“Now extend your arm, and look at your face in the mirror.”
The guided meditation thus proceeded . . .
“Where is your face?”
I need to shave.
“It’s there, at the far end of your arm.”
The mirror cracked.
“Do you see your face at the near end of your arm, also?”
I see two phantom noses
“Over there, I see my face — over here, I see no face.”
— as if ghosts were trying to escape my body.
“Over there, I see color, shapes, and movement — over here, just boundless space for that.”
Boundless space for that shattered image.
I wrote this for an internal 100-word contest at Scribophile. It was inspired by Douglas Harding’s mirror experiment, as taught by Richard Lang in the Waking Up App.
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Featured photo: HELP! (Odesa, Winter ’20)
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