Self-reflection
I can’t stop walking through this household furniture piece. It allows me to duplicate myself like cell division, and never leave yesterday’s self image behind. Yes, Maria?
What is a mirror?
This state of being is so freeing because you don’t have to define things or know truth or discover new ideas or have realizations? Just wandering, you keep walking after your ankles hurt, 9 hours longer, no 12 hours, and you don’t really know when the walking’s going to end. No breaks, no pauses. Walk, walk, walk; indefinite means endless. “But who will send us a saving grace?” Please stop asking that question. Return to silent sobbing or moaning in peace. There’s nothing to do, or accomplish (wow, that word sounds funny), or be, or “become” (another funny word). What is change? Was that ever possible? Who has changed that I can model my transformation after? I think I’d rather stay insane. I think I’d rather bleed my brain, occasionally, with leeches.
What is being without purpose?
This form of energy controls my mental image of a person. It allows me to take photographs of the person and paste them over each other to create a collage of my favorite aspects, layered, covering any moles, birthmarks, or scars, layering three different pairs of their eyes, one pair in the morning sunlight, another in a room at night when this form of energy reflected across each dark, rippling iris, the final pair when she was excited, two different ways she would put up her hair, the only four smiles I remember, one after a compliment, one while talking about a movie? Yes?
What is light?
This object has a slow hand that’s always returning to the same spot, and another hand that’s clicking away as if taking us somewhere we aren’t returning to very soon. Halfway there, at its furthest point, it starts rounding back, like a ball tossed in the air, brought back to the ground inevitably by gravity. Joan?
What is a clock?
My [blank] is reflected back and forth before the mirror, an echo chamber between my [blank] and my [blank] reflected, until like sound, light dissipates. The image doesn’t matter anymore. The idea of [blank] fades. The word becomes meaningless tossed back and forth 120 times. I’m just bewildered by what’s in front of me.
What is a face?
What clarifies smiles and makes frowns too sharp? I want to be rid of this thing like the responsibility of keeping whoever I meet happy. Keeping a pulse on their face, I feel shackled by their eyes. Always self-conscious, always worrying, tears well up, but I’m standing behind a line.
What are glasses?
This is my favorite way to view people. In fractions, the torso and the chin, or the thigh and calf, one eye above an open jaw, smiling for no one, smiling for themselves alone. But I get to see it secretly. I get to be there and take it in, the fizzling, evaporating exhale of fragrance the flower breathes. The one instance unprepared, not trying to appeal to anyone else; calm and relaxed, completely themselves. How do you act when there’s no one else around? I get to witness and savor it. Savor it from the peep hole of a mirror the size of a piece of paper. A car’s rearview mirror. Like the only window I get to see their real selves through, without façade. And I don’t need to hold back either, even blink.
What is obliquely?
The following instances have something in common: The water drips the same way. The conversations I overhear are the same. The pattern of bricks in the street hasn’t shifted at all, bricks still lie at the same angles, grass blades are the same height between the cracks? Anyone? No? Maria?
What are repetitions?
Amber Bain of The Japanese House sings, “[blank is] self-dividing and [blank has] no limit.” [Blank] multiplies silhouettes of itself, remakes itself over and over like snow angels or paper snowflakes or origami. Each time [blank] tries to get it right, by making a certain feature more prominent, and others less so. But after making a batch of 10,000, they all came out identical.
Who am I?
When you face two mirrors towards one another, the object in them is replicated infinitely. Similarly, I [blank] old memories to see them in new ways. Different things stand out in the image each time, makes it feel new or recent. I can’t put them away. I walk into the mirrors and look at each instance of the image, walking deeper into that unending hallway. Exercises to prepare myself to act better in the future, I inspect each one, to learn where I went wrong. New things come to light, makes me want to keep mining the same instance another time over.
What is reflection?
I’m an unwelcome sign taking in unwelcome sights. Light glazes my lenses, filled with smiles and faces. My pupils pull towards the furthest places, the edges of my vision. I’m not yielding to anyone; I’ve displaced them. I’m running at no one’s pace now; still running a race though. I take a few fractured glances of someone and put them back together later, in my mind as a moving, breathing organism, rather than just being with them for a sustained period of time while saying “I like your [blank].”
The answer was sweater.
I hate [blank] more than anything. Knowing the moment’s been spent already, and the world is trying to trick me into thinking this hasn’t happened before. But it has. Three times now. The feeling’s uncanny. I recognize it a mile away. Already knowing what the moment brought, what it “will bring,” let’s pretend. Reminds me that things don’t change, they only appear to alter. Every experience around the moment might be different this time, but that one instance brings me back, shows me things aren’t so different. I’m just the same now as I was then in how I feel and respond to this nothingness repeated, this inescapability. A feeling that stays recurring, never to be forgotten.
What is déjà vu?