Thursday, March 9, 2017

Mirror, Mirror, against the Wall

I sat at my writing table and pushed the computers power switch. “Top of the morning Word, I want to type a story on your bland white surface. Fyi, the story’s revolves around a full-length mirror; as a matter of fact it’s about the one that leans against a wall in my bedroom.

“I use it to gawk at my favorite ancient artifact; you know, the one I live alone with, cook for, wash his clothes, and every morning in the shower scrub his back. I’m sure you know him.

“However, this story’s about MC, My Cat, his delicate faithful feline, and the mirror I mentioned.    

“Word, wish you you should see the interaction between MC and the mirror. It would help you appreciate this story. For a first draft, though, for you, I’ll make it as viable as possible. Here goes.”

MC prances through my bedroom and sees herself in the mirror. Like in a double take she stops and looks. She stands on her back legs with her forefeet on the mirror and for three or four minutes she’ll paw her reflection.

Then, maybe because she tires of the cat in the mirror not responding the way she wants, she’ll walk around the mirror a couple of times. Perhaps, she’s looking for her.  

But, if I’m in the bedroom, I start a game that totally confuses her. When she looks in the mirror I step behind her and she sees the two of us. She meows and paws the mirror as if she wants to mingle with her two friends.

After pawing for awhile, as before, she walks around the mirror; I guess she’s looking for the familiar reflections.                                      

Her questioning kitty pose should be on cans of cat food at supermarkets everywhere.

Her crumpled mannerisms, though, looks similar to writers when they try to make sense of what’s transposing from their weak minds to their computers blank screen, all through their hands.

“Word, I think what I write on your screen and what MC sees in the mirror is similar. She sees what she imagines, and I imagine what I write. We both react to the frailty of formative foolishness, but, to us, it’s genuine.”

Later, while trying to come up with a proper transitional phrase, I leaned back in my at-times-too-comfortable-office-chair. I should revamp my misguided outline, but I really want a nap.  

But I chose to loose the tether on my mind. “Watching MC, and her adventures with the mirror, pictures how rickety life is. We look for ourselves in reflections of what we think we should be. It’s like throwing a worn rock in a quiet pond; the ripples expand, but they eventually disappear because they’re not resolute.

“They can’t stop their surroundings from displacing them.

It’s the same with our wisp of time here on earth; nothing, including ourselves, stays the same.

Weather erodes or produces, temperatures change during 24 hour cycles, and different manmade products come off the production lines. Cars and truck styles change, batteries wear out, and air pressure in tires fluctuates. Humanity, too, changes. People grow and then shrink; hair appears and eventually falls out, and populations vacillate.

“On an on, ad-infinitum, everything on earth is subject to frailty.

“That puts us Homo sapiens in a bind. If everything changes, which reflection do we look at to discover who we are? We may want to mimic a certain reflection today, but tomorrow it’s changed. 

What if we don’t like the new reflection?

Where does humanity find stability if everything in the created world does not endure?

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Heb. 13: 8.


 Scripture is from the NKJV

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