Confessions of a Pareidoliac

I have never seen the image of Ringo Starr in a pancake. But I do often see patterns in leaves against the sky and I hear laughter and sometimes complete sentences in the chatter and babble of the creek.

I guess that makes me a pareidoliac–one who is given to perceiving vague or random stimuli of eye or ear, and in them, finding significance.

If you’ve ever seen Dumbo in a towering cumulus cloud, or the Michelin Man, then you qualify. If you make a point to look for such things, you are a poet, a romantic, or have gone off your medications. (I think my personal favorite is Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun.)

I fall into the latter category. I think intentional whimsy is a healthy thing–a way transforming the minds wandering into wondering. From wonder, comes delight, celebration and honor of the fantastical world we live in. And wisdom, some say.

Pattern recognition is a way of making sense from the chaos.

There is so much of chaos these days that a little shape-finding seems an innocuous-enough way to gain a little traction, to create a little order to stand against the disorders of our age.

So there you have it: the story of the Woodfin Whale, leaping joyfully in the surf of an imagined wave at Goose Creek Beach.

NOTE: all the more reason to bring this image home–I am soon going to have to take the chainsaw to the huge broken pine that fell across the New Road last winter, since I can’t get my truck past it to fetch wood from the Fortress of Solitude. I will miss the Woodfin Whale then; but probably hear it cavorting in the waves, even so, when we take the path that crosses the creek.