A kaleidoscope is a simple children’s toy that delighted the children of my generation. We grew up when there was no Internet, and boring adult programs were shown on TV, sometimes interspersed with a bright flash of cartoons. Cartoons were always shown at the same time and on the same days, structuring our lives into a strict disciplinary scheme of subordination to rituals.
We invented miracles ourselves, playing and fantasizing. And also when we looked at the changing chaos of colored glass through the prism of a kaleidoscope. It was like a captain’s telescope showing horizons. It was impossible to repeat the pattern, the image floated away, having appeared once and gone forever. At the same time, we felt like participants in co-creation.
Already as an adult, traveling and discovering the world, I began to find in cities this strange chaos of colored “glasses” created by shadows, breaks in crooked buildings, random rays of light. The kaleidoscope still gives me a childish delight. And this delight is also impossible to repeat.