As a kid, I was always fascinated with mirrors. How could they reflect human beings, animals, everything so perfectly? Even simple glass was a reflectant. Picture frames, tv screens, and even windows. I loved how every movement was recreated with detail, how there wasn’t an imperfection of any kind. You may think about those mirrors you see in fun houses, but those aren’t meant to be mirrors, only to reflect in a funny looking way.
When you look into a reflection, what do you see? Is it a world where we are opposites? Our houses are made in opposite directions? That black eye you got was on the other one? The dominant hand you’ve grown fond of for always doing what you told it to do was now the arch-enemy? Silly thought to have, I know. The thought is still fun to think about.
Something else that is fun is that light matters, light is an important piece, as it shows what is reflected and what isn’t. If you have a dark tv with bright blinds to windows, that will show. If your face is in darkness, do you see anything but a silhouette? Do you see anything in your shower? Do you see those pale eyes staring at you from the dark corners while your face is black? Almost as if your eyes were in that shower. In the tv screen in the dark of night, do you see the smile from the window? All those sharp teeth as if it were looking at you through the screen. The pictures look different don’t they? The quick flash of not looking right before all of a sudden going back to normal.
Your friend surely enjoyed windows, that’s why his paint studio was covered in red and his body on the floor. Oh no, he didn’t get stabbed, nor did anything cause him to bleed. No, he was on a ladder, looking at the red building across the street as he was painting it for a job from the owner. He looked over to his right when he heard a crunch of something, saw that thing in the reflection, and before he recognized what he was looking at, he launched backward, falling that large height and landing right on his head. Ok, maybe some of it Was blood, but most of it was paint.
Your friend over at the boutique? Maybe she wasn’t your friend, just that one person you always liked trimming your hair if you were ever there by coincidence and needed that cut. Either way, the reason that she suddenly couldn’t come back was working at the night shift when she looked in that mirror. Closing times in stores are always killer after all, but I must say that what is most harmful is walking backwards with sharp objects. Now, I don’t blame you if you think she was dealing with scissors, it is a boutique afterall. But to make you feel even better, it was an electric razor, she turned it on for defense and tripped as she was walking back for more defense from her station, her hair was not the thing that was being cut into if you were wondering.
That sweet old lady who you saw in the decoration store you went to, the one that worked there, she loved working in the photographic frames. Her insides had a quick surge of energy and then stopped. Funny things can happen when you get a shock, she even looked like she was in one of those picture frames. Like she was blasted with a water balloon, or hit with a bb gun by a little brat she was with right as the picture was taken. I can imagine her having that hoodie covered arm around that shoulder of hers, and that white pair of eyes looking with her to the camera, a gasp from her and a huge white grin from him.
There is another kind of reflection that I’ve not spoken about, one that I really don’t have an example for. There’s a beauty to it, something I’ve never seen before really the early 2000’s to the present. You are perfect. You’re going to be a lesson to someone else about reflections, one of an electronic screen of the phone and computer variety. Just you wait until you click off tonight.