Echo and Narcissus
You call me ‘temptress’.
But I was created that way.
You created me that way.
But I was created that way.
You created me that way.
Yes, you.
You taught me everything I know. I watched you silently from the wings. Observed you from afar, drinking in your every smile, sideways glance, caress or charming remark. I absorbed your every laugh, cascading in gold and amber torrents like whisky into a virgin crystal glass, leaving any prey helpless with giddy intoxication.
I saw how you were able to seduce any woman with a single look or featherlight touch on her arm with those slender musical fingers. You taught me all this. My apprenticeship complete, I emerged from the shadows, as though from a chrysalis, armed with this reflected and vicarious experience, giving the false impression of being a woman better versed than is the case.
I made your motions my own. Then I, like a looking glass, stepped before you. You were curious and, eventually, charmed. You liked what you saw. Like God before you, you saw that it was good. And you saw perfection, Narcissus, because you saw yourself.
Yet you call me temptress.
posted by Pallas Athene | 1:28 am
hmm pretty cool writting. I like it.
Fantastic. At risk of sounding arrogant, I am a social chameleon. It's not arrogant, though, because my being a social chameleon just hints at how my own personality is so hidden away and fragile. I only exist as a function of the people around me.
I'm not saying you're like that. But out of interest, how does it feel to have someone you loved, love you when you're not really you?
(am guessing you were in love with him, etc. from references to god and your creation)
We never fall in love with a person. That's what's so scary about it. We fall in love with an image of our own designs.
First love is about cleverest deception. Two people put their best selves forward and attempt to project an image they hope will please the other. These swooning imaginations move in together. Maybe they get married and have children.
All of us fall in love with ourselves because the first days of new love are about what satisfies US, what WE want. If the other party satisfies our wants and needs, we "love" them. Human love is selfish at its very core.
Later, reality begins to break through the dream and the couple finally begins to see the person behind the initial facade. He picks his nose. She shouts at the children. He handles stress by drinking hard every night. She farts in public. His family is full of indigents, crusties, and nuts. So is hers.
Can you still "love" someone when he becomes comfortable enough to be himself around you? Can you still "love" when cloud-hopping euphoric feelings are replaced by mundane everyday life? Or will you just be off to fall in love with the next fantasy, the next machination of your own psyche?
~ Witt