Pale Fragments

0 / mirrors

**

And who are we, really? "Well, I'm me," I think to myself. And who is I and who is Me? And who is the one asking that question? And that one? On and on. A mirror facing another mirror, two armies marching straight towards me.

Am I the one who sees all of the accusers?—Who watches and is the only one who is truly wounded by the war happening across the entire developed galaxy of my soul. Who is the soul and who does that soul belong to?

Have you ever stood in between two mirrors and tried to step out of the way so that you could see all of the versions of yourself?

***

"Seventh of all, what are the stories you want to tell?" I ask myself.

"Any you want," I respond. "There is not a correct kind of story to tell. Just make sure it's a story worth telling; it must matter to you, and you must have a reason for telling it to others. If that reason is, 'So that they all love me,' then don't write that story; I've got you. I love you. I will always be here with you. You don't need to waste so much energy writing a goddamned book so that others will give you what you already have. Love is not something you can collect; it is a status: 'being loved'. Once you have it (and you always have), you don't need it anywhere else."

"But I want to be loved by someone else."

"Why? Am I not enough?"

"Yes. No—yes. I don't know."

"Okay. That's okay. Anyways, when you're deciding what to write and how to write it, always tell the reader what the story is about before you tell it. This is important: don't tell them it's about one thing and then make it about another. Don't say, 'Here's a story about a dragon,' to which they think, 'Ooh, yes I like dragons, I've been wanting to read a dragon novel for awhile, why not, let's check it out.' And then they open the cover more than an inch, and you say, 'I am in so much pain, I have been hurt so badly, please help me.' What do you think that reader will do? How will they feel?"

"I would feel angry and betrayed. I would throw away the book."

"Exactly. You can't trick the reader into giving you something that they didn't sign up for, just like you can't trick a date into sleeping with you when you told her you just wanted to hang out and do homework. It's manipulative. The reader is a real person who you are writing to, whether you see them or not as you're writing. If you intend to show anything to anyone, you have to believe that they exist and are a real human just like you—as you're writing."

"Ah, I see. You are enough."

"What, did you just say that because I gave you what you wanted?"

"Oh, um, no. I mean, it feels nice to have it."

"That's true. It does. Hey, listen. The same thing applies. I'm a person, just like you. You can't manipulate me into giving you what you want."

"I didn't—"

"Let's start now. I want to love you. I have the same goals as you. We have to trust one another."

"'One another...'"

"Hm, that's an interesting phrase actually."

"One and another are opposites."

"You don't think we have Dissociative Identity Disorder, do you?"

"Why are you asking me, how should I know?"

"Fuck," I said together.

"You know," I thought later to myself. "You don't need to pretend to like something I've written if you really don't like it."

"I don't do that. I mean, I probably do that," I thought back to myself. "Whenever I've thought something was really bad, it got published. Every time I thought something you wrote was really incredible and clever, it gets called 'masturbatory'."

"That happened twice to the same story huh? Damn."

"Yeah, seriously. I bet he and the other guy talked."

"Maybe. They both taught that class together."

"Oh shit."

I laughed.

"I just mean that—"

"I think I know what you mean. It's okay if it's bad. But 'bad' is the wrong way of looking at it; it's not evil to not yet know. I think I have pretended to like things that I knew weren't yet finished or polished or scrutinized over. I don't know why. I don't think I was pretending; I was trying to create the reality I know you want—that I want, too. I tried to convince both of us that we already had what we had not yet worked for."

"So no more of that?"

"I'll try."

"Thank you. That's all I ask."

"I know we can get there."

"We can, if we want to. We can figure out all that needs to be learned."

"Hell yessir."