Tag: infinity

Mirrors

~ Richard Schulte ~ Leave a comment

“My mirrors make people go crazy,” laughed the bartender.

Stools at the bar looked upon a row of bottles and a large framed mirror. Reflected in the mirror was an identical mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I recognized the optical phenomenon. How reflections of my own face multiplied infinitely and diminished.

I set my glass down and searched the distance.

I saw my face, repeated, strung out like drops of rain falling toward a silver lake. My endless faces fell away, receded, shrank, seemed to vanish. I was able to count eleven faces until I became a microscopic blur. No–I could barely see one face that squinted.

The face nearest me was also squinting.

I laughed.

I turned to the bartender.

“What if my eyes were as powerful as that new space telescope?” I wondered. “The one that can see all the way to the edge of the Universe.”

“Why go crazy looking? It’s the same you.”

The Wheel

~ Richard Schulte ~ 1 Comment

The potter sat before a turning wheel making a bowl . . . or a vase.

The potter’s hands expertly manipulated the spinning clay. Several visitors stood watching. It was a late Sunday afternoon at the Artist Collective.

I looked up at the many glazed ceramics on nearby shelves. My eyes took in row upon row of shining bowls and vases and cups and plates, in every possible shape, each and every one beautiful.

I observed the artist. “How do you know when you’re done?” I asked.

The potter laughed and shook her head. “Good question!”

The wheel kept turning as the potter’s hands compelled her creation. The clay suddenly grew tall like a tower, then expanded outward like an opening flower.

The spinning thing bulged, narrowed, ripples appeared, were smoothed away. Like soft skin touched with a finger.

Something organic emerged from the potter’s clay-covered hands, developed shoulders, a neck, a lip. Perhaps it was a vase.

The potter removed her dripping hands to examine the whirling creation. It was not quite born, suspended in space. She changed the posture of her fingers and the clay resumed its undulations.

The eyes of the artist seemed never satisfied.

The creation spun through endless permutations of beauty, and I didn’t understand how one curve would be considered more beautiful than another. There was an infinity at the center of the wheel: a door to a place of transcendent possibility: the eternal dream from which all things spring.

But only one fleeting vision would be subjected to fire.

The wheel stopped.

The potter thrust her clay-covered hands into the air, as if in surrender or triumph. “Done!”