Looking for The Tiny Streak

A sheen of raindrops in perfect focus, obscuring the man whose reflection looks in the opposite direction that he is looking.  

They are both looking dreamily into a sky that we can only see in reflection or that we can abstract from our own experiences of living on the earth.  

In a movie, the image of a character when doubled (or troubled or obscured) in a mirror usually suggests some kind of psychic splitting which we will gradually understand as the narrative unwinds and which, in a Hollywood ending, may be resolved.  

In the next layer of background, a Rite Aid sign.  Or, in a different direction but approximately at the same distance, another layer of background includes red traffic lights and then the dramatic architectural roofline of the Orthodox Church.  

Back even farther, the bare branches of Sycamore trees which line Highway 62, whose presence we can barely infer from the tall tall street lamps that turn the highway into an acetylene corridor in the middle of the night but in moments like this picture, just stand silent and blank as reminders that night will return.  

The tiny patch of blue sky reflected and then reflected again, first against the window of the car, then again in the rear-view mirror is such a tiny streak in the world of this photo, and yet, the psychically split Andrew is looking at it, isn’t he?  Which means inferentially that the nearer Andrew at the right hand side of the frame, the one upon whom the church sits, weighing heavily on him?  The Andrew with a telephone pole rising up out of his head in the background stringing him into systems and infrastructure that were invented before he was born?  He, too, must be looking at that patch of blue, right?  

As are you, too, if you’re able to track between these endless discursive meanderinsgs and the picture that inspires them.  Does your finger have to drag the screen up and down to make sense of these perambulations?  The way that the window may or may not have been rolled down or rolled up when this picture was covertly snapped.  Do you see the window? Is it there or isn’t it?  

We see everything through windows.   Some of these windows are material, but more often historical, systemic, institutional, and ideological.  That blue skies still show up through all these refractions feels like a token of hope regarding all our psychic splits. 

Photo credit: @aboywalkshomeatnight