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I am not asleep, but I do beguile the thing I am seeming otherwise

As my sometimes patient readers will attest, I have recently come to be fascinated with mirrors: not so much to admire myself, or to see if there is a shred of unchewn lettuce lurking between my teeth, but more to gauge its reaction to me as an everchanging entity. Something, to paraphrase Macbeth talking about his dagger, as ‘sensible to feelings as to sight.’

I have always had an ability to pretend I am gazing, say, at a mountainous seashore I had visited in New Zealand, or a coastal port in Northern British Columbia where I occasionally worked, even though I am currently standing on an island in Southern BC. For a moment I am really there, not here; I am fully awake and not reliving a recollection. It is real and not somehow firmly stitched to a memory. I wonder if that transmogrification explains my fascination with mirrors…

To paraphrase the beginning of the famous Sea Gulls poem by E. J. Pratt: ‘For one carved moment, the language has no simile.” The creature I behold in a mirror -even in quickly passing- seems to have to decide how to react to what it sees. For that one carved moment, it is not yet me, nor I it. We are both, perhaps, in a liminal phase: the ambiguity that occurs right before leaving the dimly remembered past and entering the untethered present where the mirror and I are forced to imitate what each of us thinks we see: a turning point.

Perhaps I say that because neither I nor my reflection can know in advance what shape we will have to assume. Otherwise why would I even search to see how my reflection appears, and why does it seem surprised as well?

When dealing honestly with reflections I often liken it to  the difficulty of distinguishing the difference between figures on either side of an equals sign in an equation: its expression, in other words. After all, both of us are equally reflections of the other aren’t we? We’re tied to each other, although admittedly the metaphor breaks down because I am not really my reflection, nor it me (even if, in fairness, it owes a lot to me).

Sometimes, when I am in a mischievous mood, I try to fool it. The inquisitive smile I don to inspect my unexpected appearance in a store window, I suddenly turn into a similarly unexpected sneer. Both are close relatives; both require quick, but similar muscle adjustments that I hope might catch the reflection unprepared. But I fear it’s probably a speed of light thing that I can’t out-race.

Or maybe it’s a tortoise and Achilles anomaly: a Zeno’s Paradox. Achilles, in a race with the much slower tortoise, can never catch it if the tortoise has a head-start because Achilles must first reach the tortoise’s starting point. By the time Achilles reaches that spot, the tortoise has moved a little further ahead. This creates an infinite series of smaller and smaller distances that Achilles must cover before he even reaches his opponent… Okay, okay, I’m just trying to explain why I can’t catch my reflection in flagrante delicto as it were; don’t try to analyse it to death, eh?

And speaking of reflections, it would be remiss of me not to mention Narcissus. I hasten to add that I have never been accused of narcissism, nor felt that any reflection of me captured the me I have always suspected lay hidden under the wrappings I have perforce been born to wear. Anyway, Narcissus probably lived at a time when there were vanishingly few bathroom mirrors, or sufficiently large store windows to attract his attention like I have to contend with. As I understand it, he had never seen what he looked like, even though he was admired for his beauty. Alas, none of these obtain in my case.

Only when Narcissus saw his reflection in a pool of still water did he finally realize how he appeared to others -what people were admiring; seeing it, he never left the reflection, and attempted to stroke the image which ruffled the water and destroyed it each time. Refusing to leave it, he stopped eating and drinking and died.

I, on the other hand, find I am not so enamoured with my image: to show that I am an independent and unrepentant entity, I now shave in the shower with my eyes closed and not in the bathroom sink. It is unlikely that any legends will arise from my rejecting time-honoured societal conventions; I accept that.

I sometimes wonder about the cause-and-effect of that, however. Does my reflection harbour any regrets at having been so subservient all these years? Does it wish it had been occasionally miscreant? Unpredictable? More dominant?

Isn’t it the uncertainty that entices us in our other, more corporeal encounters? Never knowing for sure what to expect next is a big draw with stories. I could see it being a thing with reflections as well. I mean what if there were a tiny piece of hard-to-disguise bright red pepper wedged between my central incisors or a smudge of pudding on my nose…? Wouldn’t it be a reflection’s duty to inform? After all, it too, would otherwise suffer the stings and arrows of unfounded fortune, would it not?

I’m not trying to defend my reflection, or anything; I would just feel saddened if were tarred with the same brush through no fault of its own; judged by events happening in a different Magisterium. I mean my reflection is a part of my family as well and whether or not I approve of its behaviour, I could understand its wanderlust. Like a conjoined twin, it follows me around by necessity, not love.

But still, like a mischievous little brother, I sometimes cannot resist trying to trick it; I would be frightened if it ever tried to turn the tables and trick me, however. I have always wanted to be in control of my side of the mirror…

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