She sat alone at a table for two, by the cafe's front window.  In the stream of afternoon brilliance she was a creature made of light, wrapped in golden splendor and woven from the restless memories of endless summer days.  In the sun's light, she smiled with casual grace, looking on with interest, relaxed in the comforting assurance of an inner secret that no one else could understand.

She loved to come to places such as this, to watch the passing people like exotic picture postcards, each one a tiny slice of life coming from a different world.  What would it be like to look at life through another person's eyes?  No one could ever really know, but in this place she felt that she could at least glimpse a piece of the lives that passed by her, in and out, like the sun's rise and fall.

Looking through the cafe window, she could see a young couple walking along the street hand in hand, surrounded by the glow of youth and love.  They were a single bubble, floating between the lampposts, past the newspaper stands and shop windows.  The girl's hair was highlighted by the summer sun beams as she pointed toward the cafe.  The door opened and they were at the threshold, standing close together.  At the table by the window a memory surfaced like spring water:

She stood outside again, at the airport, with the wind blowing through her hair and swirling the skirt around her legs.  She held on to his arm silently.  There was nothing left to say now except “Goodbye.”  On her hand was a new ring; in her heart was a silent wish that she knew could not be fulfilled, for sometimes there are more urgent matters in the world than love. A single auburn hair lay curled like a long silk thread on the shoulder of his uniform.  Reaching out, she plucked it off the fabric and opened her fingers to let it go in the wind.  “Goodbye.”  The word slipped away in the warm breeze, like the shimmering hair, curling away into the emptiness all around.  They kissed one last time before he walked away, his steps the solid gait of a soldier.  The plane took him away that day, but it never brought him back.

The cafe door closed again, the young couple walked away down the street.  Somehow the room seemed more empty in the wake of their passing.  An old woman sat at a table by the window, her hair white in the sun's warm glow.  She took a last sip of tea, set the cup back onto the saucer with a gentle clink, and carefully got up from the table, reaching for her cane.

What would it be like to look at the world through another person's eyes?

This is hard to describe without drawing pictures, but I will do the best I can. Let's say that you have the picture of a duck in the middle of a grid. Translation, rotation, and reflection are all terms used to describe how you can change the location of this duck. For instance, a translation is basically "sliding" the duck across the grid. The duck will still be facing the same direction. It's feet will be on the bottom and his head will be on top. The only difference is that he can be translated or moved to any place on the grid. Now, let's slide the duck back to the middle spot again as I describe what rotation is. Rotation is turning the duck along any given point. Let's say we want to rotate him around his beak. Basically, what we do is we put our finger on the tip of his beak and move the body. The body will only turn in a circular fashion around our finger, because our finger is holding the beak in place. This is rotation. You can do this with any outer point on the duck. Okay, finally is the reflection. The easiest way to describe this is to relate it to a mirror. You know how you can look in a mirror and everything you see is the same, but backwards? That's what happens in a reflection. To the duck, this is drawing a line above the duck's head and flipping him over that line. This line is our imaginary reflection point. If we flipped the image of the duck back over the line, it would fit perfectly into the original duck. I hope this has helped


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