Faceted Glass

Rainbows are personal, you know. Each person perceives these colourful sweeps of sublime individually depending on the light and location in which they stand.

When I was a kid I spent vast amounts of time thinking about the silver water on the highways. Why is there water on the road, and why don’t we ever reach it? Adults told me it wasn’t water and that it only looked like it—a mirage. A trick of light. I told this to a man I dated and he tells me about Jennifer Aniston’s easy beauty. I agree, to be liked. Earlier that day I had been insensitive to a co-worker and warm towards the elderly couple by the row boats. I am motherly to some, difficult to others. Odd, cold, charming; insufferable even. Rainbows are personal, you know. Each person perceives these colourful sweeps of sublime individually depending on the light and location in which they stand. We’re like that, too. Varied, ever-changing, real and unreal as a mirage before the family car.

A lighting technician once told me of the dramatic effects of lighting, how the direction it is cast could turn us into an entirely different looking person. A prism shows us one stream of light can split like a shared pear. Quirky there, caring here—faceted glass, hanging, spinning, throwing light all over the place.