Excerpt  from my thesis "Things and Themselves" (2006)

Echo and Narcissus

      Here I am... I am Echo... but I am not here. ... neither who nor where. I, and by I, I mean you. You, and the echo of me within the mind of you the reader... a projection of us as meaning upon a page. I, the reflected first person, am a copy of  indeterminable origin, neither who nor where. I am an echo. Echoes have no intrinsic qualities. They take on the shape of empty spaces. Echoes are effects of plurality and difference... even here, I am neither who nor where.

      The last time I saw Narcissus, he was sitting beside the still surface of a lake. The two of us, alone together. The countryside was uninhabited for as far as a voice can carry.  We were both very young, unexpired by age, unencumbered by fate, and it was, quite simply, love.  It was love in that first moment you recognize it as love. It was love the first time, again. In some versions of the story, the place was called Eden and we had different names. But that is neither who nor where.  Narcissus was so beautiful,  new to me there.

       Often, it has been reported it was vanity that blinded him  to me. It has often been repeated that it was blank empathy that imprisoned us both. This was not the case. I knew of his ontologies. I knew  the depth of his soul. He was not motivated by vanity. Vanity was abhorrent to Narcissus. Vanity violated the profundity of his beauty. And of beauty and echoes, what can be said that is not already spoken as a question? Who are you?

        Who am I? This was the question in his gaze. I saw Narcissus there (who and where)  searching for the source of the reflection. He gazed into the stillness of the lake, a mirror in the landscape. Upon that synesthetic surface, sight became sound, echoes within  reflections emerged.  He heard a transcendent sound that  permeated everything and reflected everyone ...beyond the surface of the water. Beyond the echo of the ego and the id entity. Beyond the blank self. Beyond the self that is concealed when you look at it.  It was an echo. It was the most beautiful echo! I saw Narcissus sitting by the side of the lake, exchanging meaning for being.