Foreign babble carries down the street from the storefront of a restaurant on the outskirts of a modern mall. Belissimo. An old Italian man’s words, completely unintelligible to the ordinary passer-by. Standing in front of the closed glass doors of the most popular pizza-pasta in the area, he examines closely the partially-filled food cabinet at the recently installed take-away bar, before making a sweeping inspection of the street-side table arrangements. He gesticulates wildly, arms reaching outwards on either side with graceless extravagance, across the pavement and towards the cabinet, magnifying his stature of 5’4″ by multiples with increased breadth. He’s raving loudly to a young waiter behind the wall of glass.

His back turned from the street and his face away from the public eye, all there is to reveal this unusual Italian is his reflection. The polished windows expose his unkemptness, his untidied hair, his marked trousers, his untucked shirt now only partially obscuring a protruding stomach that is evidential of perhaps years of love of food and wine. The transparent shadows of the reciprocal world captured on the glass reveal the slighted young man, confused and concerned, perhaps without a grasp on what it is that his elder is trying to communicate.