Black Boiling Fuzz

Last night I was browsing through The Letters of William S. Burroughs 1945-1959 and I ran across the following rather arresting passage:

What is happening now is that I literally turn into someone else, not a human creature but man-like: He wears some sort of green uniform. The face is full of black boiling fuzz and what most people would call evil—silly word. I have been seeing him for some time in the mirror. This is nothing, of course. But when other people start seeing him without being briefed or influenced in any way, then something is really there. So far, Brion has seen him (or it). And so has Stern. But Stern left at the wrong time, since it is just in last few weeks that he comes through so clear that people stare at me in restaurants. Enclosed picture will give you some idea.

Somehow this reminds me of back when I was in my early teens, and there was a large mirror on the wall down in the basement, and I would go down there and stare at myself in that mirror. I would stare in the mirror until I began to space out, and things fuzzed out, and then in the mirror my facial features would start winking in and out, disappearing and reappearing one at a time. It was freaky, like some form of self-hypnosis, like an alteration of reality. No black boiling fuzz, though.