This morning while washing my cereal bowl and spoon in my hotel bathroom sink I felt utterly disoriented looking at my reflection in the mirror. That experience did not have any physical, material dimension to it but something far more profound. "What is that thing?" was the precise question on my side of the mirror.
To the extent that I have a measure of narcissism—we all do—mine is not mirror-based, as in how I look. That is because I genuinely regard myself as just about ordinary looking. One is not much to look at. The better word to use would be conceit, which is entirely cerebral, in the way one thinks of the universe. My conceit is not about what I write or paint or speak. Those are trivial. My conceit is in the way I conceive and perceive the universe. There are as many moments when the universe stands thoroughly revealed to me in all its explicability as there are when it is indescribably abstruse. My current preference about the universe is that it is staggeringly pointless.
Coming back to what I saw in the mirror—beyond the obvious physical features on my face—it was the instant question “What is that thing?” that has lingered on. The reflection seemed so unfamiliar and yet so fleetingly familiar. An expression I had coined quite a while ago and which really does not mean anything came to mind—congealed entropy. I felt so removed from the reflection, it was as if we were two very distinctly different life forms.
In those brief moments, every worldly, for want of a better word, chutiyapa (the nearest equivalent I offer is absurdity) disappeared. For a couple of moments, which in the mirror seemed an eternity, I forgot all my mundane life’s challenges such as penury and debt; also, the fact that one has absolutely no money and no prospects.
That experience triggered this short post which while writing I went back to the bathroom mirror to see if that thing was still there. It has gone.
The best I can describe the experience would be to say it was as if I had met a version of myself from one of the many universes for a fleeting moment or two during which there was clear recognition that in essence we were the same congealed entropy.