For more than a year now, I’ve been reading Anam Cara by Irish poet and scholar John O’Donohue. Now that’s slow even for me, but it is almost unbearably beautiful and I can take in only a few paragraphs at a time. I have the sense of remembering something I knew long ago.

This bit especially cried out to me: “Modern consciousness is similar to the harsh and brilliant white light of a hospital operating theatre. This neon light is too direct and clear to befriend the shadowed world of the soul… Candlelight perception is the most respectful and appropriate form of light with which to approach the inner world.”

The same could be said of reflections: they are soft and indirect and allow access to what’s beneath the surface. Like the insights that sneak out just occasionally, dancing alone in your living room, watching your lover’s face with their eyes shut or snatching a photo of someone before they know it.

And so it is with this Thursday’s photo of Sorrow. She looks quite different if you stand in front of her, but reflected into a fabric-lined door and dismantled from her imposing Recoleta Cemetery backdrop, I can almost feel her pain.