Questions
What can you see from there?
I can see the sky. It is dusk, the horizon is a blur among long brown tussock grass, the ground is flat, straight out, but I think way way back there might be a mountain. The moon hasn't risen yet, but you can feel it coming, the very air hums with its approach. I know it is going to be a sickle moon, tilted like a forgotten sliver of wood from a carpenter's lathe. When I look at my feet, in the fading light, there is a picture in a frame.
What is the picture?
It is Frida Kahlo's 'Little Deer'. A fawn with the artist's face is shown almost in mid-spring, peppered with arrows and lined with small rivulets of blood, all against a forest scene. Her face looks out at me from the picture, she looks betrayed. She has seen her hunter, not only that, she knows her hunter.
Do you know your hunter?
I've known my hunter my whole life. When I first opened my eyes he was there, he followed my first steps, heard my first words. He witnessed my first love and my first heartbreak, was there when I first made love. He sits with me endlessly, my hunter, and he will be there at the end even when everyone else has left me for dead.
Who is he?
He is the darkness that is behind me, which every night I run away from as I see his arms reach out to shred what is left of me. He is the silence that surrounds me when I am alone, inside, trapped and desperate. He is the face of every dead body I have ever seen. He is the pictures on the wall, the black reflecting face of the television, the bitterly cold night-time windows, the unknown, the damned and the virtuous, the insane, the sparrows singing in greek, the ice of the inner ring of hell and the most purifying shaft of heavenly sunlight. Who is he? I don't think that is the real question here. I know what I can see, and I know what hunts me, what stalks my mind quietly in the dark. I have a question. Who are you?
I am the mirror, I am the questioner, and thus I am the director of thoughts. I am the force that keeps you from ever being truly satisfied or truly disillusioned. I present to you your fears, I mask the hunter, I sharpen his claws and mould the distant echoing howl. Though I cannot touch you, I can cause you pain beyond your imagining. Because I can show you yourself, I can make you hate yourself, I can hound your disgust to any part of your self-perception. I show you your world, the same, always reflected, and I teach you to desire nothing else. You will want nothing but the familiar. I will give you this, and let you free to run from the hunter that chases you down the well trodden path of your fears.
So you know the identity of the hunter?
Yes, he and I are old, old friends.
I see. The only thing I have left to ask is: What can you see from here?
I see a white room with a single red rug on the floor. On that rug sits a child, waving her arms around and looking rather odd. Occasionally she leans from side to side and makes breathey, swishing noises. She has a small collection of toys on the rug with her to whom she talks and listens to, even though they are silent. What is this?
That is me aged about five going on a magic carpet ride with my friends. In that room we travelled the world, we saw the pyramids, the jungle ruins of South America, Pompeii, the Forbidden City, anything we wanted was attainable at only a whim.
I... I can see you there, you are on that rug in that room, never leaving nor returning... What does it mean?
It means that I can win.
