Once upon a time, Bechara lived in a house in Lebanon. His neighbors had a dog named Pookie. Pookie was small, plump, and fit his name perfectly. Bechara hasn’t seen him in years, but still imagines Pookie prancing through his family’s orchard, absorbed by the scenery.
The biologist Jakob von Uexküll used the term Umwelt to describe the unique perceptual world inhabited by a living being. What appears to us as an ordinary orchard might, to Pookie, be an endlessly rich landscape of sensation. The mirror recasts banal reclaimed wood into an object of beauty. Legend has it that if you say “Pookie” three times in front of the mirror, he will appear.
