Kaleidoscope

I walk into a room and find a kaleidoscope, which I pick up and look through.

At first, I see geometrical patterns of coloured shards.  If I manipulate it, turn the tube, I see different patterns; I find that, to some extent, I can predict how these will repeat.

Then I see that the coloured patterns are made up of familiar objects that exist in the room I entered - fragments of furniture, a window frame.  Also tiny fractured and repeated images of myself.

I change my orientation, and see different parts of the room, shattered and rearranged, but increasingly recognisable.  After a while, I learn to find my way around the room looking through the kaleidoscope.  I have learned its subtle rules of operation so well that I can actually see more through the machine than I could before I picked it up.  My world enlarges.  I form a more complete picture.

Then I use the kaleidoscope to examine its own workings.  I turn it and tip it to discover more.  New patterns emerge, of utterly engaging complexity; important meanings are suggested and abandoned.  I search for the fundamental mechanism which makes all this possible.

I peer into the future.

Finally, I turn towards the past.

I see a child walking into a room, and picking up a kaleidoscope.

I discover that what I have learned is not how to make pictures, but how to look.