started for us all the second Narcissus
looked into the pool, and was absorbed
by how handsome he appeared in the still water.
Nemesis quietly drained him of the will to live.
Nemesis still curses all life through humans.
Our mirrors are politics, art and the mass media
where the only real change is our amnesia.
Given how poorly we recognise how we live,
through destroying other species, the height
of our kindness should be our quiet decline.
It could be said that our mirrors are simply our brains constantly looking in and rarely out. The Narcissus myth is one about self-consciousness or lack of will to be aware of the wider world, lack of 'attention' in the Castanedan sense.
ReplyDelete