rain wet window holds

rain wet window holds

red maple leaves, reflection

of a bare black tree

Cold autumn rain, the kind that makes you hurry to get home. As I rush along the rain-slick street, a mile-long coal train trundling east blocks my way. Without slowing down, I detour to the railroad underpass, then turn back on a different street. What does stop me is a white van, festooned with orange and yellow maple leaves. It's not blocking my way, but I pull over anyway, to stare at the spectacle of the fallen leaves, arrested in their descent by the same rain that blew them down. From the dark side window, the reflection of a "boo tree" stares back at me, its bare black limbs reaching out as if to recapture its bright treasures.
          Without the coal train I would not have taken a different route home. Without the rain the autumn leaves would have simply fallen to the ground. And without a sense of wonder I would not have stopped to marvel at the beauty of dead leaves and be surprised by a dark reflection.

flame and reflection

flame and reflection

of flame -- a pillar burning

without and within

Reflection on reflections. A reflection is a flip over a line. This virtual line is called the Mirror Line. It divides the "real" object from its reflected image. Every point in the object and its reflection is the same distance from the Mirror Line line and the reflection has the same size as the original object. In this reflection, we see two candles, one burning on the window sill and the other burning inside the frame of a photograph, lighting up the image of a pear in the center of a coil of rope. The photograph, of course, is an image of an object. And the photograph of the photograph is an image of an image.

hand rolled tabaku

hand rolled tabaku

on the stone sill, cactus behind

reflecting glass

Surreal reflections in a window in Pisac: fluted green cactus with convoluted roots, yellow ear of choclo, abandoned hand rolled tabaku, peeling paint, rough adobe, chiseled stone, orange bull's eye, blue doors. Tabaku, the Quechua word for cigarette, has obviously been borrowed from Spanish, but choclo, the Quechua word for maize, is original to the language spoken by the majority of Peruvians.