Sisyphus, Cooling

Section Editor Bethany Sharman muses on self-discovery and performing for an audience of one.

The candle flickers inches from my face and I can sense the shadow I cast behind me even now, in the room so dark as to be illuminated merely by a single flame and its glistening form mirrored in my eyes. The reflected light is only half as bright as the source, but the tiny moths still find it. It is a beacon welcoming them with open arms, inviting them to make a home in that window to the soul. 

I am their companion, desperate to reach the light, to climb through the window. I know the act is not for me; humans were not made to behold themselves. But perhaps it is not myself I am looking at. After all, how can I be the subject of fixated eyes when I am outside, watching through the window? The liminality disorients me, scares me. It is a cruel dispossession of power, to transition from the examiner to the examined. I’d rather be out here, I think. It’s not as exhausting. I sometimes wonder if it is a woman’s preference, to finally pass from under the microscope. Let me at last be rid of that ever-watchful eye, the face that isn’t really there but is nevertheless glued to the window. The moth consumed by the flame. However much the glass reveals of me, it is still a welcome barrier.

Though I long to, I do not touch the flame. In that, I am obedient. I follow the script and do not improvise. I watch my own fingers dance around the light, watch them curl back from the heat and return to darkness. The ritual repeats itself like a late-night rerun of a familiar favourite. A performance to remember. I smile at myself. Then I wonder if the shadow on my wall smiles also, though I know if I turned to check I’d only see the hazy form of yet another observer. Her blurred outline melds into the light and I suppose the truth must be in that spectral plane somewhere. Ghostly remnants of the truth, sure, but at least I’d know they were real. 

I suspect I will never discover such a truth. Not about myself, anyway. The search is Sisyphean, the boulder an infinite ball of unraveling, diaphanous fabric. It hints at something concrete, corporeal, beneath, but there’s too much of it to see what it clothes, and I am forever grabbing at an illusion. Even now I am still watching the manoeuvre, still examining myself like a panel of judges on a talent show. I feel their stares, so I make sure my hands caress the fabric, rather than tear. 

No, I cannot afford the authentic fluidity of my shadow. I must be tangible. Predictable. My stomach churns at the possibility of someone remembering a detail from long ago that I had laboured to forget. Yet even the heart that beats ever faster in fear beats with a regular pattern. It too finds comfort in consistency; to be consistent is to have a greater chance of being understood. 

I could extinguish the candle, pinch the wick between my thumb and forefinger. Finally touch the flame. If I burnt my fingers in the act, would anyone see my agonised expression in the ensuing darkness? Would they see my lips form the curses I forbid myself to speak in the light? I wonder if the chill in the air might permit me, energy depleted, to finally be still and enjoy a moment’s respite from the scrutiny. But I know the answer. In the end, the dead moth in the corner of the room and the man inside my head will always bear witness.

by Bethany Sharman