A Mirror of Before and After - CHAPTER I
By Frank Moore circa 1970s
People see themselves in me. They do not see the real me. Seeing themselves helps them to see their own beauty. Talking aloud to themselves in the form of another person helps them to grow.
For most of my life, there was a silk black screen between me and the world. I made noises. Even those who could decipher my code, could just spell from my noises a word or two -- a word or a sentence. I was a pure mirror upon which people could project any self-image, tell any secret without fear or inhibition. I was a mirror, a treasure box of secrets. When I got my unicorn horn, so I could type and spell out words on a letterboard, my role somewhat changed. But I still was a mirror and am still one.
Don’t just stand there. Talk to me. My name is Unicorn. I talk by means of this board.
Yes, I am a mirror. You don’t see me, the total me. In the illusion of seeing and talking to me, you are seeing a reflection of yourself.
I am a mirror without a frame, sitting outside the Student Center … in the Bus Stop Café … in the park … in the Mind Vendor Headshop … in Mother Lizard’s Ball. Watching you buy your American flag bellbottoms. Watching. Watching you eat your cheeseburgers. Watching you smoke your dope and play with your soap bubbles. Watching you as you come in from hitching across country. I hear your secrets, your hopes, your plans, your dreams. But you rarely notice me watching and listening. I am so visible that I am invisible. A mirror without a frame. A spy from your spirit.
Sometimes you hear a laugh … or maybe you smell the smell of unwashed armpits and unwiped ass, and you turn around. I am there. You see me, even when turned away and pretending not to see the slobbering idiot in the wheelchair. No, I am not an idiot. I am for you a symbol of death and insanity. You have made yourself believe that you aren’t going to die, or even get seriously sick. You think you are in the Pepsi Generation and are going strong. You’ve got a lot to live, and Pepsi has a lot to give. But deep inside you, you know you are not only dying but are already dead. And Pepsi can’t give you life. You’ve put a shell of fiction around your knowledge and are living in that fiction. But I poke holes in your fiction … some of you run out screaming, “Exhibitionist,” trying to patch up your fiction.
I am indeed an exhibitionist. I have a certain control over the mirror image … not always … and never the complete control … sometimes I become trapped in the mirror. A mirror doesn’t have its own identity: it is what it reflects. But I wanted an identity. I wanted to find me, to be me. I wanted people, especially chicks, to see me as me, not as a reflection, like me … and yes, even to love me for what I, who I, really was. So for most of my life I fought against the mirror role.
But I always got suckered into it in my desire to show people their own beauty, suckered into it by my emotions; and the role trapped me again. But somewhere along the line I accepted the role, wanted to go into it fully.