Propjets and Writings

“I’d dream I was looking in a great long glass… and I’d walk up to the mirror holding out my left hand…and seeing myself walking to meet me with its right hand out. And just as it came up to me, it would suddenly … turn its back on me and walk away into the mirror again, grinning over its shoulder, and suddenly I’d know that it was the real person and I was only the reflection…”

Dorothy Sayers, The Image in the Mirror

Previously, I have described my beliefs in an alternate universe which mirrors our own, and have mentioned one aspect of interaction between that world and our own, namely, the attempt at socialization between myself and my mirror image. I realized that I would be unable to be amicable with one so similar as myself (barring miracles, including the miracles of God's love), so I began to speculate on other ways to develop positive relationships with looking-glass land.

In order to talk to other people in this new world, I realized that I would have to make rather a spectacle of myself, since the only way to see someone else in this world would be to drag their counterpart from our world along to witness the experiment. Not being exactly brave enough to attempt this (My sanity is one of my chinks in my armor of humility), I speculated on the possible outcomes, like any good scientist would, to form my hypotheses. I came to two conclusions: either I would see no response on the part of the mirror image of my friend, other than the suspicion of insanity written on their face at the same time as my friend was registering the same emotions on his features, or, he would deviate from the response of my friend, totally disproving my theory that those in looking glass land have to copy exactly what is done in our universe. This second result would also probably insure at least my temporary insanity, and any observers would likely hear a very heartfelt scream coming from my lips until I fainted on the floor or something. (See, I'm not a total believer in the reality of this other world.) At any rate, I enjoy making a fool of myself at times, and proving the existence of this world is also a worthy cause, so I overcame my former embarrassment and determined to attempt the experiment. (Incidentally, Mr. Snodgrass, doing things that embarrass yourself, intentionally,in public, is the secret to being immune to blushing, although I am very much inclined to think that blushing is often very much more preferable to making a spectacle of oneself. I, therefore, do not endorse this technique.)

I chose for my counterpart my sister, Amy, and informed her that whatever I said, I was not talking to her. I then had her face the mirror, and proceeded to speak to her reflection, “Hi, hello, anybody in there? I'm not insane, really I'm not,”, with the rather disappointing result of nothing except a lot of funny faces on the part of the mirror image and my sister. Try as I might, those in the mirror would not deviate from our actions, and we could not deviate from theirs.

So, my former hypothesis held up, proving nothing except that I'm willing to ignore my self consciousness for the sake of science, and convincing my sister that I'm a little bit odd. This disappointing, but expected result leaves me desirous of further experiments to attempt. But at the moment, I'm short on ideas. Any suggestions?

-propjets

“He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

In my metaphysical ponderings on mirrors, I realized that the ugly youth in the window I was staring at either must be exactly who and what I am, or if not, must be a superb and malignant actor. Maybe in the other world all men are actors who enjoy mocking us eternally. This idea rather exceeds my credulity, so I prefer to assume that everything in that other world is exactly like ours, except for the remarkable reversal of everything, creating the effect named after the portal that causes the two worlds to meet.
In light of this, I reasoned that most men (if they can be called that) in this other world must be similar to those of ours-that is, capable of making relationships, both good and bad, and desirous, to whatever extent, of acceptance and love, much as I myself am. In light of our remarkable similarities and my desire for a friend who always wants to do what I wish to do, I contemplated the idea of attempting to befriend my 'mirror image', who is at this moment typing a similar essay, only from right to left. I began to use improvised sign language to attempt to communicate, but he was obviously thinking of the same thing, and so he politely waved back at me. We tried further methods of communication, but since we were always silently asking the same questions and giving the same answers, we began to bore of this exercise and relapse into our reveries.
I began to think how frustrating it must be for him to be doomed to copy everything I do, exactly as I do it, in light of the fact that being a copycat is to my thinking, somewhat foolish and immature. Since he thinks exactly as I do, I instantly assumed how frustrated he would feel over this, when I realized to my horror, that he was having pity on ME for being eternally doomed to copy HIM! This rather startled me, and just to be sure, I tried to do anything which he would not copy, but he copied all that I did, and whether it was because he was forced to, or because he enjoys tormenting me, I am still unsure.
In any case, I began to realize that, whatever relationship we did develop, it would be more likely to be one of animosity than one of friendship, due to the fact that the very things he does that irritate me are my own exact faults. This realization caused me to wonder, if, perhaps, I could instead befriend the reflections of my friends, in an effort to establish a positive treaty between our world and theirs. I shall describe my efforts toward this end in the next article.
-propjets

(The following was written, and has been recently published, in the weekly publication of a club to which I belong; hence, things are probably a little different from my normal writing style.)

“When people talk of Ghosts I don't mention the Apparition by which I am haunted, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, which lurks in the plate glass of shop-windows, or leaps out of mirrors”
Logan Pearsall Smith

Have you ever spent much time in front of a mirror? I know most, if not all, of you have, and I also indulge in this vice, from time to time. In my case it is a particularly dangerous vice, because my mirror is in my room, always before me in my most pensive and metaphysical moments. I warn you, when you are feeling metaphysical, avoid mirrors at all costs, for when any amount of time is spent before them in thought, the idea begins to creep in that, whatever you have been taught, and whatever you believe, mirrors are, as are all pieces of glass, really windows-except these windows allow you to see out of one universe into another.

It is remarkable, that once these thoughts have begun, they are impossible to destroy, or disprove. In fact, all attempts to disprove this belief in a parallel universe, revealed by mirrors, are either irrelevant or only serve to further substantiate what one already knows. For example, one may say that mirrors are really only a highly polished surface backed by an opaque material or darkness. Very well, tell me what that has got to do with the issue. Or, one may say that those mirrors really only reflect what is happening in this universe, but this merely begs the question, “What if instead there is a parallel universe, where you, and all other things you call reality, are the reflections instead!?”(I realize that these arguments are, to some extent, straw men. If you think of any better arguments against my theory, please bring them to my attention so I can be more correct in my metaphysical theorizing in the future.) Indeed, the only way I am aware of that we have found to deal with this troublesome belief is to convince ourselves that if we're not careful, we'll end up in a psychiatric ward after all. In truth, the world of those in denial to our fundamental truth about mirrors, and many other things, such as Christianity, find the only way to get rid of such beliefs is to call them and those who accept them, insane.

But all this is beside my point. I could care less, really, whether I am sane or not, although I believe I am, since I doubt this theory of mirrors. I wish, instead, to explore some of the social implications of this parallel universe, for which mirrors serve as windows. However, in light of the limits of space, I shall reserve my (pardon the expression) 'reflections' for another time.
--propjets

Wicked. As in, another way to describe immorality.
I was reading John Mark Reynolds on GTA, and ran across the term. He makes some good and thought provoking points, I would recommend the article, but what I want to say has little to do with it. If interested, go here: More on Grand Theft Auto

This made me ponder the extreme political incorrectness of such terms, that even in my hyper-christian circles, we shy away from such black and white terms. We use words like sin, and bad, and wrong, and immoral, but...wicked is all of those, with even more force. Scares us off somehow, or something. Anyhow, I just got to pondering the word wicked, and thought I'd share that with my readers...
How about you? Do you water down the black and white, do or die, heaven or hell nature of the truth as instinctively as I do?
Think about that...
--propjets

So, my Dell laptop, combined with Windows, just got worse, and worse and WORSE, until I couldn't even enable a networking device without getting the BIOSD stop screen. This, and just a general desire to jump on the ever-cool Linux bandwagon, made me decide to load the latest version of Ubuntu the day it came out, which happened to be yesterday. It took me about 18 hours on DSL to download the iso, but I loaded it on my machine today as a dual boot with XP, and I am very, very pleased with it. For one thing, everything works the way it's supposed to, and for another, the way it is set up is so much simpler than on XP. I also like not having to really worry about internet security, such as antivirus, and firewalls. At this point the only downside I have run across is the fact that some of the rarer applications I use on XP, such as my content filter and internet accountability program, do not support Linux. So, I'm looking at alternatives, or ways to make WINE (a windows emulator) run these.
For the most part though, I am very excited and pleased to have my computer working like new again. We'll see how this experience turns out in the long run. :D
--propjets