The Second Room 

How we use a room defines it—any room with a bed becomes a bedroom; all inhabited rooms are, in a sense, living rooms. An empty room might be seen as a blank slate, but even in the emptiest room one finds dust, and dust is not neutral.

The placement of a mirror changes a room—it creates a strange, sometimes sinister window. For Borges, mirrors “extenuate this vain and dubious world within the web of their own vertigo,” imbuing them with a capacity to arrest and terrify.

A gallery is a room for art, and art is, among other things, a mirror.

Strange, that there are dreams, that there are mirrors.

Strange that the ordinary, worn-out ways

of every day encompass the imagined

and endless universe woven by reflections.