Julia Schwartz

December 9, 2003

The Magic Mirror

If I look into a magically revealing mirror right now, there is no way I see any two-dimensional form. Instead, I gaze now at a figure with countless sides, all competing with one another for the most attention and regard, yet simultaneously constructing themselves unanimously in pursuit of some common whole that forms an unclear identity.

            Most of all, I think I see frustration with so many things in this moment – above all, the frustration of a world gone wrong. There are too many things I can’t fix – about myself, about others, about the world at large. Too much pain, too much time wasted too much needless destruction of precious life. I sometimes wish that the entire world would be full of the endless beauty that I imagine in my own little corner of imagination, yet things always go so wrong. Sides of me reach out with anger, do something, change this, do something…

There is the side that feels so alone with so many people missing from this life that should be here now. It is the side that is dominated most by memory, the side that has only pictures and echoes and the occasional discussion to resurrect.

            Next to the side of past is the side of future, a side so scattered right now. Dreams questioned, locations unknown, players absent, direction nowhere.

            The sides are infinite – ambition, pain, destruction, passion, loss, gain, absorption, passion, romanticism, the sage, blindness, ignorance, “scope for imagination,” kindreds, scholarisms, rebuttals, seclusion, silence, shouts, calmness, frazzled, lost, found, searching, desirous for perfection and still searching for a way to be lost…

            As of now, all the sides shrink from the light, enclosed among themselves, struggling to be let out, yet still, constrained. There is no release of the bounds of the human soul, there is only the release of the soul itself, and that is a time that shall soon come. There is too much unknown, too much unconquerable, too much imperfect. Though in spite of everything, that face peering out from the mirror is smiling.

            There is the side of release from the world, the side that escapes from the tremors of anger and frustration to a world where all can be perfect and beautiful, that world of quiet contentment – the world of Arcadia, the world of the “eye through which we see the world,” the world where “Olympus is but the edge of the earth everywhere.” Beauty and happiness are at once intertwined with escape, and the most wonderful results.

            Success and pride are another side, because feelings of completion and result launch a parade of emotions. Those are the times when there is power in one human being, when an idea blossoms into an effect and perhaps one life will eventually be saved. Sometimes anything is possible, and the only impossibility is failure and inadequacy.

            Among it all is a layer of self-revelation, the omnipresent whisper of support and strength that reminds me why it is I do what I do, why it is all so necessary, why our lives consist of black and white as well as gray. Self-revelation comes with reminders of what has been lost, strength that holds me up even when all that is demanded is a quiet retreat.

            There is the surface. There is what lies just below the surface. There is what lies beneath that concealed layer, and then there is what lies within the depths of the true soul.

One mirror is never enough, because no one will ever see all that is me.