Kalos Eidos Skopeo

From These Windows: Online Collection – a selection of writing and art inspired by the collections of the V&A Museums. 

Once, he broke into a thousand pieces, and his colours faded. Shattered into tiny fragments of himself, scattered across the room, every bit of him strewn, dispersed and disparate. Each dejected section of him uneven, asymmetrical, unrecognisable but for some larger parts that hinted his prior identity; and minute imperceptible debris, unfamiliar and jagged edged, invited unease. He was no longer whole, the sum of his parts, but a sprawling of scraps and slivers, impossible to reconcile back to the man he was. But I gathered him in anyway, because I loved him, and piece by piece, splinter by splinter, delicately, carefully, so as not to lose any edge of him, as, unaware, he gently sliced through my nurturing hands, ripping my skin to shreds. Mindful not to bleed upon him, to stain him with my own cuts, as over time, over a long time, I assembled his brokenness into a chaotic fusion of his parts. Unable to recreate him as he was, an impossible jigsaw, I kept him clutched close. Cocooned in our relationship, colour seeped back through his fractions, and I placed my scarred hands around him and I turned him, continuously, tenderly, and spun his spiky shapes until they responded with jerks and twitches, pulsing his colours back to life. I observed his many beautiful forms, shaping into new patterns, his symmetry restored. Configurations of him that could only have been created by his shattering. He returned to me, exquisite in his vulnerability, striking in his sparkling shards, and his fragments danced with one another, under my watchful eye, as they reflected his wholeness, beautifully damaged, in the protection of our kaleidoscope.

Words © Victoria Lothian

Artwork © Cara Rooney

	The creative pieces for These Windows were inspired by visits to the V&A Dundee, where writers and artists were given a guided tour of the Scottish Design Galleries followed by an interactive session exploring objects within the SDG handling collection: https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/exhibitions/scottish-design-galleries
	This piece inspired by: Kaleidoscope The kaleidoscope is a Scottish creation, invented by Sir David Brewster in Edinburgh in 1816. He designed it to demonstrate his experiments with the reflection of light. Using a tube fitted with two or more angled mirrors, an endless variety of colourful symmetrical patterns can be viewed.