Tag Archives: light





OK, I’ll bite: what if we can’t walk through mirrors because our reflections are in the way?  If we could somehow hide ourselves, somehow become clear and vast and constantly rotate around ourselves, turning on our atoms, maybe we could approach and breech.  Speed will make us harder to see—but what we see and what the mirror sees are two different things.  Mirrors reflect; they are a second stage on which this reality exists.  Spinning speed will blur us to a human watcher but a mirror will pirouette with the best of them.  Anything that is possible in real time is possible for a mirror to see because it does not see with its eyes but with its whole face.  There is no eye-brain coordination, just an eye, no lag in the live broadcast because there is no broadcast, a mirror is a static thing which displays others’ dynamism.

Maybe we could sneak up on it in the dark?  But light is only an impediment to the human eye, light lines the perimeter of our range of vision.  To a mirror, dark is the same as light, only less complicated.  Mirrors are not slaves to the light, are not slaves to making meaning as we are; no analysis, no biases, no opinions, only purity, only truth.

You can only see the present in a mirror.  You can wave and remember the placement of motion, but by then it is a memory.  You can try and wish a glimpse into the future but you will only see a reflection of your current understanding embodied by your hopes reconciled by your best guess projection.  But mirrors really only tell you on thing: now.  One of the problems with sneaking up and walking through is that as we approach we get bigger and bigger until we reach our full size.  Maybe if you were to stand far enough away—to become small enough of a threat—and if you knew a way to skip a few bars of time and how to run in the void between light and darkness, to be cloaked in neither—you could get in.  If you ran fast enough.