I have no face

 

 

 

 

 

“But here I am nobody. I have no face. (…)
‘That is my face,’ said Rhoda, ‘in the looking-glass behind Susan’s shoulder - that face is my face.
But I will duck behind her to hide it, for I am not here. I have no face…’”

-Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931

[Image found here]

The repository of unlived things

Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.

Maybe all paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived things. 

-Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Book of Pilgrimage in Rilke’s Book of Hours

Image: Found