Like I was Looking at Myself from the Outside

Some people remember a moment on which they became aware of looking at themselves from a distance, without the link with a form of self-awareness or the question which I is being observed. For example, in the fragment of a memory from Chapter 5:

“I was no longer one with myself, but observed myself from up above, as it were.”

The following letter does not contain an observation ‘from up above’, but ‘from a distance’. The author is a 75-year-old man, born in Surabaya, but who moved to the Netherlands during his childhood:

“I would have been around eleven years old when I, presumably playing on the streets, momentarily leaning against a wall, had the experience or feeling of moving away from my location and looking at myself leaning against that wall from a distance. It could only have been a short time, during which I had a few thoughts, but I remember those as an experience of a kind I never had before.”

Another man of about the same age wrote:

“I was seven years old and lived in Rotterdam, near the river Maas. It was a bright, sunny day, and it was pleasant near the water. This was a popular area for boys like me to copy the older boys, fish up 43all types of things from the dirty Maaswater, such as bananas, peanuts, and sometimes even a coconut…. That day, I was alone at the water’s edge. I was afraid of getting too close to the water without other boys from the neighborhood around. Rather than attentively investigating the water’s edge for loot, I looked beyond it and saw the bustling port for the first time. It was a sensation of enormous spaciousness. At the same time, I experienced and underwent an ‘outof-body experience’. I saw myself standing from a distance and at a height of a few meters, and heard a voice say: ‘You will always keep looking’. It was an entirely quiet moment, not at all frightening. I have never understood that voice and that out-of-body experience.”

We move from these two older gentlemen to a young 21-year-old woman:

“I would have been between ten and twelve years old. It was fall, early evening. It was already dark, raining, and there were strong winds. For reasons now unknown to me, I had walked into the garden and taken off my clothes at the back of the garden near the edge of the canal to become one with the wind and rain. I can only remember the following about the moment that I was standing there: it was like I was looking at myself from the outside. I can still remember every detail of this in that manner. I told my older sister that evening, but she looked at me like I was crazy.”

Some readers may be thinking about the emerging sexuality at the start of puberty in this context. This will surely have played a role, but this explanation does not seem significant to me. At least not for the topic of this chapter: turning your own physical appearance into the object of your observation.