By Chris
It makes sense that I loved the face in my past life, because I only seem to love it in this life once it becomes my past face. It takes a time-traveling mirror for me to appreciate my reflection.
When I look at myself in the present, all I see are the ways the image fails to measure up to some vague ideal that exists in my imagination. I don't really see my reflection or the ideal, but the space between them.
Yet when I capture that image and look at it through the power of time travel, at some future moment, a year later or five or ten, I suddenly appreciate the image I see. That person was attractive and I don't understand why I couldn't perceive it back then. I love that reflection from the past.
Then I turn to look in a standard mirror at present-me and again see only flaws. Except later, one, five, ten years further on, that same image I can't appreciate now will be mystically transformed into something future me finds pleasant.
And it cycles on. I love what I see in time-traveling mirrors that show me what I was once present-me has moved on, taking his criticisms with him.