Inarcissus

The youth, wearing only boxer shorts, is gazing with a sense of awe at the small square object in his hand. A smartphone! It has a screen; it also has a camera. Its lens has captured a mirror with the boy within its frame, gazing upon, contemplating, perhaps admiring, even, the screen of a phone that now is holding an image of himself in the frame of the mirror holding the object that has captured it within the frame of the screen. We see this image as we wander social media, where the picture of the boy in the mirror in the camera, which he gazes down upon with awe, as if it were an alien artefact, is there for us to ponder. The image has stolen his attention; it has captured and confined him, fascinated and entranced him. He has fallen into a shimmering pool, self-referential, gazing at itself. It is another land.