Dangerous Household Items by David Orr

Author:David Orr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fata Morgana

The three principle forms of mirage—

Inferior, superior, and Fata Morgana—

All depend on the inversion of an object,

Literally the mirroring of an object

(“Mirage” stems from the Latin mirare,

“To look at,” which in turn derives

From mirari, “to wonder at”), and are

Distinguished by the nature of this mirroring,

Whether, for instance, the image appears

Below the object itself (an inferior mirage),

Or above it (superior), or in combination

And distorted—elongated, compressed,

And rapidly changing—as is the case

With the rare and peculiar Fata Morgana,

Which takes its name from Morgan Le Fay,

King Arthur’s mysterious half sister,

Who serves as enemy, savior, or lover

To her brother, depending on the chronicle,

And whose magic governed shadowed Avalon

And its shadow versions of humanity—

Le Fay means “the fay,” or “the fairy”—

And one can see how early viewers

Of the Fata Morgana would indeed

Have supposed the phenomenon revealed

A fairy kingdom, a many-tiered castle

Shifting at the skyline with alien elegance

And promising a half-longed-for communion,

Which is, of course, the standard portrayal

Of mirages—that is, as things wished for

But unobtainable, and unobtainable

Because ultimately nonexistent—

And why we associate the mirage with

Delusion rather than simple misperception,

Such that when we say a feeling or belief

Was a “mirage,” we mean we were deceived

Not as to its nature, but its possibility:

A mirage is simply not there, much as

A fantasy has no underlying substance

(One can have a fantasy about something

Or someone real, but the vision itself

Is purely fictional), though this notion

Is incorrect or at least inaccurate

With respect to actual mirages, which are

Genuine reflections of physical facts:

From certain vantage points, there is no way

Not to see a Fata Morgana, as it results

From the bending of light rays along

A temperature inversion and is therefore

Unaffected by any effort the viewer makes

To see through it, and can even be

Photographed, unlike an optical illusion,

Yielding blue-gray blocks or thin blue ribbons

Rising and sinking as if slowly drawn

By hidden forces through the thickening liquid

Of which they are themselves composed,

An effect best seen in time-lapse video,

In which the strange, estranging spectacle

Can be disconcerting much as a person

Can seem disconcerting in those moments

In which we suddenly perceive the extent

To which we have failed to perceive them,

Neither as they understand themselves, nor

As they “truly are,” which is to say,

As some imaginary observer with perfect

Perspective might label or describe them,

And it is as if we had discovered

In the middle of a private conversation

That there was no conversation, but rather

That the object of our address had been

Responding to cues from some other,

Indiscernible speaker or theater, and what

We had believed to be behavior

Answering our own requests had been

Something closer to coincidence, as if

We were children whose cry of “Run away!”

Overlapped with a cartoon character’s choice

To flee from a threat, and this knowledge

Blows through us like cold wind across some vast

And yet imprisoning plain, and should we run

Or stand still, we can’t decide, and the landscape

Abruptly skews around us, as cliffs

Rise from what had once been stable ground,

And black oceans drown the landmarks

By which we hoped to navigate, the ice

Ascending in mountains like the mountains

That faced Sir John Ross in 1818,

The mountains that rose from the terminus

Of the Lancaster Sound in

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