Mirror

by Uvi
1980
 


I stare at the mirror and the stranger, that woman who is cast back from there seems lost in her dreams.

I wash my hands in a strong flow of water. I lean down to erase a barely seen smear, to wipe it off the glass. Her hand comes after mine, as if in her trance she is forced to follow. 




My hand comes down upon that smear, rubbing it off, polishing it. But then, appearing from the other side, strange fingers dip into it. They draw, playfully perhaps, a rippling texture of slime. Her smile is evil, Lilith, through the smudges.

Mockingly she waves her hand at me as if to say goodbye. As if this is a farewell scene, staged against the background of a train station, and we the viewers are forced to come close to that familiar face, the face exposed by the eye of the camera; and then in one cut the image changes to the rail tracks, the wheels start to rattle, and one train car goes away, gradually fading into the distance.

Yes, as if this moment is dear to us, as if there is no way for us to choose, no way to turn our attention to any other detail. Until the eye of the camera is shut off. Until the spell has run its course.

My face encased in my hands I find myself in the same old routine, that same gesture of those who are deathly tired; and inside this emptiness I whisper to myself: Far, I want to go away, far away from here.

And what is the feeling of far, if not waves alternating between sinking and sinking deeper, taking me away from the anxieties of here and now, rocking me into the kingdom of dreams?

My eyes take a peek through the intervals between my fingers. This is the only way I am allowed to examine other shapes. The golden mirror frame. How ornamented, how intricate it is. Water burbling. Finger, interval, finger.

Mirror, mirror, is there any queen as beautiful as I?

 
 
 
Uvi Art Gallery