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Enoch |
by G. David Schwartz
The one to which I refer was a ponderously deep mirror. The mirror reflected monkeys and butterflies, ermine, raccoon and any other animal, which passed by and glanced into its depths. Most of the time, I could not see my own reflection therein. I did, however, see the traces and fumes of the other existents. Once I saw the famed and deterring panther. I was struck by the profundity of her beauty. Another time I saw a weasel. I was struck at its immature behavior.
One day I looked laboriously deep and saw myself. I had grown accustomed to not knowing what I looked like, having peered into too many mirrors across the years. Each time I noted these reflections, and traced them back to their essential structures. These structures were defined genetically (as a gift to me from all of history) as well as environmentally. I was content to be a series of distractions. Those more scientifically minded than I called this "refraction." But a banana by any other name...
On the particular day about which I am speaking, I allowed my gaze to penetrate deep within the light waves and particle components of the silken surface, which reflected generations of light and dark. I saw, as a famous colloquialism expresses it, my reflection.
I was like the eyes of hell upon me. My visage was terrible, and terribly germane to the witness of weeks, which fell behind me (as well as those which stood prideful before me). I was all that was in the mirror. Even the background, which was generally so much noise, was an extension of myself. The door which was behind me, the door into the room in which I stood, was the narrow porthole into my soul. Therefore, the door was as much a part of my as the ceiling which was the top of my cranium, or the walls which were my heart. The door was also the one, which led away from the notoriously small room and, therefore, out of my soul. In a momentary lapse of humanity, I wondered if there was indeed anything, which was not me. I felt the full weight of the burden which was me, which was, therefore, the mirror and, therefore, everything which had ever been reflected in their particular mirror: anything which walked in the sand or drank from the sea out of which this particular mirror was eventually composed. A bitter silence beaconed me to look deeper into the glass. Volcanic illusions crisply told me their secret, sacred, encoded name. I watched, awe-struck, as my hair pealed away in wave after wave or worn images. My cheeks, generally so ruddy and redundant, melted into the nectar of stoneware madness. My teeth fell from, or shot up out of, the black hole, which was my mouth. I was the stunned inventor of a new genre: lyrical pus. I dialed the telephone to find help. I should learn to ask whom I am talking with on the other end. Every human being is heard in every circumstance, and only the dizzy believe this is not the case. I was ablaze with the wild wisdom of decades within decades of wonderment. This undoubtedly explained why I spoke like a blithering idiot. I stammered and baffled even myself.
G. David Schwartz is the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue and Midrash and Working Out Of The Book. He is currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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