Proudly Seeing Faces

Humans have a gift…we perceive familiar patterns where none exist.  The ‘learned’ amongst us call this phenomenon Pareidolia, and go on with a long and even more boring dissertation on the hows, the whys, and the psychology of said same.  The rest of us say:  “Look – I see a dragon eating a castle in the clouds.”

 

I looked this term up this afternoon – and found something that royally irritated me for a second.  An article, who’s headline read:  “Do you see faces everywhere?  That’s because you’re a neurotic mess.”

Ex…..CUUUUUUSE me?????

Ignorant, judgmental, terrified boneheads…

 

I’ve always been proud to be able to see the drunken octopus… 

 

Or the shocked faces in a wall outlet…

And I’ve seen some pretty freaky stuff in clouds…

 

But to say this is the result of a diseased mind?  It’s called having an imagination, which (I suppose) in today’s regimented, group-mind-think culture may be considered an affliction unless you’re seeing the Holy Virgin-Mother Mary in a piece of toast (now with more whole-grain miracles!) …but still.

Ignorant, judgmental, terrified boneheads…

I’ve captured a few oddball things on my walks about town.  There are a couple of pretty funky trees in Bethesda Park – one looks like it’s bowing, and the other like a diva in full high-note on stage.

And I found this stone in front of the Waukesha County Historical Museum where someone molded a face.

 

 

Rest assured, I’ll be browsing my little town all throughout the summer for more examples of my ‘neurotic mess’ of a mind.

And speaking of neurotic messes of the mind – ever read one of them articles on organizing your workload?   The one I remember from long ago (and I do use this mental trick) was:  instead of focusing on the entire task from start to finish, which can seem insurmountable and WAAAAAY too much work – if you mentally break it out into several more manageable ‘chunks,’ and then only focusing on the chunk at hand, you can trick your mind into getting it done more effectively.

So, I’ve officially broken out my walk to work into three distinct and smaller legs.  I’ve the city leg, the parks leg, and the industrial leg.  I realized I’d been doing this this morning, so I figured I’d celebrate with a blog post.

So here’s a few shots from that qualify for the City Leg:

 

 

And from the Park Leg:

 

And…lastly – the Industrial Leg.  I even get some color on this segment of the journey, because on one side there’s industry, and the other, a huge cemetery with plenty of flowering trees: