Part 52

I stand before Dali’s painting of Gala looking
out at the Mediterranean. As I step away from
it, it turns into the face of Abraham Lincoln.
I try it a few times, walking back and forth,

squinting, changing angles. A man watches me
from across the hall. I see what the artist dares
me to see. One thing quite unlike the other.
Yet the very same. I wonder if from twenty

metres away, you would see a different me. At
forty metres, I would be a stranger. Or a sinner.
At hundred metres, I can be whatever you
imagine. An optical illusion. A doppelganger. A

dream. No one knew, for the longest time. Most
people still don’t. What they see is what they
want to. We hide our secrets well. Even ordinary
stories are packed into sarcophagi and buried

deep. Readied for the afterlife. I try another
trick. Peer at myself, nose to the mirror. Then,
measure paces backwards. Haven’t I lived at
different distances from myself? Alone and

young and afraid, I didn’t let myself too close.
Who would want the mirage to unravel? When
I could bear to say it aloud, to myself, find
words for estrangement, abandonment, apathy,

find words to console those words, I began to
tolerate myself, in small doses. Before the sink
holes opened again. What is the antonym of
father? Of mother? What is the colour of

disaffection? The man is smiling at me, watching
my experiments. I wonder what he sees. How far
away he is. How far away I am. What is the perfect
distance for the surreal to sharpen into truth?

(Figueres, Spain)