dressing table mirror with lights

This is the tenth story of the online Flash Fiction series dressing table mirror with lights this summer. You can read the entire series and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years here.
At the end of the lady's lunch, we were exhausted from talking for a while, and we continued to sit around the table by the window overlooking the Hudson River, sipping our wine, and poured ourselves another glass. It was here that Bridget asked everyone what they thought of the idea of "finding yourself." "Does a character in Homer, Shakespeare, and the Bible want to ask,'Who am I?'" Then the conversation was interrupted again.
"Except for Lear," Farah said, "Who would ask,'Who can tell me who I am?'" Don't you like the question of'Who does he think he is' or'Who do you think you are' followed by a rhetorical exclamation point? "
Lucinella's chair faces east. She has been watching people on the nearby rooftops, and she said, "They are having a party, and they didn't invite me!"
Ilka said that her search began with her grandmother, Elonka, whose name was Elonka. "She passed away before I was born, but I have seen an old sepia photo-there are actually two photos taken by someone standing outside the open door of her bedroom. Aunt Mali used to let me play ——What do they call it? ——Stereoscope, on Sunday afternoon, my mother’s cousins used to meet in Mali’s apartment on the outskirts of Vienna. I don’t think I remember where my father was. Tante Mali ) Very fat and very old, with a sweet and cute face. She and Onkel Maxl finally came to Mauthausen. The magic of the stereoscope makes the glass of the water on the bedside table become three-dimensional, more than sitting The tan grandmother on the crocheted sheets is more real."
Lotte frowned angrily and said, "I never understand why something that looks three-dimensional or virtual is more exciting to us than the real thing in front of us..."
"Imitate," Farah said. "Is it Aristotle or did I say that we like similarities, I think, do we find ourselves in it?"
Ilka followed his own thoughts: "The room is illuminated from the left, so there must be a window in the corner, which is not visible around. The secret of the tan bedroom: Someone took off the flower and put water in the cup; somebody Put the glass on the bedside table..."
"That's what I mean!" Lottie said. "An imaginary person will gently attract us when he walks past an old photo, but he doesn't care that our neighbor is passing by our window at the moment. What does this tell us about who we are?"
"My mother found Elonka's old skates," Ilka continued. "The grandmother who was skating in her pajamas surprised me. I mean, when were roller skates invented?"
"Look!" Lucinella said. "Look! The people upstairs! They are taking out the cake. This is a birthday party."
"Birthday," Bessie said. "People talk about the grief of missing themselves or their children's birthdays or graduation. Tell me something that symbolizes birthday parties, graduation ceremonies, Thanksgiving, family dinners, and even weddings—"
Ruth said: "The next ladies lunch will be with me. Agenda: Tell me about one thing and let people know who you are."
The next time my friends met, at Ruth's table, Ilka read what she wrote about what she had written on the morning of waking up in her first British foster family in 1938: Me. I was lying on a strange bed, not knowing what I should do. After a while, I got up, slowly got dressed, and opened the corridor door. Where did everyone go? The night before, an old woman and her daughter picked me up from the station and took me to this house. The lights in all the rooms were on, and many smiling people stood around looking at me. A maid in a long white apron took me upstairs to the bathroom and took a shower. I understand that she wanted me in, but I was ashamed and did not want to take off my clothes. I don't remember being taken to this bedroom in the morning. I walked out of the corridor, listening to the silence. A door was half open. I looked inside and saw a dressing table. A mirror with a photo attached to the frame reflects a brush, a comb and a heart-shaped pillow. I gave the door, and I told myself it might be an accidental push. It revealed the corner of a person's bed, covered with a shiny green sheet. I know I can't walk into someone else's bedroom-I shouldn't look in it. Am I allowed-I mean-use these stairs? I climbed to the next floor. There were a few doors there, but they were all closed. "
"The bedroom," Bessie said. "If you like, Robbe-Grillet showed us that we are part of the geography of the room, and then we can explain the color of the wall or form a relationship with this or that piece of furniture. Try it! Imagine yourself in the first bedroom Bed; note that you know the direction your feet are pointing, and you remember the position of the door relative to the window."
"No, you are not," Lottie said. "You are here for ladies lunch. But why am I the one at the party who argues about everything that anyone says?"
"And me," Farah said, "is the one who brings up things that no one is interested in."
"And you," Ruth said to Bridget, "you asked us to ask who we are. What do you say?"
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