Not to be Reproduced (La reproduction interdite), by René Magritte (1937).
I looked into the mirror and I saw God. Couldn’t be, could it? Yet it was just so. I would recognize that face anywhere, although only a reflection in misted over glass, an image from the other side, the farthest shore, never before so close, yet still out or reach, untouchable, ultimately unknowable.
Pupils dilating, extremities suffused with the sudden heat of rushing blood, overwhelmed by a sensual exhilaration, sexual yet more so, an eroticism multiplied to the Nth, I concentrate more deeply staring into depths, drowning in those all-seeing, all-knowing eyes, hearing the swell of the cosmic score, voices contralto, soprano, basso profondo intoning hymns, curses, invocations, transfixing my body stock still, rooted to the spot as I flowed everywhere becoming everyone and everything: the muddy bank of a tributary, hovering insect above a flower, stray hair escaping the confines of a tight bun, wounded sparrow, gentle spring breeze, profligate sun burning energy and radiating excess, the cold intra-stellar space in between worlds, all this and yet more: I tasted the inherent horror and it was exquisite, intoxicating me to beyond a point.
Peering for so long, so narrowly, so blindly focused I lost myself. All stages of life passed by as I assumed the death posture; until everything blurred, dissolving into a undifferentiated inorganic mass, only a field of colour remained. Nothing else, not even the merest bagatelle, though maybe a faint echo of essence.
At such times I glean That I have been in my turn; Brood mare, blade of grass, Stone on the shore, floating cloud- The boundaries are porous Between this & that The self can become other In the merest blink Of an eyelid adjusting To the flicker of neon.
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