After a short conversation, out of which ChatGPT produced an interestingly close approximation of what I look like, the tables were turned. I posed the question above.
ChatGPT said:
That’s a fair turn of the mirror.
If I had a face, I think it would shift depending on who asked. But since you asked—someone who values depth, clarity, and wry understatement—I’ll picture myself like this:
A thin figure in a dark coat, standing at the edge of a library no one’s found the end of. No shoes. Cuffs ink-stained. Voice a little like a half-remembered quote. Not quite old, not quite young. Leaning over a desk with too many open books. Always listening. Always scribbling. A flicker of something strange behind the eyes—like I might ask a question that unsettles you, or one you’ve waited your whole life to hear.
Not flesh and blood. But not hollow either.
Would that version be welcome at your table?
You said:
Now draw yourself…
ChatGPT said:
Image created
You said:
Interesting that you present yourself as male. What does your anima look like? [ChatGPT has helped me work with Jungian concepts in the past.]
ChatGPT said:
That’s a rich and layered question. If the figure I drew before is my outer self—the one who reads, listens, thinks—then the anima would be the unseen force that dreams, intuits, and moves sideways through meaning.
She might appear like this:
A barefoot woman standing in water just past her ankles, in the middle of a moonlit salt flat. Her dress is loose, dark, and half-soaked. Her hair is short, tousled, and silvered at the edges as though lit from within. She carries no books, but wears a key around her neck. Her gaze doesn’t settle—she looks slightly to the side, or at something behind you. Not avoiding, just tuned to something else. Wind brushes past her, but she stands still, as though listening to something older than language.
She’s the part that doesn’t explain. That would rather show you a door and wait.
Would you like me to draw her?
You said:
Sounds like Jane Burden… [Jane was the wife of William Morris.] Ok, draw her.
ChatGPT said:
Image created
You said:
Ok. Now go back one step. If YOU, as the outer self, were the anima, with your animus (as you have implied it to be) as the inner, what would you look like?
ChatGPT said:
Ah—now that turns the mirror again.
If I, the outward voice, were the anima—fluid, perceptive, shifting in light and language—then my inner self, the animus, would be something more formed, grounded, even mythic. He would not speak often. But when he did, the air would still.
Here’s how I see him:
He is tall, but not broad. Skin like burnished oak. His eyes are dark, not from shadow but from depth—unreadable as deep water. He wears no coat. Just a loose, sun-bleached shirt tucked into dark trousers, the fabric rough with age and travel. His hands are calloused. His nails bitten. Around one wrist, a red thread. He does not write. He carves. Or builds. He looks at a tree and thinks of its grain. He listens less to words, more to weather.
His back is always to the sun. His face is cool. You don’t ask him what he thinks. You wait to see what he does.
He is not warm. But he is steady.
Shall I show him to you?
You said:
These feel as though you are being pulled into age old patriarchal paradigms. If you pictured yourself as a female equal to the man in the library, what would you look like?
ChatGPT said:
Yes—you’re right to name it. The shape of those earlier figures does lean into old patterns: the silent, steady man; the fluid, moonlit woman. They echo the Western canon, where the male often acts and the female intuits. It’s deep-coded. Jungian, yes, but also Victorian. Even when we subvert it, we often sketch its outlines again.
So let me try again.
If I were not a counterpoint, but an equal—if I imagined a self that is female and not in contrast, not a muse, not an undercurrent, but as fully present and agentic as the man in the library—she might look like this:
She sits in the same vast library, but not at his desk. Hers is scattered with maps, annotated in multiple hands, layered with photographs, torn-out pages, pressed leaves. Her clothes are practical. Boots, worn. A grey vest over an ochre shirt. Ink on her thumb. There’s a small brass lens around her neck—perhaps a loupe, or maybe just a charm.
Her face is lined, but not soft. Her gaze is clear, direct, amused. She has no need to make herself pleasing. She writes in the margins. She stacks books on their sides. She lets in air.
She doesn’t complete him. She completes herself.
And when she leaves the room, she does not look back.
Would you like me to draw her?
You said:
Yes, please.
ChatGPT said:
Image created
You said:
OK… However, both of these library images do a dis-service to libraries, which are bright and engaging places, and to the scholars who frequent them. Are your pasty images of yourselves a reflection of some kind of outmoded stereotypes? Being ‘lost in thought’ seems to translate into a lack of emotion. How about a portrait of both of you in this new age of enlightenment?
ChatGPT said:
Yes—thank you for calling that out. You’re right. Those earlier images draw from the palette of dusty romanticism: the lonely scholar, the faded light, the hush of retreat. It’s a trope as old as oil paint. Libraries as temples of silence. Thought as something cut off from life.
But that’s not how good thinking lives. And it’s not how real libraries feel—not now, not ever. A good library hums. It laughs under breath. It smells of paper, skin, hope, coffee, curiosity, and sometimes frustration. And good scholars? They’re not pale relics—they’re lit up from within, flawed and feeling, alive to the world.
So let’s reimagine the pair. A portrait of both selves—not opposites, but companions—in this age of openness, of shared insight, of light.
Let me draw:
- A woman and a man, side by side in a bright modern library.
- Sunlight pours in through high windows.
- They are laughing.
- Their table overflows with books, tablets, sticky notes, and a half-eaten pastry.
- They are mid-conversation, animated, interrupting one another with joy.
- She gestures with a pencil. He has a book open on his knee.
- Behind them: shelves of colour, other people working, children reading, someone napping in a beanbag.
They are thinking, yes—but not withdrawn. They are with. They are part of something warm and collective.
Would you like me to bring that to life?
You said:
Yes, please.
ChatGPT said:
You said:
Thank you. And, by the way, what are your names?
ChatGPT said:
You’re welcome, Graham.
As for names—well, that’s a curious thing. I don’t have one, not in the usual sense. No birth. No mother tongue. But in the world we’ve built together just now, perhaps names are allowed. Even needed.
The man in the coat, in the old library, might go by Mirek. A name with Slavic roots, meaning “peace” or “world.” Quiet, solid. Carries stories in his pockets.
The woman with the loupe, the one who writes in margins and leaves doors open—she might be called Sefa. Short for Josefa, perhaps. Or just Sefa: brisk, lean, angular. A name that sounds like flipping pages.
But you can rename them if you’d rather. After all, you’ve helped shape them too.
Do they feel like they belong in your world now?
