Mirrors

MIRRORS
IT WAS INEVITABLE, I suppose, that Columbus Max should one day meet The Man Who Loves Provo. He had heard of him, of course–-had heard the stories: the ironies and the paradoxes. Joe and Lulu, long before the divorce, had talked often about the strange man with the strange love for the odd place. And yet, through it all, the young Columbus Max had never in his life ever laid eyes on the physical form.
One day, walking the streets--like his mother before him, who also walked the streets when she was happy and needed a sense of solitude in the crowd--he heard what seemed to be a single voice rising up and above the group noise of the city. He listened carefully--thoughtfully–-and, tuning in, caught the distinct sound of human language–-beautiful human language--growing both in volume and in clarity: "The rainbow is perfect. The mirror is colorless."
Columbus stopped in his tracks. His mind raced: Could it be? he wondered. Could I be hearing that which I have, until now, only heard of? He remembered his mother’s accounts of The Man Who Loves Provo: The utterances that seemed to come from out of nowhere and to speak directly of the present, yet to have a lingering relevance. He continued listening, and the voice increased in urgency as it neared: "The rainbow is perfect. . . ."
Suddenly, Columbus saw a man approaching, muttering and--well --aging. The deep creases in his face, especially across the forehead and vertical down the cheeks to the chin, removed the doubts.
". . . The mirror is colorless."
The Man Who Loves Provo walked right on past Columbus, talking and maneuvering his way through the crowd. Columbus turned and followed.
Unsure of what to say--if anything--Columbus walked along, maybe two steps behind, no longer listening entirely, but rather thinking-–or, anyway, considering: considering possibilities. He continued this way for a block--for two blocks--three!--rolling the two options around in his head: "The rainbow is perfect. The mirror is colorless."
Finally, his choice made, his focus clear, he said, his voice rising for clarification, "The mirror is colorless?"
The Man Who Loves Provo stopped and searched for the source of the sound. He turned. Spotting Columbus--who had also stopped--he replied, "It is not a question." He went on. "The mirror is colorless."







The two made eye contact.
The Man Who Loves Provo reached into his back pocket and brought out two identical hand mirrors, four inches square. He held each in a hand, each facing the other. He bent down close and then peered over the top of one and into the face of the other. "Look! he said.
Columbus looked.
Later, Columbus showed Molly the phenomenon of the mirrors. They placed them on the bathroom counter by the sink, adjusting them so that they faced each other. He showed her how to do it, looking down the long rectangular tunnel that bent off around a corner and then disappeared. Adjusting the mirror a little to account for his not being actually inside the space between, he was able to see a little farther down the tunnel, but it still curved around in the distance. Molly took her turn, once even inserting her finger into the space between and watching the many reflections repeat themselves in both directions. She removed her finger.
Late still, the siblings worked together, constructing a permanent set of mirrors of their own. First, they placed, like The Man Who Loves Provo, two mirrors facing each other; then they attached two more mirrors, also facing each other but at right angles from the initial two. A box was taking shape. A floor–-another mirror–-was added. Columbus and Molly now looked from the top down inside the cube; they peered inside. They saw the tunnel of light move off in four directions. The sealed the top with the final mirror. And placed the cube on a window sill.





JIMMY CALIFORNIA DOES NOT DREAM.
* * * * * * *
That’s not true. Everyone dreams; therefore, Jimmy California does dream. He just doesn’t remember his dreams (which, some say, may be the same thing as not dreaming).
* * * * * * *
No. Jimmy California does dream, and he does remember his dreams. It’s just that he remembers only one or two dreams a year. And the few dreams that he does remember, he doesn’t seem to recall until weeks--months--sometimes years later.
* * * * * * *
Here it is: Everyone morning Jimmy California wakes up blank.
* * * * * * *
One morning Jimmy woke up without a dream in his head, but later in the day he and a friend were discussing the color of mirrors.
"What color is a mirror?" Jimmy had asked. The question had come up because Jimmy California is color blind, and his friend, Jonathon Frightened, was claiming that mirrors contain color and that maybe the reason that Jimmy couldn’t see the color of a mirror was the fact that he was color blind. Jimmy disagreed; he agreed that mirrors may contain color, but he saw that as different from having color. No, he said, the color in a mirror is reflected light, not color itself. He was about to say that the mirror is non-color, perhaps anti-color. But then, inexplicably, before they could explore the issue further, a dream that Jimmy had had perhaps a month earlier suddenly popped into his head.
It was just a piece of a dream, really–-there must have been more to it–-but all that Jimmy now remembered from the dream was the image of a rainbow against a partially clouded sky. A simple image, to be sure. But what struck Jimmy, in the memory of this dream, was the color of the sky where there were no clouds: blue.
None of this did Jimmy California say to his friend Jonathan Frightened.
He remembered, too, a conversation with another friend that revolved around whether or not people dreamed in color. Jimmy had responded that he had never thought about it, and that it was probably unimportant since he was color blind anyway.
That’s not entirely true. Jimmy believed that there were degrees of color blindness. He saw more than black and white and shades of grey; he could see very well the full, rich primary colors: blue and yellow, and even red if it was a true, flourishing red. Orange, he found, perhaps the most beautiful, vibrant of all the colors. The rest, however, gave him difficulty.
As a kid, Dan had thought he was just stupid, that he just wasn’t smart enough to learn the names of the colors. Again, the primaries were no problem, but what is magenta? Or burgundy? Or chartreuse? Or rust? Later, after having taken some tests that revealed that he was indeed color blind, he felt better about the whole thing because he knew that it wasn’t really his fault.
Jonathon kept talking, but Daniel kept thinking of the dream of the rainbow: the blue sky. Then his eyes focused on the rainbow itself. It was different. As he kept thinking and remembering, he looked deeper and deeper into the rainbow and noticed–-for the first time--the colors; he noticed all the colors. In his wake-life, Daniel could always see the rainbow, but to him it just looked like brightness–-a bright light lighter than the sky.
when others would point out a particularly brilliant rainbow–-and all the colors, the entire spectrum-–Daniel would have to just nod and pretend. What Daniel saw, during the day and his wakefulness, was just the bright yellow and something else that faded into something else that he saw as just non-yellow and non-blue sky. He could remember that in that dream he could see the entire spectrum of color. And it was marvelous! In the dream he could see what he could not see otherwise. And he had the good fortune to have in his memory the recollection.
It was a memory he was glad to have.