Yesterday, I went for a physical walk to a nearby State Park. Today, I instead decided to see how “far” I could go looking at an old olive tree right out my front yard. This is a walk through perception — powered by imagination. You might come with and see what you see. You may want to put the screen at some distance from your face or use a phone rather than a large display. If the image is too large, you’ll see a completely different set of characters. Of course, you might anyway.

The first group of photos is all from that one tree — a tree that also happens to be featured on the cover of Turing’s Nightmares.

What faces do you see above? I see at least six large humanoid ones.

The lower middle part of the picture above reminds me of The Burghers of Calais by Rodin. Not to be “Rodindant”, but that is an amazing work of art that you should definitely see in person if you can. I believe I saw it both at the Met in NYC and the sculpture gardens in DC.

Also a pretty good pair of owls on the right.

Every two dots of approximately the same size forms part of a face. I can pretty much see as many “faces” here as I choose to. I can easily see 0 by steadfastly reminding myself that this is a tree trunk. Definitely a time & place for that mentality. But not always. For right now, I’m satisfied to see about twenty faces and move on. It’s interesting how often as adults we mainly use our imagination only to see all the bad things that might happen. Sometimes, that is also quite useful. But we can also use imagination to craft beauty or gain insight.

What do you see above? Turtle on the sand? Or, high flying eagle far above the semi/desert scrub? Or something else entirely?

Somehow, the picture above seems to echo elements of Christianity. Three wise men kneeling, angel on the left. I can also see a mind of “mini-history” of the life of Christ from infant to young man to thorn-crowned lamb.

If I focus on the bright spots above as figure, I see a large face LR & a small one UL. The dark on the left, is a shark, on the right, a totem pole of animals.

 It seems to me clear that the frog above is bragging to his cousins about a huge worm — the one who got away: “I swear! It was this big! I would have had it too, but I was knee-deep knee-deep in muck!”

Of the panoply of characters in the photo above, my personal favorite is the little mouse at 7 O’clock. It could well be Stuart. What are your favorites?

The above elephant is sad about losing her habitat. (Who could blame her?) And what’s worse, from her perspective, is that while elephants are very loving, those destroying her habitat are anything but. She, in fact, wonders at our use of the term “humanity” as in “Show some humanity!”

The photo above evokes a Boschian hellscene with warriors, monsters, victims, violence, cruelty, & mayhem. Maybe it’s because of the violent video game my wife’s playing in the background, or maybe it’s because of the violent reality, Vlademort Putrid is creating in real life.

The brown woman in the foreground looks worried. I believe the grim looking bearded knight in helmet down below is knocking at her door. He wants to conduct some seriously bad business. Maybe not a knight, but a guy in a tinfoil hat who wants to kill. What do We do?

 “Hey! What about me!? Small can be beautiful too!” As I walked away from the tree, these tiny few flowers reached out to me.

I answered: “Oh, flower: you are so right!  As usual.”

The cypress(?) trunk above has a hole I which I suspect may be a scar from having a limb lopped off that went into the space of part of the house that was added later. Forensic forestry? That might be a fun setting for a detective series. Solving crimes from tree reading. Something like Bones or Numbers

The roses, of course, want everyone to remember that they too are out here doing their part to make the world a more beautiful place; to spread joy; reduce carbon in the air. She wonders what we’re doing to help.

Last week’s promissory flowers have given rise to this week’s prototype apricots. Thank you, bees! Thank you!

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Bee Wise

The Ghosts of Flowers Past