Traces of Time

1 of 5 pieces, cross stitch on linen
170 cm x 270 cm
2002/2003

Mirror

Novel by Nils Viga Hausken

He told me some time ago about a dream he’d had as a young man. He was an elderly friend of mine and he told of the dream that he had made a reality. The experience was profound and affected him for the rest of his life. His ambition had been to visit his writer hero’s homeland and promenade the very streets that the Great Russian poet had also strolled along many years earlier. The Poet, in his works and diary’s, had written copiously of the multifarious streets and their aesthetics.

Many years later I visited my now deceased friends’ widow. In the course of the evening we began to discuss the normally unremarkable looking mirror that hung in the entrance hall. She related the circumstances of how it came to be in her possession.

As a young woman she had worked closely with an architect who was a leading light within the field of architecture. He died suddenly and his family decided that she should have a keepsake, an object that she herself could choose.

She chose a simple mirror that had hung in a corner of the architects’ office. There, most everyday, he had viewed himself as he hastily brushed his hair or arranged his tie before greeting clients or hurrying off to a meeting.

I regarded her for a moment; and thought how revealing it was that precisely she and my deceased friend, had chosen to spend their lives together.

Translated by Jane Power