Mirrors are strange things, and what one might see in them.
Perhaps you have had such experiences. One does not know how common, or uncommon, they might be. Certainly one does not talk much about them, and, I suppose, for good reason.
Have you ever been afraid to look in a mirror, for fear of what you might see?
I do not mean that you might be dissatisfied with your image, something so simple, that it was, say, unkempt, sallow, bruised, or such. I mean something quite different.
Suppose something not yourself, or certainly not recognizably yourself, was there.
Some people are afraid to look into mirrors.
Did you know that?
They do not know what they might see.
Suppose what you saw in that silvered surface, so innocent, familiar, placid and smooth, so like a window, was not you, but something quite different.
Have you had that experience?
Might it not be an ancestor, or a stranger, or something else, perhaps an animal, perhaps one unfamiliar to you, unfamiliar perhaps even to your mythologies, or might it be something more terrible, more bestial than a beast.
Or it might be something like a human, but not a human, not really, something like a human, but not a human.
Perhaps it resembles you, but you know it is not you, not really you.
But similar.
What does it want with you, if anything?
It puts its hands, or paws, on the glass, from the inside. I could show you the scratch marks. They are deep.
It is no wonder that some people are afraid to look into mirrors, especially, at night.
Fear of the dark has been selected for, doubtless. I do not think it is simply a matter of a partial impediment of vision, for an absolute darkness is seldom found in nature. There is the light of the moon, and stars. I suspect, rather, it has primarily to do with something that took place long ago, over thousands of years, with what hunted and prowled at night, things with excellent night vision. Night was a time of danger. Apes who did not fear it would surely at their hazard share the night with sinuous, stealthy, and silent things, things swift, unwelcome, and hungry. And so those to whom the night seemed disconcerting and hostile might huddle together until morning, their predilections to be rewarded, and deepened, and confirmed, in the callous lotteries of the jungle. And the gift of fire, would it not have been as much a weapon against the darkness, as a comfort in the cold? In any event, fear of the dark is common in ground apes, and we still, on the whole, respond to genetic cues honed in their way by ancient knives, knives moist, curved, and barbaric.
One supposes that fear of the dark is recognizably irrational, but there are, of course, irrationalities which have their utilities, or had them, at least at one time, and now linger in the hereditary coils, embedded for better or for worse in the fiber and sinew, the dispositions, of a species, things like the salt content of the blood, with its recollection of the fluid chemistries of ancient seas.
Dreadful surprises, of course, need not lurk only in the darkness.
The eye of the day is no stranger to horror.
It regards it with equanimity.
The experiences I have in mind do not require gloomy hours or dismal settings. Indeed the routine trappings of night might serve to mitigate the shock of such surprising occasions, facilitating and encouraging as it would interpretations in terms of fatigue, moods, and shadows. Indeed, if such experiences occurred only under conditions of poor lighting, conjoined perhaps with inattention, exhaustion or stress, it would doubtless be easier to discount them. Unfortunately, perhaps, they can occur, or intrude, under conditions which might seem to maximize the ease and acuity of observation. For example, they can occur, unexpectedly, as one glances into the mirror in a public washroom, or in the showroom of a furniture shop, in a hand mirror left lying on a dresser, and so on. Too, a polished surface may give them a habitat, or a way of appearing, or intruding, even the surface of calm, shaded water.
One is familiar, of course, with the myth of Narcissus, who, supposedly enamored of his own image in a pond, or mistaking it for a lover, one as beautiful as himself, sought to embrace it, and drowned. Doubtless the story, as commonly told, and understood, is intended to convey a warning against the advisability of too great a self-love. So it is a good story, one supposes. On the other hand it has occurred to me that at the root of this story, and rather different from its common, even contrived, interpretation, there might lie another reality, one rather different. Perhaps what Narcissus saw was quite like himself, and yet was not himself, and that, as he watched, perhaps in horror, it reached up from the water, and, its bared arms dripping, seized him, and drew him beneath the surface.
It is just a thought.
I have occasionally seen things in the mirror, which I have not understood.
There are, of course, one-way mirrors, in which one side is a mirror and the other side a window. In this way, one does not know, of course, when one is before such a mirror, if one is, unbeknownst to oneself, being viewed from the other side. But I do not have such devices in mind, at least not in the usual sense.
Commonly there is nothing behind the mirror but a wall.
It is not a window.
To be sure, a mirror might be replaced with something else, and then, in a sense, it would not be a mirror, but a window.
What one took to be mirror might be a window, through which one might be viewed.
More importantly, perhaps, through which one might view. Surely you and others have regarded one another through a window, and thought little of it.
To be sure, the mind is a large and strange place, not well understood, and it may have many corridors, leading to different rooms, not all of which are familiar. Perhaps through such rooms, as through vision, or touch, we might reach other realities, or they reach us.
Due to the contrivances of atoms and fields a soundless, colorless world may give us sunsets and symphonies.
One wonders if there is such a world, so comforting a world, one of atoms and fields. It is a bold hypothesis, a reassuring guess, a marvelously constructed defense against incomprehensibility. We salute it, and wonder if it is true. The only world we know is that of our first-person experience. Beyond that what do we know?
One wonders if all the marbles of the universe fit into our little sack.
Doubtless, but one wonders about it.
What if they don’t?
You have probably all, at one time or another, looked into a mirror, perhaps from the side, and seen something watching you, from behind, or the side. You turn about, and it is gone, of course. And you look again into the mirror, and you note that it, whatever it was, if it was anything, has left.
The following has occurred to me.
Let us suppose this has happened to you, or to someone I know, perhaps a friend.
Perhaps what you took to be your reflection took you for its reflection. And what if you were its reflection?
Is it as interested in seeing you, as you might be in seeing it?
The most interesting aspect of this matter, from my point of view, is that, recently, I can detect no one in the mirror, no one. I can, for example, see the bed, the dresser, the wall, the picture on the wall, and such, but I cannot see anyone, not anyone. For example, I cannot see me. I cannot see my reflection. It is not there. I should not have broken the mirror, I suppose. But I was trying to drive away what was on the other side.
The mirror has now been repaired, and I can press my hands against it, but I cannot penetrate its surface.
The world here seems much like the world I left.
Sometimes I see the face in the mirror.
I have clawed at it, but I can only scratch the inside of the mirror. The gouges are deep.
I suspect it will want to go home sooner or later. Perhaps we will pass one another in the corridor.