White Azaleas, by Julia
While preparing a post for PEGASUS I received a Comment from Dr. Alistair on my post ”Reflections”, December 16.
That reminded me of one of my earliest memories. From the day my first two years of golden baby curls were lopped off (to the accompaniment of my mother’s tears) until my family moved from St. Augustine when I was in First Grade, I was taken to Caruso’s Barber Shop on St. George Street for haircuts.
When seated and raised up on the barber’s chair I faced a wall that was one huge, long mirror. Behind me, the wall was also a mirror. The result was that I could see not only my reflection in the mirror in front of me, but also that reflection reflected by the mirror behind me back to the mirror in front of me, which reflection was in turn reflected to the rear mirror, which returned it (containing all the previous reflections) to the mirror in front of me – and so on in an endless ping pong game of light, scores of reflections of the same thing, smaller and smaller, in a tunnel to infinity.
I hope I’ve explained that so that if anyone hasn’t experienced it he or she can visualize it.
I can’t attach a cosmic or spiritual meaning to what I saw in Caruso’s Barber Shop any more than I can to the reflections that surround and fascinate me today, but for some reason the memory evokes a sense of significance.
When I try to think of all the other memories I have of reflections, the list swiftly grows beyond management, and so I’ll leave you to make your own list. But among all my memories of reflections, none has a higher place than the infinite diminishing mirror images in Mr. Caruso’s shop.
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Tomorrow will be 1m 8s longer than today.
Yellow Kolanchoe, by Julia
