This woman was perhaps the beauty of the city; even now I feel, seeing her for the first time, she could be called an attractive woman; but if I imagine looking at her with the eyes of the other customers at the bar, then a kind of weariness settles on her, perhaps only the shadow of their weariness (or my weariness, or yours). They have known her since she was a girl, they know everything there is to know about her, some of them may have been involved with her, now water under the bridge, over and done with; in other words, there is a veil of other images that settles on her image and blurs it, a weight of memories that keep me from seeing her as a person for the first time, other people's memories suspended like the smoke under the lamps. --Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler
This is very close to my own idea. The woman stands there, alone, and those who view her bring their own contexts and meanings to her.
