The black hole problem
It’s a funny thing about mirrors - I mean the evil they represent. I suppose many people forget or are unaware of the moral ambiguity and occult applications surrounding the invention of and distribution and use of mirrors throughout society. Some groups retain an awareness, demonstrated at certain times when, for certain reasons, mirrors in the home are removed or covered. It’s not just a matter of the moral vanity that mirrors cultivate, but a matter of the demonic applications that mirrors can and do have. Like most people, I think of and treat mirrors as a passing convenience, only briefly glancing at myself a couple times a day. Only if there is a need do I pay closer attention - that blemish on my chin, that ink on my necktie, that worrisome, bulging tummy profile. But that was not always so. When I was a child I often played with a hand mirror in front of my mother’s vanity table mirror, trying to create “black holes” by perfectly aligning the hand mirror in such a way as to create a “tunnel” of infinite regression. Such a thing is possible to do, but not to witness, because to witness it one has to tilt the hand mirror ever so little to afford a glimpse down the tunnel, and that small angle of tilt is enough to spoil achieving an infinite regression. It will be really long, but not infinite. The infinite regression comes only with a full-on, flat presentation of the hand mirror to the flat surface of the wall mirror which precludes me being able to gaze down it. I was always afraid of it, this infinite tunnel, imagining it to be a tunnel to Nowhere, literally, a worm hole, or a black hole, a hole going right through our space time continuum to - what? To the other side. The idea of infinite was scary because it was so incomprehensible. And yet there it was in my hand. Who knows what demonic horror or unconceivable multi-dimensional entity could emerge into our world through such apertures if we keep them open long enough. I still think so. Oh, yeah, I like to have mirrors around for convenience, but I never forget the danger they represent. And I don’t play make-an-infinite-tunnel anymore. It’s creepy.
In Japan it is considered unlucky to have two mirrors facing each other. I never asked my wife why, figuring that the explanation would be too difficult, but I like to imagine it is for a comparable reason to my suspicion of making black holes with the hand mirror. If two mirrors face each other then one of them is covered, which is the case in our apartment’s bedroom. There is a mirror mounted on the inside of a wardrobe door, and there is a wall mirror opposite the wardrobe. That means when the wardrobe door is opened the two mirrors reflect each other. To prevent that, the wall mirror is habitually covered (we use a silk obi, a belt usually used with a kimono). I wonder if mirrors can have some Halloween application?