Two-Way Mirror

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own, although this was no reflection on me. I had long since fretted over my misty inconsistency, my missing solidity, my not-mattering matter.

I have no idea how long I've been incorporeal, but I know exactly when it happened. It was when I willingly chose to refuse Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence, whoever he was.

I realized that I didn't want to come back eternally. And if I only live once, what does it matter? I come, I go, I'm gone--as if I never was. Only if I choose to accept eternal recurrence do I have any substance, because eternal recurrence is permanent presence.

But I didn't and I don't.

There are no burdens to hold me to the ground. No love to make my mass attract another's gravity. I am light, barely being, and unimportant--because I chose that. As Milan Kundera, whoever he was, wrote, my "unbearable lightness of being" means there are no important items to weigh me down.

That's the life for me, if you call that living. I do. It's safe and unchanging.

I gaze into the mirror, in an otherwise empty room in an otherwise empty house. There were people here after (before?) me, but time is slippery and that could have been anytime in the past or the future.

Outside of time, you realize why its passing is an illusion: our little points on the coordinate system can only approach an asymptote, never overtake it. Time does not plod along, but the myriad versions of each of us race toward that impossible curve in space-time. The crowd that makes each of us can become quite huge, as decisions are made and others refused. Still there seduces an asymptote for each of us.

It's not a straight line, which is the funny way most people think of it. And the closer you get to it, the more slippery it becomes and the heavier you are when you slip down.

If you need a disposition as to whether it's all worth it, ask Sisyphus. I'd rather remain at the bottom of the incline, inert. The life for me.

I loook into the mirror--it's a parabolic mirror. All that you are is focused onto you, but it's a consortium of multiple frequencies and contrapuntal vibrations that, for me, are just noise. Within the din, I know, are countless choices and varying reflective contemplations. One approaches invisibility the more one ignores and casts off the choices. For me, instead of a parabolic funhouse mirror of all my imperfections, exaggerated, there is only absence. I like breaking even. See you in a minute, Sisyphus; I'm good right where I am.

The mirror shows only a reflection that isn't my own. And as long as I see nothing, I know I am safe in Limbo, weightless, airy, and delightedly unimportant.

It is said a mirror is only as deep as what it's reflecting. As such, there are countless depths of field, ever-changing focal lengths, and a forever of evers. It's an iris, an aperture that opens to endless worlds. I realize this after standing in front of it and accommodating my eyes to different focus depths.

I have seen all the ghosts contained in that mirror. They do not like it--that I was eyeing them, regarding them...judging them. There are reasons they are stacked along a parallax of forever-receding entities, trapped in two-dimensional destiny. The world seems safer that way.

It appears as if they hate me. The way I could step away from my mirror. Yet, I always return. Something keeps bringing me back.

At one point I gaze, perhaps, miles into it. All is well. Countless phantasms position themselves almost out of sight, eyeing me suspiciously, peeking from one mirror edge or the other. When I crystallize their form with a focus, they dart back behind the mirror edge completely.

One doesn't, however.

One keeps one eye fixed on me, then leans farther in toward the mirror center until both eyes are on me. It is now she who can focus on me. I am startled to the point where I dart to the side of the mirror myself, to keep out of her sight.

I am angry. I don't want to be eyed, regarded...to be judged.

I was so aghast that it takes me time to lean back in front of the mirror. When I do, I expect the long winding tunnel of spectral personages to flank the edges, one eye exposed in ever smaller semi-hiding characters in a play never staged, until only the eyes are visible in the distance as a trail of black dots--an ellipsis of eternity...

But a solitary figure eclipses the ellipsis. She moves forward, eclipsing more and more of the eyes, thus closing them. She draws nearer and I have to decide. Fight or flight.

I choose fright. She chooses sight.

"I see you," she laughs. Her eyes are black and her skin is oily. Her dark hair is matted into a shower cap of gelatinous slick.

"This is new," I say to her.

"Not to me," she replies. "I've been part of your reflection as far into the mirror as you can see."

"And the others?"

"Who do you fancy?"

"You confuse me," I admit.

"Of course you're confused. You're a coward. You have no courage to choose."

"Choose?"

"Yes, choose." A frigid wave cascades up and down my spine, like a ghoulish wave's ebb and flow. "Choose me, I don't care. One of the others--not important. But it's about time you choose."

"About t-time?" I stammer, nervously. "That's funny here," I blurt, "in front of this mirror."

I begin to feel a stretching of my space-time toward the mirror. I fight back. I have no desire to wander in and never find my way out. It is dark in there. It is cold behind that glass. It is disturbing. The power of the draw becomes stronger, and I have to hold the mirror edges on either side to keep myself out of it.

"I can assure you it isn't very funny in the mirror," she reprimands me. "We are all your possibilities--your good lives, your horrible lives, dizzying pleasures and unspeakable horrors; a life of sorrow, exaltation, happiness, despair, and hope or hopelessness. Sometimes all mixed together."

"That sounds horrific. Why do I have to choose?"

"To settle the reflections. All of your possibilities must self-determine. If not, you will join us here. It must be you who chooses. This is your mirror, after all."

"So, what's next?" I ask, realizing I am losing my battle against the power of the vacuum pulling me in.

"Choose. Focus on one of us. You'll see."

"But I focused on you. Does that mean I chose you?" I am on the precipice.

"If you want it, yes."

I looked at the reflection in the mirror that wasn't mine. I knew she was right, that my window was closing. There's the concept of being outside of time, here--and now also being out of time...and then there's oblivion in a 2-dimensional cage at the mercy of anyone who happens along. Outside time is respite and laziness and having a good laugh at Sisyphus' expense. But oblivion hurts. Outside of time is unstable. The clock must strike.

"I'm not ready to make my choice," I plead to the reflection, desperately holding back. I embrace my presence on this side of the mirror. "I'm afraid."

"You choose or your choice will be made for you. That's the way it is. Choose wisely or not, you'll see soon enough."

The draw on me strengthened; my resistance wavered: I was losing ground.

Perhaps if I shattered this monster into a thousand shards, I thought. There came a reply:

From deep beyond the glass, the ellipsis in the vacillating parallax widened into infinite beaded strings of wide-eyed terror. And from beyond, from a thousand strata, screams of terror coalesced into a rogue wave of tsunamic discordancy--a polyphonic juggernaut. I was knocked to the ground and began to be pulled in by my feet. There was nothing for me to hold on to. Just before my head cleared the threshold, I raised up to look into the mirror from this side--my safe side--one last time.

Crossing the silver-nitrate threshold, my final view from this side of the mirror was of a reflection that was my own. It appeared satisfied, fulfilled, and at peace, which was a good reflection on me.

Marie Fitzpatrick Edwards and Charles Mason Edwards are pleased to announce the birth of their first child, Claire Marie Edwards, yesterday at Women's Hospital. She weighed 7 lbs 9 oz and was 19 inches long. Both Mom and baby are doing well.