Lady with a mirror

My friend Rev. Mugo was writing today about a toddler locked in a car (see here) and by chance I had my own little incident involving cars theis afternoon too. I pulled up outside our local post office and got out of ours and there was a middle aged lady standing by the road looking very carefully at herself in a large hand mirror...

Dunno. You tell me! I've been trying to figure that one out all afternoon myself. Let's think. Maybe she was taking a large, antique hand mirror to a friend's house, stopped at the post office and suddenly noticed that her hair had slipped out of a fastening. But there was something very 'Buddhist' about this sudden vision of a person staring at herself in a large mirror in a village street. A definite touch of Hui Neng there somewhere. Or maybe the fifth of the 'Four Sights'.

More likely she had just been driven crazy by the present unspeakable heat and humidity eh? Who wouldn't be? But I won't whinge, I feel rather happy. First I got a three year extension to my residence visa this morning, I definitely start to feel like I "belong here" now. And secondly I had an abstract for an academic paper for a conference in Kyoto in December accepted too - I feel I have got my toe in the door of Academia! So even I will shut up about the mushiatsui (sultry) weather for a change.