The man who was the green dog before there even was a green dog became so ill he slept most of the time, and when he could get up he managed only to sit without moving in the large brown chair. The green dog didn’t like the large brown chair because it faced a mirror. A snippet of leftover man-thought flitted through the dog-consciousness: mirrors pretended to show everything, but in fact showed very little.
How strange to think another thing’s thoughts, thoughts it had no hope of understanding.
Even though the man himself seemed to have no liking for mirrors he sat watching the man in the mirror for days at a time. Eventually he did not return to his bed at all but sat in the brown chair day after day, watching the man in the mirror carefully, as if waiting for something sad or awful to happen.
When the awful thing happened, the green dog howled. Then it went into the kitchen to relieve itself and look for more food.
How strange to wake up as someone else then wake up as someone else again.
The man in the brown chair who had become a green dog had no strength left for walking or lifting or even eating, but he did have strength enough to recognize the man in the mirror for what he was: dust and reflection, lost skin cells and idle fantasy molded by shadow, a compendium of every person he’d had any stray urge to be.
And as the man in the brown chair declined, becoming less like a man and more like a piece of badly worn furniture, he came to understand that the man in the mirror was far more than he had ever been. He came to understand that he had given the man in the mirror the best he had dreamed and hoped for, and consequently the man in the mirror—although completely imaginary and not much heavier than a dying breath—was far more alive than the man in his sagging saddle of furniture, in fact was far more alive than this man had been at the best of times.
This is not to say that the man was overcome with any kind of sadness or regret. He had led what he considered an interesting life. He’d had a family who cared what happened to him and he’d had a career better than some. And a wife who had loved him so much that each day it was yet another surprise for this man who had grown up without the expectation of love.
The fact that the man in the mirror was so much more was undeniable, and unchangeable. The man could accept this because he felt he had no choice in the matter. Certainly none of us could ever be as fully realized, as complete, as our imaginary selves. And now at the end of his life he could think of nothing better to do than to gaze at his better self as first breath, then imagination, left his body.
The man in the mirror felt only the vaguest connection with the old man slumped over in his ratty brown chair. He gazed at the dead man much as he might have looked at a somber photograph, one he had seen perhaps too many times.
In fact, the only interesting thing to happen in this particular view was when an ancient green dog occasionally wandered over to the dead man to lick his fingers and howl. For some reason, this vaguely amused the man in the mirror but he suppressed his chuckles, not wanting to startle the dog from the room. Eventually his patience was rewarded and the dog stared through the mirror into the mirror man’s eyes. Which froze the dog in terror. Which made the man in the mirror smile.
But even without the green dog and the dead man in his sorry chair, there were still things the man in the mirror could do to entertain himself. He might follow the trail of a ray of light as it made its way from that other world of more limited possibilities, through the silvered glass and into the unlimited realm he called home. He might stay with that ray for a time as it distorted against the furniture of his world and made itself into colors as fragile as the last thoughts before sleep. He might step in front of that light and grin as it distorted his carefully formed image, turning it into water and cloud and dark. He might paint the sky of his world with the fragments of his own brittle image.
He might step through the silvered glass and take the place of a dead man.
How strange, thought the man in the mirror, to see the man you were and feel nothing but embarrassment and shame.
Without breathing, the man from the mirror watched the man he might have been sleep, feeling curiously empty, even of humor. He attempted a grin but could not maintain it in the coarser atmosphere of this more mundane world. In frustration he kicked at the dead man’s leg, which swung swiftly away from the blow. The man from the mirror was surprised by the quickness of the dog, only just hearing its growl before it clamped its jaws around the mirror man’s own leg. The mirror man felt no pain, of course, or irritation. He observed the dog with vague interest until it released his leg and slunk into its corner by the old brown chair and its dead master, watching the mirror man with fear and anger. The mirror man did not fear the dog but still decided he would not strike his dead counterpart again.
How strange to see yourself yet not see yourself at all, the man from the mirror thought, watching the version of himself, which ironically was far more real than himself, collapse into decay inside the ancient brown chair. The mirror man could not bring himself to feel sorry for the man he’d actually been, because that man had already felt far too sorry for himself. The man from the mirror understood all too well that life was in large part image and reflection: you create an image of yourself out of light, dust, and air, and you send that image out into the world while you sit home alone in your rotting brown chair counting flies. If because of that image you achieve some sort of success or someone loves you, then it’s all for the good. If the image fails, it’s all just dust and light anyway, so what do you have to complain about? Real people whined endlessly—in the abstract realms of the imagination you could hear their distant voices scraping at the gates, so much so that the dwellers in dream could hardly hear themselves sing sometimes.
The mirror man looked down. The green dog was at his feet, gazing up with eyes veined in yellow and red. Shoo, the mirror man said to the dog. Go away.
The green dog urinated on the mirror man’s imaginary leg.
All right! the mirror man shouted. He loved things! He loved his wife, he loved his children, his grandchildren, the mirror man said, gazing over at the putrefying corpse, though he was a bit soft and dreamy at times. It would have been better for his children if he’d been firmer
The mirror man felt the familiar warm liquid running down his oh-so-perfectly imagined leg, wetting the stiff, unwrinkled socks, staining the shiny-with-never-a-polish shoes. He glared down at the grinning, grinning green of the dog. Okay! He loved and was loved. He believed life was hard enough that no one has the right to make things more difficult for anyone else. He loved the beginning of the day when the spreading light awakened the light and color of everything it touched. He loved the end of the day and the smell the fading light and heat left behind. Sometimes he had trouble with the in-between times, mind you…
The green dog growled and the mirror man stepped back. But he tried, that’s the important thing, he did his best, he made an effort. He loved making things, even if it was just another space with a light bulb hanging over it, and then he loved telling what people might do in this space, he loved clubhouses, libraries, and family rooms, he loved telling stories, he loved just having something to do, he tried to invent new occasions to celebrate with his offspring and theirs, he loved inventing holidays, he loved turning everything into play, he loved seeing, and smelling, and dreaming of everything, including all the things he would never be. He loved making the effort. He loved trying.
The mirror man sank into himself then, spent and, much to his surprise, saddened by the longest speech he’d ever made in a life at least as long as that of the dead man in the brown chair.