Partial Reflections

And as I look up, I see mirrors, thousands of indistinguishable rectangular pieces that form the walls, the floor, and the ceiling up above. Thousands of mirrors form millions of reflections. Every single me, slightly different than any other me.

At a length I recognize a white door, I try to count, four, no eight, no twelve mirrors in fact are replaced by a white panel with a crystal knob on it, confirming that it is, indeed a door. I’m not sure if there’s a ground beneath the glass floor, or if it will break by the pressure when I walk. I ask myself whether running through will help leave the shattering glass behind, or should I walk, careful, diligent slowing down at some steps and pacing on others.

Anyhow, I decide to walk. Funny thing! Only a few of my reflections are following me, I gaze at them all one by one, right in the eye. It doesn’t take me much longer to figure out that as I accelerate, more of me start to follow. I wonder if there is a scientific explanation to the phenomenon, but end up even more bewildered. The floor seems to be stable enough so I speed up further, but I see no more additions to the legion.

I reach the door. I try to push the door open, rotate the knob otherwise, and again try to push. I hear a mocking giggle in the background. One of my ‘non-followers’? What the hell! I think. I try to pull the door this time. It opens and I can figure out the laugh.

Soon the reflections that had been following me, start to frown, some show a hint of anger, some of disappointment, and some of pure despair. They don’t say anything. I convince myself into thinking that they can’t.

There it was. Another room of mirrors and mirrors and mirrors all over again. And another door, again forced me to wonder, sixteen, no twelve again! This one was closer, maybe that’s why the door appeared bigger in the scenery.

I understand, or at least I try to. I pretend to feel for them for I have to leave, never to see them again, for I don’t believe in “looking back”. Reassured, I run towards this next door. A smaller room beholds but still millions of new reflections. Once again not everyone follows. It takes me less time to get through and even lesser to figure out that what is there on the other side of the room. I knew I had to pull the door this time. I choose to ignore the frowned, angry, disappointed, and despaired faces. And so I did. To my surprise, I wasn’t wrong. Another room full of mirrors, still smaller.

I go through hundreds other such doors. Somewhere in the middle hence I get stuck, my followers however pass me by up to the end. I look down. I wonder if the mirror under me has melt down, or I thought the reflection underneath has held me. It’s neither.

I was holding me. The part of me whose reflections were never moving, walking or running with me, was holding me. He steps out of me, stands in front of me. He looks me back in the eye, and then at his, our reflections, billions of them now. He starts walking the other way, running the other way.

Now I stand here. This room of mirrors, rooms rather. All of them having two doors, entry and exit as I recall, they’re called. Now I stand here. My imprecise intellect starts to see, realize, and appreciate. A smile on my face tries to betray the sense of regret in my eyes. Now I stand here.  “The door was in fact meant to be pushed. The entry was the exit, and the exit, the entry. For when I looked up, I just looked up, for I don’t “look back”. There must have been a way out, a door behind me in the first place.”

Now I stand here. I decide, choose, under my own influence to turn back, to retrace my steps exactly the opposite way. I’ll run first, and walk later. Maybe the floor will crack this time, given the opposite pressure and fatigue from the previous time. Maybe the “first” door will lead me to another, larger room. Maybe I’ll get frustrated of the increasing size of rooms, and my decreasing speed. And maybe after traveling through another hundreds of rooms I’ll decide again at some point to head “back”. Maybe I’ll be back at this same point some time in the future. But I have to take this chance, I want to, for I have nothing to lose.

The new reflections, just formed, have started frowning. I choose to meet their tranquility with chaos, and their interest with apathy. And so, on this day I begin, again.

Alex and Alix

The original creation was done using different names so I've removed the portion wherever anyone was addressed by name. Let me know what you think.


Alex: Do you come here often?

Alix: Just when I need to get out, and I need to get out alone.

Alex: You mean when you are sad.

Alix: Not exactly, but yeah, when I’m quite a bit below the line and I can’t even remember why.

Alex: You’re aware that time has an amazing feature by which it keeps flowing…

Alix:...and instead of wandering around the city, if I would just go to sleep, there’ll be a new morning, a new beginning waiting for me. Is that what you want to say?

Alex: Not just that. I get your point, I know that everyone is aware of what’s right. The point is to stop running, step out of the path, jump off the tripod, and stumble on a different sight altogether.

Alix: Tell me something, if you were to photograph one thing tonight, here, what would that be?

Alex: I don’t know… Oh! Wait, I don’t see anything more beautiful than the moon at this time of the day.

Alix: Even though you know that you might get an exact same view, possibly in a fortnight and maybe a thousand other times in your lifetime?

Alex: Probably, yes. But how is that relevant?

Alix: You talk so condescendingly, so proudly about looking at things differently that you’re unable to recognize the beauty in the things so obvious. You oblige yourself to look for something different, something better in the very same things over and over again. THAT in itself is another obsession.

Alex: It’s so not true. If I’m trying to review a particular matter so as not to, as you said, ‘forget what I’m sad about’, it doesn’t mean that I’m unable to see other things. It just means that I choose to ignore other irrational things for the time being…

Alix: That is what an obsession is my dear, you know, you feel distracted when you are distracted. You haven’t chosen to ignore other things, you have grown habitual to you obsession, just because it’s easier that way.

Alex: Perhaps, you’d have noticed, given such philosophical knowledge of yours, that you have a tendency to project your feelings as facts. Not everyone is a fan of such acuity.

Alix: So considering this ‘everyone’ of yours or anyone for that matter, you’d rather prefer to be an object of appreciation than to be a subject of admiration.

Alex: No, it’s not for me or for you to be or not to be. It’s about how the world around sees me and the very creation of me as of now and any other time is affected by it. Self-righteousness as you know it can be most dangerous of all its kinds and life is, trust me a luxury for those who accept this.

Alix: A concept and an idea is all it takes to create something or someone, and if and when you set out to create something, you discover more than you could ever create. That is what, in fact materializes your mere being to what you want to be or to what the world around has made you. And then what most of us do? Choose the ‘luxury’ and deem ourselves as the reviewers of any other of such discovery.

Alex: I completely agree with what you’re saying, but just because something is easy it doesn’t have to wrong. The concept, the idea, the creation altogether is meant to be realized. Isn’t it? All I’m trying to say is that anyone, sensible, will choose realization over absolute abstraction.

Alix: Absolutely, indeed anyone will, but it’s going to take quite a few visits to this realization to actually part the half grown grass from the half diminished one, or a day will come when everything has faded away and you realize that nothing was ever growing. You however took an extra step each time to reach there and find everything somewhere in between…

Alex: And by then you’d have convinced yourself that the matter is out of control, and if only there was another line of sight to this. Oh! Wait, that is what I’ve been doing so far, and I haven’t been ‘sad’.

Alix: Yes, to some extent you are right, it does help. But there is always a tradeoff between the time you spend manipulating the situation for a desired ending and preparing for an unexpected one.

Alex: And whatever comes up, afterwards at certain point we always realize that it is never much different…

Alix: … from what we expected?

Alex: Yes exactly, not much different from what we expected.

Alix: Isn’t it vividly easy to disagree? You can disagree with someone, even if you haven’t formed an opinion of yourselves yet.

Alex: What can I say? I guess we are just two tough people who have a knack for easy things.

Inertia

I've seen no piece of land, my inertia pulls me further.
Amid oceans I've ridden cyclones, I've seen no zephyr

'Sorrow' clutched my hand, "Stay. You must not seek bliss.

Its brightness blinds, I'm bound to leave you stronger."

'Bliss' had waited for me, "It's your call, not mine after all.

I can bless you with the perfect ending.  It's me remember?"

'Expectation' couldn't wait. "Extremist for you travel on water,

You must know sorrow and bliss are lies, just parts of me."

'Dream' came along, "My perfect beginning never ends.

I'm where your worries fade. Here you can forever be."

My inertia pulled me before I could label them as friend or foe.
Amid the ocean, riding cyclones, once again I can only feel vertigo.

A detour

If appearances were indeed deceiving, would you deceive me?

If I were to give myself, would you or would you not receive me?

A place you have never been, the lost shall know the locale better

I've just arrived here, I know not the way out, neither the vicinity.

A choice made is not just the one, choice to live with hangs beside

Slide under and your head gets stuck, can't rise over in vertigo city.

I know not how to swim. A boat shall get me through the waterway

"What if the boat sunk? Don't you know I can't swim?" you'd say in vain

"I would walk underwater then, I don't mind carrying you along too.

Even if the Gods were to cry at the shipwreck, we'll never feel the rain."

Tell me, if appearances were deceiving, would you deceive me?

If I were to speak my heart, would you or would you not believe me?

A fragile reverie

A bubble in a bubble, from inside and outside, stressed double.

And it's a dark spell, a common impression, a false expression.

Embarked on, with a sword of glass in hand, searching shapes in clouds,

you swirled around in tornadoes around the circle to see it as a sphere.

Listen now, to the echoes of sound, see through the reflections of light.

collect the cannonballs, as they collapse down from the skies so clear.

A fine crack on the cornea of left eye crushes the view as you know it,

tried and failed to trace the sparks to the depths of the deepest ocean.

Lead self to the 8th dimension again, counterfeit a relinquishment again,

Reconcile with the lights, sounds, for all have already been set in motion.

A bubble in a bubble, I know the feeling, you are stressed double.

The spell need not a wizard, breakout, now, crack the walls outward.

Denial of the devil's advice

"Let yourself be carried away, as far beyond reality, on a devil's advice

I said, "as far you would let go of self on the rhythm of an angel's  sighs."

Seven minutes past midnight, indistinct, defensive, he pushed me in rush

Wrote down and tore off, one thing and every other, he hadn't done yet.

He woke up the next morning, sensed an indecorous tranquility in the air

He climbed up a tree, and wondered whether to forget or rather to regret.

"Don't let the very last idea you possess be corrupted by that single desire"

I said, "walk with me, rule the ground for now, when you still have a chance

It was an illusion, a dream, where what you watched, saw, observed, inferred,

were all the same." Intense was his face, with his mind lost in its own romance.

I said, "let yourself be carried away, far beyond reality, on a devil's advice."

"No", he screamed. Too bright was that shade of black, the one in his eyes.

Thoughts and Words

To everyone, anyone in that room would seem well articulated
Still Alix lately believed, entire concept of "talk" to be overrated.

Tangled up in the petite loops of a long chain, falling off a metal skin,

every word without a thought, pulling another after, just made noise.

She had witnessed it all, rationality wrestling away the sensibility

With each word sonic scribbled over previous, emotion lost its poise.

Do away, she wanted to with the calculations, with the science of trust

If only the intuition and the inspiration were still anywhere to be found

In nuances of color in raindrops, in haphazard waves of snowflakes

Her silent thoughts claimed words, just like a dance would, to a sound.

To everyone, anyone in that room would seem well articulated
They really were Alix's thoughts that did need to be navigated.