Mirrors in the Open

I prefer my fish as a paste but my steak as a slice. I wrote this on the survey postcard attached to the magazine I found on the coffee table outside of the bodega I frequented. They let me be near, which was kind. The survey smelled of perfume and I was intent on returning it to sender. My opinion was valid and they should know and take note. I wanted to be heard like so many others.

The Inhalation of myriad tiny machines that change your mind. The rapid content imprints itself as necessary in your own makeup. The More machines the more you desire them. The are constant and never ending. Each one is nearly 30 seconds in length and attempts to latch a hook and couple with your own desire machine. You might sway to and fro with many of these hooked machines clinging onto you. Some many get shaken asunder, yet many will cling for years to come, never to be completely discarded .

There was a man I knew who would laugh at his own jokes until you joined him. There were a few times where I didn’t join him and his laugh eventually dwindled or he would explain his joke further. This was worse. I still remember his sunken eyes and gaunt face. He was a gigantic man and his body had strange proportions. His mouth was full of large teeth that would stare right at you while he laughed and laughed until you joined.

I was starring at my monitor. A nice new monitor. And I couldn’t help be notice a small bubble starting to form on the screen. A small bubble that grew into a festering boil. I produced a knife with which I cut open the bubbling mass. The monitor was blemished, a scar lay on the bottom left corner of the screen. A childhood friend stood there and said as much that I had finally ruined it. Books fester in the corner, beverages bubbles near the bookshelf. Dust gathers in specific places. Have you ever noticed that? Dust is intentional. Draw pictures in the dust and watch they they took succumb to time.

I find mirrors in open rooms disturbing. A mirror is a reflection of reality and thus not reality itself, making whatever you are looking at in the mirror something other than you. Even though it looks like you and copies your movements it is not you. When I walk into a room I do not want to be confronted by such a ghastly experience of myself from another dimension. There are times when I know I must use a mirror, but these are times I can prepare for, not like being caught off guard to a gigantic mirror in some lobby. You put one of those things in there, what are you going to expect if you put a portal to an alternate dimension right there. I swear to you that other self that other me moved. He moved I tell you, so I had to break it. Wouldn’t you? But then I had to run. Couldn’t let them catch me, they kill a man for things like property damage these days.

I watched, in the mirror, the memories of an old man. His brain wasn’t what it use to be, but once we saw together what he was then we were again. To see before you the entirety of ones life broken into the most powerful memories feels you with dread. But not all dread is bad, dread just is. It is the saddest, most nostalgic experience. It crushes your soul with mortality, yet if you look closely if you look ever so closely you will see what is also there. That wonder and beauty of life reside in that dread, nestled together like pups seeking warmth.

Reaching into his pants I saw as he received a generous amount of sweat and stench from his own genitals and brought his fingers to his nose and smelled deeply. He enjoyed the smell of his own soured genitalia. It forced him to remember he was real. This brought on a terribleness of inexplicable doubt. A behavior formed upon in public should only be understood behind closed doors. If only everyone had doors to close.

It is a sinking feeling into a long ago comfort now lost. You can almost feel the warmth of the blanket, yet it is not there. It is almost there. You can nearly remember it. It’s so close. It’s less of a memory than it is a feeling triggered by lonely spaces, silence or melodies. A train rumbling past you invoked a profound sense of lost and longing for what you never had. You’ll experience time dilation through desiderium. To long for someone or something that is absent, and yet that object of desire may not even be known to you is to be….

I awoke in some garage, a tertiary piece and an unwanted son. A trench coat held my frame and kept me sane. A subtle snore and a delicate wind rolled through the porous structure. A blue boat that was actually a car rusted in the middle. I had taken hostage the corner. It wasn’t mind to occupy but I couldn’t remember why I came. Any common explanation for my placement was improbable. I had been one place and now I was in another. Wherever I had been it was not here, though I could not remember that place I had been specifically I could feel the memories of countless other experiences. A sushi restaurant with bright lights and sapwood booths along a long wall. A dimly lite oyster bar that served burgers with melted cheeses and caramelized onions. The smells and sensations were overwhelmingly real but they were only memories. I was in the garage.

I was an onion. In a bright white kitchen. The chef caressed a finely honed German blade around the entirety of my diameter, and then from that incision, peeled my skin away. He cast my husky exterior into a green bucket and proceeded to slice me directly in half. Each half was splayed across wooden surface as I was then cut horizontally three times and then across the top laterally into thin strips. The chef carefully sliced up to but not through my bulbous root. He then cut ever since close together perpendicularly to the horizontal cuts he had just made and I feel into thousands of tiny pieces scattered like leaves in winds from vast empty fields.

Happy holidays, I said, as I handed a large tip over to someone I swear I never had met but looked so oddly familiar. He had just finished packing my bags, or cleaning my dogs, or maybe my chimney. I had a fire the night before. I was alone and with my family. The house wasn’t smoky this time as we remember to open the flue. The Christmas tree was fake but the pine scented outlet was real. Presents progressed through rapid successions of various rapidly changing wrapping paper. I assumed the years were moving by, but the tree always stayed the same.

I was on a game show with flashing bright lights. A smiling man in a plaid suit beckoned me forward. Spell the right word and say what everyone else was thinking and I would win. A mini van was at stake. Top six answers and I couldn’t think of a single one; however I bogarted the entire introductory period with my flashy looks and style. Forget about answers the questions when you can look this good. The other team won the game but there were still snacks in the green room.