I always had a complicated relationship with my reflection in the mirror. Actually, nothing special: thin lips, grey eyes. The problem lied elsewhere. Long before my birth an anonymous English poet has described it as follows:
|
"This man is me. I see him at the mirror.
He sees me too. Which one of us is I?
An ambivalence is a standard error
of self-perception. What if we imply..."
|
Really, what if we imply that the man I see in the mirror is real me, and the one, who for about 30 years has been taken for the original, is just a copy, a reflection, an optical illusion caused by the refraction of light, a mirage?
The carefree mirages are ignorant about their nature. Having met on the windy crossroads of the universe, they call each other by names and go skipping through the metaphysical drafts. Alas, a cold of life always ends up with fatal results.
A child doesn't know about death and therefore is immortal. I've been immortal too until my mother died on the eve of my fifth birthday. Black suits, red noses, a cautionary tale instead of my bedtime story and the covered with a bed sheet oval mirror in the corridor. They told me that people in mourning must cover the mirrors so that the guest from the dark side couldn't get out of there in search of his reflection.
Overcoming the fear, I lifted up the cover and stood long at front of the mirror, looking for my mom's reflection, and my doppelganger never left me alone, being sincerely sorry for my loss. I showed my tears to him, he showed me too, and his grief seemed to me griefer than mine.
The Englishmen say it is no use crying over spilt milk. It is more useless crying over shed tears, particularly as we had happy days too. Having got undressed and came close to the mirror, insistently and mindfully persevering in efforts to hold the imaginary fullness of each other, we were as if we had become a whole. This is how a mirage turns into an oasis; this is a way the wrinkled by wind reflection in water reveals true form of the Moon when no one's looking. His hairs sparkling under my fingers; my fingers getting smeared with a silver pollen as if I caught a butterfly but caressed a young man's reflection - the memories I won't share even with the most handsome psychoanalyst. His onslaught was as quick as silver in our veins. My pretended retreat was as slow as motion of the turtle which had one thousand heads start, two viceversal hands kiss and 709 words speak, including neologisms and the articles I would never learn how to use in a proper way.
Alas, in the sober light of day I clearly saw that all of this pertained to any thing - the dubious puns, Zeno's paradoxes or just an interesting case from psychiatry but not the Iness that every Itness is looking for. The conclusion was therefore clear: Achilles will never catch up with the turtle, even if they move towards each other.
I blundered. All of this pertained to other thing.
Once he left, as opaque and impervious as a loved one. Once I noticed, that passing on the street, I was not reflected in the mirrors of people's eyes anymore. Once we both saw that the O-shaped oval mirror was covered on the other side.
Death is a viceversal reflection of life: just like right hand flips into left one in the mirror, joy becomes grief and the living turn into the dead. It's kind of sad but now I know that things live as long as they are reflected in my mind. Having picked up a heavy, perfectly reflected hammer, one day I will cross over to the dark side of this Blunderland. What about seven unhappy eternities for the broken O? I don't mind. Losing the milky way you walked before me, confusing your moonprints, eyeing wrong reflections, I will wander among the infinite number of mirrors until I catch up with you, Achilles.
Hi, how are you? You haven't changed: thin lips, grey eyes and the fingers smeared with a silver pollen.