Lookingglass Hell

Alone you’ll be free. But you can’t be alone.  

All one you'll be free but you can’t be all one. 

You can’t.

Because.

People are watching so you can’t say what. You’re thinking. Want to say can’t say can’t. Think. People have 

Eyes.

Like mirrors see you suck your soul out.

Glass eyes.

That’s what you see.

If you look behind everybody’s nobody’s eye. Behind the glass.

There’s a hole. A perfect sphere of blackness. Black hole sun, like that idiot pop song the idiot neighbor insists on playing so loudly. Yes, I might open my chained door a crack, and politely raise my voice. “Please turn it down.” I try to say it nicely. But my neighbor’s shouted reply is invariably, “Fuck you.” After which he turns up the volume to even greater decibel levels. Because I’m helpless. The neighbor knows I never come out. What I really should say …

In sheer defiance, I shout out the appropriate, impolite response in my fortress of solitude.

“Fuck you.”

Tourettes! It’s a breath mint! It’s a candy.

Silence! No more interruptions.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I refer you to Exhibit A, a painting by René Magritte. “The False Mirror,” en francais, “Le faux miroir.” If you examine this painting very closely, you can clearly see that the eye in the sky is clearly open, clearly proving that everyone’s eye in the whole world is open, and there’s a black hole inside/behind the I, and we’re all being sucked to our deaths into this cosmic vacuum cleaner. Everybody.

Except me.

Because I’m the Man Who Wasn't There.

(Shhh. That’s the secret!)

But it’s true.

I’m invisible.

You won’t see me. I won’t let you see me.

Because.

I have formed (ha!) a force field that protects. A barrier that.

Preserves me. Except there’s no you I me it. I’m not really talking to you (me) this is all done with mirrors! 

Based on this ineluctable logic, I decided in the year 25 AD of the Julienne Fries calendar to disappear from the world of people. Quit my job. Pounded boss’ desk with weak white fists. Fuck you you. RESIGNED like “The Prisoner.” XXXXX. 

Thanks to dear dead rich daddy I could do that.

Daddy died thanks daddy.

And left (me) enough money to live alone.

Thus, I became my own world. 

Home alone, home all one.

The will was read, the corpse was in the ground, the house was mine. I did what anyone would do in my situation.

Shut the doors, tinfoiled the windows, nailed up hurricane shutters, sealed out the mindstorm. Paid for decades of lawncare in advance. Phone, yes. TV, no. Food deliveries only, paid all my bills on time. Nobody bothered me. My brilliant plan worked.

Yay.

Ladies and gentlemen, sluts and thugs, I am now in the sixteenth hour of the thirteenth year of my great isolation, my grand experiment, my grande mal. To John Donne I say, Fuck you, sir. I am an island!

Like the astronuts before me, I have gone where no man has gone before. My trek stabs ever onward in this apparently stationary house, this Eden, this space capsule. To speak plainly, I’ve remained completely alone in my house since 1979! 

All doors, shut, windows closed.  

No contact with the Naked Apes at all.

Then.

In the Year of the Comet, disaster.

The old-school family grocery store down the street [insert name here] folded. The old man who ran it croaked and died. Thus, no more deliveries. Chains (you have nothing to lose but) don’t deliver. You go to them, they don’t go to you. That’s the way it works. It’s the law. (Exceptions for nuts, but that means getting on the nut list.)

After starving for days, I’m forced to go out for groceries. Before leaving, I grab a pair of mirrorshades, to reflect any harmful rays. Ray Bans, of course. Vintage. Put them on. The logo sparks a word association.  A painful childhood memory. The Miami Seaquarium. Waterworld life behind thick green glass. 

If you look inside the manta ray, gaping maw, inside, it’s hollow, look in you can see the rib cage!

Dad’s future widow squeezed my hand.

Look honey, look.

I squint my eyes.

No!

But the harassment continued. I finally looked.

And saw into the nothing. The hollowness. The implication was clear, and I was a clever little boy. The manta ray? It’s a tube with fins swimming around. I’m just a tube with legs. The direct cognition of emptiness, as the Buddhists say.

What’s wrong, honey?

Nothing.

I walk into the nothing now. A new kind of nothing.

How has the world changed during my self-imposed exile? What horrors await? The nightmares of Harlan Ellison? Or Philip K. Dick? Or.

Outside, sun stabs. No evil robots.

I walk like a robot to the shopping center on the corner. It’s now become the Sunrise Mall. Completely changed. No more fins on the Publix marquee. O brave new world.

Store. Door. Aisles. Cart. 

Aisles, aisles, aisles.

Colors, boxes, colors. All screaming for my attention.

Look at me, look at me, look at me.

Checkout line. I fish out a fistful of cash.

“Does money still work?”

Horrified look. But the clerk nods. Yes. It does! 

Callou, callay! O frabjous day!

The pimpled clerk starts swiping my purchases over an eye in the conveyor belt. Math seems to be a lost art in 1994. A world designed for morons. Kornbluth, it seems, got it right.

Scan, beep. Scan, beep.

I want to go home. 

Mister? Hey! Child’s voice, ignore it. Mister! Don’t engage. Scan, beep! An eternity later, I buy the needful groceries, try to walk out. But the child keeps calling out to me. Hey, mister! You. I didn’t die, but I’ve clearly violated some future protocol. Mister! I ignore her, keep walking. Redfaced manager appears. Are you all right, sir? I shake my head, no, walk past him. Then the child runs up, but Mother swoops down to save her. Don’t talk to him, honey. I walk past them both and out the sliding glass doors.

Sun now lower in the sky. But the light still hurts. Even through the Ray Bans. But let’s emphasize the positive.

My mission was a success. I’m still invisible.! 

I keep telling myself that. Keep walking.

Nobody saw. Ha-ha!

Sweating like a pig, I make my way back home. And then I’m inside. I made it!

My trek goes on, Masala. It goes on.

Plop the sack of groceries on the table. 

Ringing phone. 

Longstory short, I will still live alone, they won’t stop me. The question of groceries will not defeat me.

Ringing.

Switching metaphors, this is the story of my life. Or play. Performed inside this lonely stage. A tale told by an idiot. Performed by an idiot. For an idiot audience. Me. (applause) My Shakespeherian assault on that global village idiot theater of the collective unconscious is a hit with.

Ringing.

Ignore it. Pay attention to me! 

I wrote a song:

 Alone you’ll be free but you can’t be alone

The trees are watching, watching with glee

The trees are watching you now as they shellter

A coven of witches who live by the sea    

What did you think? I think.

Ringing.

The strident phone keeps doing that. I won’t need groceries for awhile, so I don’t pick it up. I go to bed.

Ringing, ringing, ringing.

No. Shut up.

I’m going to sleep.

Danger, Will Robinson. They saw you! They’re going.

Sleep. Safe and restful.

Sleep, sleep, sleep.

ZZZZ.

Bad dreams, not safe and restful.
First, an endless line of Men White Coats. Holding nets and marching in tune to an idiot novelty song from 1966.

They’re coming to take you away, ha-ha.

They’re coming to take you away, ha-ha, ho-ho.

His brain agan, always worried about its own survival. They're coming to take you away. Not a joke. At a deep survival level, the organic computer inside his skull knows it's true. But he doesn't take the hint. He's afraid, but not enough.
So the nightmare gets worse. His brain stops dancing around. Makes the warning explicit. Spells it out.

You looked weird. You smelled bad. Somebody complained. Tomorrow, they’ll call and call again. You won’t answer. So they’ll come. Policeman, social services. The Man. The Man will pound on the door. Sir? You need to open up, sir. You’ll either open up or they’ll break the door down. And then they’ll take you away.

You wake. Which is to say, I do. Then reach for the big box of pills that daddy (thanks) stashed under the bed. Take one. Sleep again.

Now, safe and restful.

Lost in Technicolor dreams pretty about Alice and that pretty world of talking chesspieces and dragonflies and the White Knight and the Red Queen and the pretty things they said. The secrets they. 

Alice got through the glass.

Awake. Pop out of bed like a Jack in the Box.

Trying to remember. The secret the?

Alice = all ice = all I.

Alice got through the glass.

Escape is possible! Yes!

I go to the bathroom and try. For the thousandthousandthousandth time. But I can’t get in. No. Because myself is in the way, as always. That idiot on the other side of the mirror! No use pounding it bloody. I’ve learned my lesson.

But the dream revealed.

A secret. It’s in the book!

“Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.”

What did she find? That’s not the point! 

Alice got through. 

The book tells you how.

The book is magick! There are spells within!

(I read that in another book.)

I try to find Dodgson’s novel in my mouldering ziggurat of books, but can’t. But I’ve read it. And what I need is in my head.

So, back to bed. I pop another pill, illegal this time. (Daddy sold them. That’s where the money came from. Don’t tell.)

Sleep, more dreams. But they’re not dreams.

Much bigger than that.

Hallucination, vision, spell. No.

Those are just words. They don’t describe.

The place where the terror comes from. The holy terror.

And he was in that place.

The realm of. 

Words? You’re going to name it?

As I was saying.

Here. This place. Is.

Magick. A crossroads. A decision. Bloody signature on paper. Sign here, sir. And here.

Quit stalling!

You’ve been here before.

You know what to do!

Drown the dormouse in the tea.

You’re the dormouse, you’ve always known that.

Doormouse = dormant.

The self/not-self you think you are, aren’t.

Kill yourself. 

You don’t exist. What have you got to lose?

“He” made the choice, the only choice. (“He,” “it,” “I,” whatever.) He killed himself. Drowned the dormouse kicking screaming burbling in a pot of tea.

And then woke up for the final time.

Happy for the first time in years.

Laughed and laughed.

It worked!

Now he was really alone.

Because there wasn’t any me any more.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you might expect, it went to that bathroom and walked up to the mirror. This time, ah, there was only empty glass. Skinny, out of shape, it huffed and puffed and hoisted itself up on the sagging mildew stinking sink cabinet below the mirror. Hunkered down, no hurry, studied it. There was nobody on the other side. His "I" did not deceive him. But be sure. Test. Experiment.

It did exactly that.

Put its hand through the glass. Right hand.

Its right hand went through. 

Hypothesis confirmed!

Pulled hand back. Shouted.

“Sic semper tyrannis!”

Now?

Only one thing left to do.

Go all the way through into the mirror world.

It pushes, struggles, pants.

The mirror yields melts like water.

And then it’s all the way there.

On the other side.

Here.

Where everything is different.

The chorus of voices. Stops. Finally.

Nothing but stuff here. Nothing but objects.

And it is an object.

It can finally touch things! 

Walls, glass, medicine cabinet.

It runs its hands over this and that. But what if?

Looked back at the mirror. Like Lot’s wife. 

Curiosity killed the.

But it doesn’t turn to dust.

Doesn’t fade away to ashes.

Because there’s nobody on the other side of the mirror. Still empty there, too! Which meant.

It can go back and forth. From one world to the next!

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Opens medicine cabinet, another empty mirror. Pill bottles.

DNIRDEZNEB. MUILAV.

Reaches out. Then its brain flashes out a warning.

Danger, Will Robinson.

Survival at stake. Take no pills. Why? Scientific American, July 1971. Parity and Looking Glass Enzymes. Complex technical article, organic chemistry, but the takeaway is clear. Take no pills, eat no food in Mirror World. You’ll die.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t want to die.

But it still feels curiouser and curiouser.

So it walks outside its Mirror House into the Mirror World.

Sun, not so different here. Knives of light. Can’t see. Then it can.

Visible signs of neglect on all sides. Weeds, grass, waisthigh on the lawn. (Lawn service took the monthly check, did no work. How was it supposed to know?) Childhood bicycle turned to rust, lying in the tangled green. Stained hurricane shutters. The whole house sagging. CODE VIOLATION notice on the door. Prime downtown property! A teardown! This neglect is just asking for trouble. The Man would surely come.

But nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. They’re coming to take you away. Not anymore. 

It smiles up at the stabbing sun. 

Then walks up to the cracked sidewalk. Kept walking. Looking.

 Everything is backwards. (In terms of parity, not time. It refers you to Scientific American.) Lookingglass world. Left is right, right left. Bus passes on the street, stops. Noise, stink, fumes, ad on the side.

SEIFSITAS MELAS.  

Sidewalk, people walking. Can’t see it, hurt it. (Body brain it formerly know as “I.”) A vacuum can’t destroy a vacuum! Nothing can hurt the Man Who Isn’t There! No one can see you!

Really?

Stand still on sidewalk. Experiment.

Flashes genital region.

No reaction.

Crowd keeps walking, walking, walking. 

Brain thinks: of course...

Hypothesis confirmed! Yes! It is invisible!

Logical. Obvious. Mirror World is imitation only. Just a copy of the Real World. These aren’t real people. No mind, no thought, no self. Ghosts. Empty images, the walking dead. They’re all its. Just like it! (But they don’t know it.) The fun part is.

They can’t see it because they aren’t there. Can they hear it?

It shouts.

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you."

Nothing.

So happy, so happy.

It had lied to itself before, it knows that now. Pretended it was invisible. It really wasn't. But now the lie is true! Here, now, it truly is invisible. And …

Invisible means invincible!

Old woman drags squeaky wheel cart full of old woman stuff past the bus stop. Bus hisses, starts to go. As an experiment, it pushes her under the bus. The wheels of the bus go round and round, crush her, crunch her. She screams, thrashes around like a wind-up doll, spewing red fluid on the asphalt.

Then everything stops.

And the universe goes backwards, rewinds, repairs, goes forward again. The old woman is good as new.

Repeated experimental trials achieve the same result.

It realizes the first law of Mirror World.

Anything it does here is temporary. You can’t permanently change Mirror World because Mirror World only imitates Real World. It’s only a copy. Any change corrects itself.

It runs back home, grabs some needful stuff, then heads out again.

Then wanders the Earth like Mephistopheles. Walking up and down. Searching, studying. Killing Mirror People. At least temporarily.

It keeps this up for days, popping pills (amphetamines, symmetrical molecules), not sleeping, not eating, finally starving. It wanders far, far from home. Then.

Panic reaction. 

Because its brain is flashing out another warning. A very obvious fact it stupidly forgot.

It will die here. No food to eat.

Fear of death. But more.

Guilt feelings. 

It stops in front of a sidewalk cafe and screams.

“I’m sorry I killed myself! I'm sorry!”

Nobody reacts.

It runs. Panting. Head full of thoughts.

I have to get back, go home, push through the glass, get back to the other side. The Real World. Where people have eyes and they can really see you. I was wrong, I was wrong. Being seen isn’t the worst thing. I hate being invisible. I really really hate it!

It knows this is a lie. “I” have to do this, “I have to do that.” Who is it kidding?

But it runs anyway, and finally gets back home.

It fumbles with the key, opens the rain-soaked, mildewed door, goes in. Runs through the ruined kitchen, runs back to the bathroom, crying and crying, then it pulls itself up on the sink counter again. It's going to push through. It's going to go back. This time, it’s going to stay. 

But it can’t get through.

Because.

Because there’s some idiot on the other side! Eyes wide open, pounding bloody fists on the mirrorglass. Screaming and screaming. It’s seen this idiot before, it knows, can’t quite place it, but that’s not important now. The idiot screams at him. “Get out of the way, you idiot! Get out of the way!” It screams the same thing back, but it's useless.

No matter how much it screams, the idiot won't get out of the way.

— Marty Fugate, (c) 1994

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