Saturday Reflections – (A Short Story)

I awoke to the muted quiet of another lonely Saturday morning. The day held no promise of excitement as had none of my days for as long as I could remember. Without thought, I removed myself from the coils of blanket that formed a shroud around my body. Fitful nightly journeys down fantasy lane left me twisting and turning, waking like a stick in the center of some blue and lint speckled cotton candy. As usual, I spent a few moments sitting on the bed’s side in mindless confusion, dreading another day sucked clear of all ambition, and then arose.

From a lifetime of rote, I reached for the light and the companion, white noise generating fan switches, and squinted as the bathroom flooded with eerie morning brightness. Before me stood the mirror, an edifice of self-reflecting narcissism gone awry, and I cajoled my sleep blurred eyes to focus on the apparition that I knew would peer mockingly back from its recesses. I stretched, “Aahh…oh God. Good morning, sad camper. Another day, another fifty cents..oops. Nope – you, my bosom buddy, are still part of the miserable ranks of the unemployed, or should I say uninspired?” My toothbrush, bristles bent from scouring many unwelcome guests from my teeth, was soon in my hands. Paste squeezed from the tube for the ‘exciting process’ of a ritualistic search-and-destroy mission of the mouth, an activity further signifying that this mass-produced morning was a natural extension of the mass-produced night just exited.

               Brush, spit, brush, gag, spit. Opening the medicine cabinet, I removed a soon-to-be-depleted bottle of Listerine from amid a forest of medications, mostly never used, and found myself swilling the ill flavored liquid around my mouth. “Gar..hge..gar..hge,” the sounds of disinfection are not pretty, especially when your mind is pretending that it is organizing the day’s non-existent activities. That done, I put away the accouterments of dental hygiene to take one last amazed and disbelieving look at my reflection in the mirror before showering.

               Suddenly, the image in the glass fluttered in a blur of indistinctness. This was patently strange? I strained to get a sense of what began to happen, trying to cajole my brain to give analysis. A pang of fear swept through my body as tear-filled eyes stared back at me from the now slightly less familiar image. From the depths of my pain, welling up faster than any physical energy has ever been explained, a powerful thrashing, mortally wounding surge of sadness racked my body fully, causing me to lean over and steady myself on the sink counter with now shaking, trembling hands. As tears intermingled with the slight traces of blueness remaining in the sink, I lifted my gaze once again to the quietly suffering man in the mirror.

               It was shocking, for I know that a mirror reflects back the image of the person standing before it, but… Odd, I didn’t seem to recognize this sad but gentle soul meeting my gaze. Quite unexpectedly, the woeful man spoke, “Who the hell am I.. and have we met?”

               Wasn’t this supposed to be me up there on this silver screen? Wasn’t I the star of my own ‘B’ rated story? Why did I not recognize this person, staring me down in the naked moment that was taking place? “Why, I don’t think I know you,” I faltered, “I really don’t think I know you, and I am quite sure that we have never met. Although, for some unexplained reason, I know somehow, here in this moment, we are destined to understand something as yet never understood.” Then silence.

               We stood there for an eternity, sizing each other up. If at first I thought this to be myself, the equal scrutiny the man in the mirror was giving me made me shudder with realization that this could not be. For the man showed an intention and purpose that I could not relate to. In that moment, I saw this lost soul as possessing dark secrets, wonderful imaginings, creative processes, feelings, thoughts, emotions, stories, ideas, fascinating constructs of the mind that were completely foreign to me. No, this was not me; this was someone who had a complete lifetime inventory of experience that was not akin to anything of my own. The rays of light entering my eyes were not reflected, they were cast from some other being as yet beyond my acquaintance. They were traces of some sort of divine occurrence that was taking place here in the white noise-filled silence of a treasured moment.

               When I saw the translucent tears, hesitatingly and haltingly falling from the mirror man’s eyes, I became aware of my own tears. I was no longer sure if they were from an empathetic sadness generated for the pain this man of light was surely feeling or if maybe they formed from a sense of splendid joy and relief that he was here. Whatever their source, the man in the mirror and I now silently wept for one another.

               “I feel we must talk,” broke the silence. “we must understand that which we never have.” The man in the mirror had read my mind! I suddenly realized that we both stood before one another completely naked. Instinctively, I reached for my blue robe hanging on a door hook. My guest must have become aware of the same for he reached for a robe as well… his was covered with rainbow swirls of incandescent colors and iridescent shades forming beautiful non-repeating patterns of indescribable beauty.

               “Can, can I invite you… in? I mean, must you stay where you are?” we both asked simultaneously. But the man in the mirror responded to my query first as I marveled at his robe, “I’ll come over to you.”

               The mirror began to vibrate as the mirror man stretched his arm toward my side of our mutual existence. The glass slightly bent toward me, startling me. I could see a bed in the mirror over the shoulder of my arriving guest; it was neat and lovingly made up. A bedspread similar to mine was tightly and perfectly stretched and smoothed over the entire bed. The mirror was now shaking as silver protrusions forming flesh-colored fingers pressed further and further into my Saturday. An arrogant lump settled in my throat and chided, ‘Ordinary day, huh?’

               “Glubblub,” the sound bleach makes when poured rapidly from a half empty bottle marked the entrance of the mirror man into my presence. The mirror oscillated toward us, then toward the tidy bed in the mirror, toward us, the tidy bed, us, the bed, faster and faster until, it came to a final magical halt. We were together… and something gnawing at the back of my mind suggested, maybe not for the first time.

               “Well, I, I.., my feet are cold. Let me throw on some slippers,” I stumbled, “and then we could, ah, talk in the kitchen over some coffee, perhaps?”

               “Wonderful,” spoke my ethereal friend, “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” and he was off in the proper direction before I could point the way.

               I raced toward my disheveled bed, gazing about for my slippers. Tearing at one messy corner where the bedspread had puddled on the floor, I discovered a pair of tattered brown slip-ons, with the sole of one torn back in a grotesque tongue-looking fashion. I slipped them on quickly and flapped, walked, flapped, walked seconds later into the kitchen.

               I was dumbfounded to find my kitchen immaculately clean; I mean sparkling clean. What I’m saying is, I had never seen anything this clean in my life! The bottom of my sink had not been visible for so long, I idiotically stared down toward its glistening bottom and marveled at the shining chrome surrounding the drain. The tiles on the countertop and floor were perfectly new looking as was the Spanish walnut finish of the cupboards. Where were the scratches of countless careless meal preparations? Where were the scuff marks on the floor where countless cheap shoes had pivoted without lifting? I began to feel dizzy, when the smell of some hot un-coffee-like aroma wafted up my unsuspecting nostrils and forced me to pivot around towards its source. As I turned I couldn’t help but notice that my den was equally as tidied up. My books were methodically arranged in my bookshelves by color scheme, height, and author with the shortest books on the left embossed with authors’ last names beginning with ‘A’ and the taller books toward the right and below with letters of increasing alphabetic value. My television set, centered in the middle of a large angular oaken cabinet, was where it always had been except that instead of a picture tube, a spray of colorful flowers flowed out through the opening.

               Light streamed in through blinds that had never been worked open and the soft poetic sounds of ‘Wassermusik’ by G. F. Handel filled the living space I called, or once had called, my home. Stranger still, I had never heard of Handel or ‘Wassermusik’ before, so how did I now know this was what sweetly danced into my arid ears, relaxing the tension out of several muscle groups that had never taken a holiday before?

               I continued to turn and finished my arc, gazing into the gentle eyes of the mirror man, sitting at my now beautifully polished circular dining table. A sprig of daffodils adorned a woven basket at the table’s center and my dirty socks that had rested there the night before were no longer visible. Between getting my slippers and arriving here in this once familiar – now wonderfully foreign room – no more than forty-five seconds had past, forty-eight at best.

               “Herbal tea?” An outstretched arm proffered some deliciously purple concoction steaming from a porcelain cup I had never seen before.

               “Well, I generally drink coffee, but thank you just the same.” As I turned toward my cupboard where I kept the coffee I was interrupted by, “I really wish you would try the tea. I know you are used to things being a certain way, your coffee and all, but I really wish you would try the tea. Not for me, you understand, but for you.”

               The eyes that steadily gazed at me as I turned back were kind eyes. They beckoned me to relax some more and not to worry and they sent me a message of hope. Those eyes seemed to acknowledge all the hurt and suffering, and knowingly understood the tragedy that had been my life. I took the cup from those familiar hands and drank.

               What a wonderful experience! Here I was dreaming a reality or realizing a dream – I didn’t know which – and consuming a cup of the most delightful and tasty tea that the world had ever known. But what is more incredible, I hated tea! Yet why I hated it, I wasn’t sure of anymore. We drank in the same silence in which we met.

               Finally, the reflecting man spoke in a soft tone, “Why are you so afraid?”

               “What do you mean?” I asked, startled by his candor.

               “I mean why do you feel as though the world is judging you? Why do you care and judge yourself? Do you know you’ve stopped living the life that inspires you, where you dance and sing and revel in the spirit of lightness at which you excel? My old soul, you are here just to dance! Don’t you know that? You are here to sing, to laugh, and love, and hold, and create for yourself. Don’t you see that you’ve moved in directions that have gotten you lost? The world shouldn’t be deprived of the wonderful spirit that God has lovingly bestowed within your heart. Can you not maintain faith in an essence that harkens freely to the music of your soul? Why don’t you listen to that essence?

               …I was speechless. Listening to lofty expressions of celestial insight as spoken by images from my bathroom mirror, was understandably difficult for me so early in the morning, especially before I finished my first cup of coffee, or tea in this case. The mirror man now sipped his tea gently as he awaited, what I gathered, was a response from me.

               “Well, you have touched on a nerve it seems,” I choked. “I am not really happy lately. I’m not quite sure I ever have been. And as for feeling that the world judges me, well, sure, it judges all of us. I don’t think that is any big deal though.” Then it occurred to me, I was weary of what I spoke, for fear my mysterious friend… would… draw some sort of…spiritual..conclusion. STOP. STOP STOP STOPPPPPPPP! Wait a minute! Was I being tricked or something, some sort of mind game to make me admit to something I had or hadn’t done? I suddenly felt guilty that I was now feeling… suspicious.

               “I hope you don’t mind the few changes I’ve made around your home? I know how often you’ve berated yourself for watching the small picture screen over there,” the mirror man pointed to my once functional television, “and that you have always wanted to turn it off or get rid or it so that you could concentrate on substance.”

               ‘Substance?’ No thoughts of ‘substance’ had ever crossed my mind before. Oh, sure, I have used the television to forget my worries and then wished, several times, it had never been invented. But issues of substance? “Yeah, I’ve spent some time in front of that, ah, picture screen when I was..,” what was I about to confess? “…afraid to look myself in the eye. I just don’t know what to do anymore. I am afraid, and I don’t even know what of!”

               “Well, you’ve always wanted to look yourself in the eye? You are doing so now, didn’t you know?”

               A brand-new shudder of delight raced up my spine. The same tingling sensation I felt when I read the accounts of people achieving enlightenment through the practice of meditation. “How am I to believe I’m looking myself in the eye here – that you are me?” I asked while bringing my tea to my mouth to hide in its depths. “I don’t have a robe like that. I would never even think of buying something so… beautiful for myself. I wouldn’t deserve it.”

               “It is beautiful isn’t it? I am glad you admit that you appreciate its form and content?” A silver twinkle appeared in the mirror man’s eyes. Again, I was drawn to the soul sitting across the table from me. His appearance was of me, I had forgotten that. Yet he seemed so different from me, so alive, so calm, so confident.

               He spoke once more, “I am you. I am you as you are when you stop thinking. I am you when you start living outside your mind. All the doubts you harbor are the demons of your own creation. I could take their form too if you feel you could benefit from seeing them firsthand. Would that be helpful?”

               “Well, I, I guess that maybe…” The room filled with raven blackness. The void across where the table had been heated up. Suddenly, red tendrils of crimson self-loathing burst across the void and singed my eyebrows. A horrible smell of doubt crossed the room and suddenly my vision was flooded with a horrid creature sitting across from me in the flickering red shadows. At the center of its pallid face, toward where an eyebrow should be, a deeply furrowed frown ridge circled its sweating head, almost completely hiding jet black and lifeless eyes underneath. It was picking bits of non-flesh like skin from its body, wincing in the process, and then tossing the skinny slivers of itself down a most horrid, misshapen mouth.

               I shook with horror as it spoke to me, “Thanks for everything. You and I are one, friend. You allow ‘us’ to thrive you know,” it drooled; “by not being all that you can. You have given ‘us’ life. You are one with creation, you are a God. I am consuming ‘us’ as your life of default dictates, for sustenance of course! I’ll keep feeding until there is no more of ‘us’ left and then ‘we’ will be satiated… and dead, won’t ever have to worry about judgments again.” The creature continued Its cannibalism, as I passed out in my herbal tea.

               When I came to, the mirror man was pouring another cup of pungent tea for himself and me. The stream of liquid exiting the teapot’s spout, poured forth in metered and evenly spaced stripes of color, matching my vision’s robe. “That was horrible,” I said with difficulty, the chattering of my cup against its saucer drowning out what little volume I mustered. “I never want to see that creature again! What a nightmare. Where did he come from and where did he go?” As I spoke, a pressure suddenly built within my chest. It increased in intensity but was suddenly released as a misshapen transparent arm thrust itself through the fold of my robe, stole an English muffin from a small tray, and turning the muffin vertically to accommodate its passage, disappeared back into my chest.

               English muffin crumbs fell to the floor as I jumped up in fright and ran screaming around the room, knowing that this was the veritable last straw; I had never known or seen such horror in my life. It went beyond mortal comprehension and description. To make matters worse, what would the neighbors think? – What would the neighbors think? What was I saying? Where did that drivel come from during this moment where I had faced such a hellish specter?

               “You are caught in the thought traps that pervade your mind,“ stated the mirror-man with gentle delight. “Give them up by placing your heart and mind fully where they find contentment, beyond that which can be analyzed. It is here you will find peace. Here also you will find serenity. The choice is yours. Think about it, but not too deeply.” He rose up from his chair, and gracefully walked to my side. I could tell he understood my fear and as if to allay it, he gently took me in his arms and cradled me. I wept once more, but my newfound friend didn’t. It was as if he understood the time for weeping had passed. He laced the fingers of his left hand through the fingers of my right and guided me back to where we had begun.

               We stood in the dim light of my bathroom, my back to the mirror. Through my tears, I saw the man of vision blink at me, crows feet forming deeply at the corners of his sparkling eyes. “Your heart is a beautiful place,” he spoke, “Please visit it often … I have!” I knew we were about to part ways, but I didn’t want him to leave. This incredible creature of magic and love had shown me something so obvious, yet true, that I blushed at the thought of its simplicity — I could choose to be happy by climbing out of my own head and into my heart!

               I had to let the mirror man know how he had given me hope, how he had made a difference in the course of my humble life! I caught myself feeling so deeply, I almost forgot that the vision was about to leave! A new weariness enveloped me as we locked our gaze for the very last time. “How,.. how can I ever possibly show you my immense gratitude for the gift of your visit?” I managed, as tears cascaded down my cheeks and splattered on my bathroom tile.

               The mirror man briefly reflected then grinned again. “When you look in the mirror,” he whispered, “smile a lot. I like it when you smile.” As I stood there trembling, he approached me so closely that my eyes began to cross and then I blurred as a sense of warmth and confidence passed through my body. – My friend had left. I swung around quickly in time to see this wondrous angel walking off into a silver-colored swirl, an ugly looking creature at his side, being led off on the end of a leash. Just before he disappeared from view, I noticed that the mirror man was now wearing – a tattered blue colored robe.

               Suddenly, I was aware of the white noise and the faint traces of blue toothpaste in my sink. I had the uncanny feeling that I had just lost several pounds and my body felt amazingly light. I stared at the image now facing me in the mirror. What a handsome face stared back, what a marvelous twinkle in those eyes, and I couldn’t help but appreciate the beautiful rainbow-colored robe sitting so nicely on those strong shoulders.