Mirrors

When I was in London, England, twenty years ago, I was in the Victoria & Albert Museum's glassware section once.  I was thinking, "There's an Englishman walking toward me," but it turned out I was walking toward a mirror!  I wonder if many people have had that experience? (It happened with the southern belle in the Civil War novel Cold Mountain.) I suppose it's a sign of maturity.

The medicine cabinet in our bathroom has three little doors in front of it, each with a mirror surface.  I've found that if I open them at the right angles, I can see the top of my head!

When European explorers found new lands, the indigenous people they met were often afraid of the mirrors they sometimes carried. The latter felt that if something could capture your image, it might capture your spirit too. First Nations people in Canada often dreaded cameras for the same reason.

There's an epigram in Classical Greek about an aging courtesan dedicating mirror:

Lahis, who laughed at Greece, with young lovers crowding 

Her door, dedicates this mirror to Aphrodite:

For what I used to see, I no longer can,

And what I do see, I no longer want to!