R is for reflective surfaces.

                                                                                                                                                       
Letter R

You hold a photograph of someone beloved staring into the lens, and you feel like they’re looking into your eyes.

When breaking up with someone — if you mean it — the first thing you do is put away all their pictures. Keeping their images around means keeping the person alive and current in your thoughts.

Here’s the inverse example: I recently moved into a new apartment and hadn’t gotten around to putting out the framed photos of my family. When I discovered the pictures in a box, a pang came over me and I immediately missed every single member. It’s as if without the pictures, they had temporarily receded in my memory.

That day, I put out all the frames, and every family member received a long call from me. Then I went on social media and deleted the pictures of the ex I sometimes still thought about, to prove to myself that it really was over.

Therapy comes in all forms, I guess.

Getting back to eyes staring out from a picture, even my own have been an issue. I have to throw away my outdated acting headshots — duplicated by the hundreds — quickly and without thinking because it’s unsettling to see my face at the bottom of a garbage can.

As easy as they are to produce, duplicate and dispose, it’s fascinating that pictures hold such power.

And reflections? A mere trick of light, yet there’s something mystical about the doubling up of an object. Think of eternal mirrors. In me, at least, they inspire headache-inducing thoughts about time and the universe.

In a picture of a reflection, without context, there’s no difference between the reflection of an object versus the object itself. The copy and its copy are interchangeable, a thought bursting to be a metaphor about perception. It’s true that the reflective surface can bring a change in perspective through a variety of factors like distance, texture or shape, which would compound the metaphor further. If only it were that easy to change perspective and draw conclusions during self-reflection as well.
 
 

~ Part of the A to Z Challenge ~
A post a day except Sunday for the month of April to cover topics beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Events always real, names always changed.
Cathartic Monkeyism returns in May.

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