terrible, if you've been up all night you look even worse. Even otherwise comely people look dreadful first thing in the morning. Early morning is the enemy of sanity and personal attractiveness. Puffy, inert, heavy-lidded, dull, creased, perhaps a white spoor of encrusted spittle on your cheek, viscous matter in the corners of your eyes, miscellaneous flakes of who knows what epidermal detritus, various post-nasal humiliations, skin eruptions that weren't there when you went to bed, it's like a dermatologist's album of horrors, any number of wet and dry corruptions of the human integument. It makes you wonder why people do it at all, maybe they need a little confirmation of their own existence when they first get up. Sleeping is a dangerous thing after all. Looking in the mirror in the morning is like when people survive a plane crash and kiss the ground. I made it, I'm still here. But my god, look at me.

I love old movies where women pop out of bed perfectly coiffed and mascara'd, wearing bizarre extraneous garments like "bed jackets." Apparently people used to wear a lot to bed, there was a whole sleeping wardrobe you had to think about that rivaled your day wardrobe in size and complexity. Women in old movies favored flowing lacy things in multiple layers. I cringe whenever I see them, just imagining how twisted I'd become in such a getup. I can barely have seams touching me when I'm in bed, much less being trapped in some kind of endlessly torqued nightgown prison. They also lay their robes across the bed for easy access upon waking, as if yet another layer of clothing affords one that extra measure of protection needed for negotiating the hazardous domestic environment. Men apparently liked satiny pajamas with huge round buttons and chest pockets. And the piping! Lordy the piping. Furthermore, if old movies can be believed (which they can), everybody smoked in bed while talking on the phone. They'd hang up and lay there thinking about the distressing implications of what they just heard, exhaling meaningfully in their special elaborate bed garments, each of the several different fabrics surrounding them dangerously flammable. In real life Bette Davis would've combusted several times.