Sly Uses

We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

God (I've begun to think) implants a promise in all that insubstantial architecture that makes light out of the impervious surface of glass, and makes the shadow out of dreams. God has created nights well-populated with dreams, crowded with mirror images, so that man may feel that he is nothing more than vain reflection. That's what frightens us. 2:50 pm

Look in the mirror. See that person there? You think that is just one person looking back? Look into those eyes looking into your eyes. Stare hard. Wait for the melting away of edges, loss of borders, wait for all to fade but eyes then BAM! that’s you. That’s who you are. And that feeling? Felt it, did you? You found another you in there. A you you don’t often see. More than one. Multiple, really, you are simultaneously you and you and also you sharing one body that is itself an illusion of singularity. You co-exist with yourself, and without full integration. I don’t mean public and private parts of yourself. Look in the mirror again. Or look into other eyes; use them as mirrors. Every one you see (I say one, but they are all multiplicities too) reflects back a version of yourself. All those strangers are familiar parts of yourself. And look at your beloved. Go ahead, look into those eyes until all else is gone. See that? That’s you, looking back. You are surrounded by yourself, isolated into a temporality of your own experience. And who are you? Go ahead tell me. Tell us all. We’ll only hear versions of you which reflect versions of ourselves. What does this mean? Well, you tell me. It is the self alone who can make meaning, and only for the self. And what might be insensible to me might be meaningful to you. Who are you? You are me. Who am I? I am you. Who am I? I am God. Who are you? Well. Well, well. You go look in your mirror honey.

Beneath a reign of uncouth stars.

February 22nd • Proteus

11:46 am

[A slight whispering wind blows through the theatre and we hear the sound of an incoming tide. The veil of the temple rises revealing a circle of people lying on their backs staring up at the sky.]

Cassiopeia: [gazing at herself in a hand mirror] The stars are beautiful at this time of day, don’t you agree? Though not as beautiful as me of course.

Pan: Of course, baby. Now come over here and sit on my lap. My energies are rising.

Cassiopeia: None so beautiful as me.

Shadow: [rolling over, bending himself toward the rocks, turning his back to the sun] Darkly they are there behind this light. Darkness shining in the brightness.

Proteus: [in the shape of a long stick, curved at the end, no knots] We are here to look at birds people, not stars. Now pay attention before I change my mind, I’m getting tired. Did you hear that rook? That means it will soon rain.

Pan: This is Seattle, everything means it will soon rain. Look, a dog! It will soon rain. Look, a wave! It will soon rain. Please. So, Virgin, your hand is so gentle. Love the longlashed eyes, baby, want to trust me a little?

Cassiopeia: She, she, she. What is she to compare to me?

That Virgin: [pointing] That cloud looks like a book. See it up there? Oooh, now it looks like letters. U. P.

Pan: [visibly aroused] A lady of letters! I am lonely here, touch me.

Proteus: [in the form of our souls] Goodness! Look at that manshape ineluctable! I’ll sit on your lap. Cling to you a little, a woman to her lover.

Pan: [in his flutiest voice] The more the more!

Shadow: [flatly] Come back to us Proteus, I see shadows of birds on a white field.

Pan: [Flutier] Don’t listen Proteus, come, cling, then come. Now where the blue hell are you?

Proteus: [In the form of a mirror] That’s better. Feel a bit shamewounded. Now where were we. Oh yes. Those birds, Shadow, are magpies and there are one, two, seven of them. A secret. And my stars, look, an owl! And it is nearly noon, no wonder I am so tired. Let’s see, owl, a revelation at night. Also a bitter mystery. A mysterious secret will be revealed at night. Also, it will soon rain.

Cassiopeia: [rubbing lotions into her skin] Proteus, you’ve never looked so flat, yet in you I see distance. Near, far, east, me. Oh there I am. Me. Oh Proteus, you are so beautiful. Oh, I feel something! What is that word known to all men?

That Virgin: What is that word? I want to feel it too. Point over here Proteus, show me what Cassiopeia sees.

Proteus: [In the form of Berkeley] You see nothing. You think you see. Everything is flat, and you only think you see distances. Those stars unbeheld behind this light? Their distance is only an element of your idea of them.

Pan: [masturbating gently] I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

Shadow: [in the form of my form] Not for all the word.

Gone too from the world

January 27th • Nestor

10:20 am

Scene: [A narrow street in 12th century Cordoba, Spain. Two men are huddled together, tussling over a cracked mirror. They are fighting but palpably they are not angry. These men are close in age and have known each other since childhood.]

Abulguailid Muhammad Ibn-Ahmad ibn-Muhammad ibn-Rushd (aka Benraist, Avenryz, Aben-Rassad, and regionally Averroes): Give it back!

Moses Maimonides: No!

Averroes: [letting go suddenly so the mirror strikes Moses Maimonides in the chest] Fine. Go ahead and try. But you know you can’t reach him without me.

Moses Maimonides: (defeated, with a sigh) Together then. But I speak first.

Averroes: Agreed. Now make room, I can’t see.

Moses Maimonides: That better?

Averroes: Yes. Ok go.

Together: We call upon the ani

Moses Maimonides: Stop! I’m speaking first.

Averroes: Fine. Agreed. Let’s get on with it.

Together: We call upon the anima mundi, the great soul of the world, to show us in this mirror the face of the one we most believe, the seeker of pure truth.

[The face of Aristotle appears in the mirror. He is irritated.]

Aristotle: You two again. Sheesh, can’t you leave a man in peace? What do you want now? I’m busy. Aquinas and I were trying to prove some nonsense of his with algebra over lunch. Well, he was having lunch, I was in the mirror. So what now?

Averroes: I have found two words in your Poetics that I do not understand.

Moses Maimonides: No. Stop. Don’t listen to him. We want to ask you about resurrection. I think that once we are dead that’s it for the body. In the world to come we will be souls but won’t need bodies. I’m certain you believe this is true.

Averroes: Incoherence! That is the incoherence of incoherence! There will be no personal immortality; we are all participating in the same intellect. Now as for those words I cannot translate

Aristotle: Have you read nothing I have written. Read first before you bother me! Look. I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Focus on the here and the now. That should be enough for both of you. Stick with the observable and above all, break that mirror and leave me alone!

Averroes: But I must understand! What is the meaning of comedy and tragedy? What are these things?

(In a blaze of pyrotechnics Aristotle makes his exit. Moses Maimonides obediently, and also in an attempt to reach the other side, smashes his face into the mirror. It shatters and in the reflected multiplicities of the shards still falling, Moses Maimonides sees the reflection of Averroes and the bloody mess of his own face, perplexed, gently disappear.)

I just saw my own ghost

January 8th • Telemachus

9:09 am

It was a moment, like a recollection of things to come, walking between Haines and Buck when Buck turned to look at me and said nothing. In that silence I saw my own image, looking shabby in dusty black (insincere?) between the two of them looking hip and expensive. Is this how others see me?

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

January 5th • Telemachus

It devours itself and spits itself out, kills itself and generates itself again. 9:00 am

Buck likes to dress in front of a poster of Oscar Wilde like it is a mirror. Today he told off everything he put on for being stiff, rebellious, etc. Wants puce gloves and green boots. Not quite over Wilde and paradoxes no matter what he says. And he thinks my hat is artsy. Called himself Mercurial Malachi, that Mercurius that is made up of all conceivable opposites, a contradiction and I suppose it is one but not how he sees it. He is vulgar mercury, hardly the anima mundi. He is both creative and destructive, though, I give him that. And he is solvent, despite what he pretends.

The simulacrum is true

January 2nd • Calypso

The simulacrum is never what hides the truth -- it is the truth that hides the fact that there is none. 8:51 am

Silly Milly gave me a genuine reproduction crown derby moustache cup for my birthday when she was five. Four. I gave her the real imitation aberoid necklace she broke. Then we played pretend with the mail, me putting pieces of folded brown paper into the mailbox for her. Look Milly, you got a bona fide letter and I’d present her with the fake, and look here’s a forgery, and see Milly a fabrication, and this one’s for you a fiction, and here’s yours an invention, and what have we here the make believe, and for you an affectation, and look here’s your pretence, and Milly somebody sent you a fraud and a mock and a pseudo and here’s a counterfeit sham and an unreal inauthentic and oh how nice this one’s the implausible and here’s a subterfuge and a phony and a simulation and the simulacral just for you my darling. Oh she is my lookingglass from night to morning. We laughed when she found Mr Goodwin’s mirror in his hat, that polite old perve, bowing Molly off the stage. Look what I found! Pert little piece she was, sex breaking out even then.

Sun break, slowly.

December 27th • Telemachus

Grey. Far. No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. 8:33 am

The Sound is a mirror today, at least while the sun break lasts. But I can see now the clouds are beginning to cover the sun, slowly wholly and the water’s morning peace is turning dim. I sang for her while she was dying. Her door was open and I sang so she could hear until she cried and I went to her. The words she said made her cry, love’s bitter mystery. I was silent. The Sound from here is a bowl of bitter waters. Where now?

Am I repeating myself?

December 23rd • Telemachus

All art is quite useless. 8:21 am

Buck pointed that cracked mirror of his at me today. Says he stole it from the cleaning crew his Aunt hired. Made me look. I took a look but it took more from me. Made me see myself as others see me. Is that something crawling on my head? Nobody saw that, right? I feel a bit like Dorian Gray revealing that mirror of his soul to Basil. Wilde was right about that one. God isn’t the only one who can look at my soul, I can too and there are too many of me. We. So many possibilities buzzing past, and I can watch them go in the mirror and join the multitudes. The twenty-first century dislike of web fiction is the rage of Calibans seeing multiplicities of his own face in the screen. Get used to it. Or maybe just help me up from this hall of mirrors. I would ask for an infinite rock so I could do some smashing but cracks turn one mirror into several and I cannot bear more multiplication. Enough. Stop it. Don’t look at me. You look at yourself.