A few weeks ago when I rearranged my office I hung the large blue-framed mirror on the wall between the windows. I like this mirror, it's a handsome mirror and really helps the room. I've mentioned this mirror before, it's no crime. My desk is against this wall as well, directly beneath the large blue-framed mirror, perpendicular to it, which means that it's a simple matter for me to see myself in this mirror by leaning slightly forward and raising my head just a bit and looking to my left. Look, there I am. I am to my reflection's right and he, or rather it, is to my left. Together there are two of us. You get the picture. I do this often, as it turns out, from some weird uncharacteristic compulsion, although the orchestrating of new opportunities for looking at myself was not the reason I moved the large blue-framed mirror to its current location, as a matter of fact I am no fan of looking at myself in mirrors and normally try to avoid situations in which sustained self-gazing in a mirror or mirrored surface is unavoidable or avoidable only with great difficulty, like for instance a glass display window at certain hours of the day or a hall of mirrors or those hotel bathrooms with many large mirrored surfaces, rooms of awkward self-scrutiny in which merely finding some spot to look at while I pee that isn't an image of me peeing is a real challenge and I end up urinating in quiet shame. I've learned that it is indeed possible to pee and cringe simultaneously, that mortification does not, in fact, "pinch off" the flow. No, it just so happened that the wall between the windows was the ideal spot for the large blue-framed mirror, and it also just so happened that the floor space between the windows, under the blue-framed mirror, was the best spot for the desk, so that a situation was inadvertently created in which the temptation to lean forward just a bit and raise my head just a tad and look to my left to glimpse myself, or rather my face, in the blue-framed mirror, was made irresistible, as it turned out. Now this has become a problem, because I lean and turn and look at myself all the time now, it's gotten out of hand, and furthermore I've taken to murmuring at my reflection, or whispering, or sometimes even exhorting in a surprisingly throaty manner. I lean forward and raise my head slightly and look to my left and urge the reflected image there toward some course of action. I appeal to the image, I plea, I make entreaties, some practical and reasonable, others vague or ambiguous, some bizarre or quite simply impossible. Today I drank my first cup of coffee and leaned forward and raised my head slightly and looked to my left and met my reflection's eye and said: "You've got to get control of your personality, you're all over the map for fuck's sake." And then I started writing this.