Perspective. Well Played.

The question is not what you look at,

but what you see

 -Henry David Thoreau

 

What Is It?

 

The other day I talked about perspective, and how sometimes we need to let things unfold and be open to seeing things in new ways.

Then, the very next day, this came across my view. Perhaps I was being tested?

Look at the image above. What do you see?

Are you sure?

***

Believe it or not, but this is a woman.

***

In full body paint.

***

Look again.

Her left leg is pointing down like a tail.

Her right knee is drawn up.

Her right arm is braced on the stump. Her other arm is folded over her head.

The bird’s eye is in the center of her forehead.

The longer you look, the easier it is to see her.  She’s sitting on the wood stump.

***

Now, where did the bird go?

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginning

What do the beginner’s mind, an organized desk, a new year,
and a bird about to take flight all have in common?

Hope for a new beginning.
A sense of possibility.
Anticipation of something new.

Be Open. Be Receptive.

“The open mind and the receptive heart – which are at last with fortune’s smile the informed mind and the experienced heart – are to be gained anywhere, any time, without necessarily moving an inch from any present address.”

– Eudora Welty

A few mind bending and heart opening finds from around the world found from the front row seat at my own computer screen.
Is your mind open and your heart receptive?

SEE

14-year-old Zev from Natick, Massachusetts, has taken the photography world by storm with his surreal photo manipulations. Better known by the nickname of ‘fiddle oak’, Zev presents a highly imaginative portfolio of surreal self-portraits, which he created together with his sister Nellie (aged 17). His work seems to mirror the transition from the fairy-tale childhood worlds into those that are way more complicated and still unknown.   Websites: fiddleoak.wordpress.com, flickr, and  http://www.demilked.com/surreal-self-portraits-14-year-old-fiddle-oak/

———————————————————————————————–

FEEL

SUSAN SONTAG ON LOVE

The recently released volume of Susan Sontag’s diaries, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980, is a treasure trove of insight — on writing, on censorship, on aphorisms — from the deepest corners of one of the greatest minds in modern history. But besides her extraordinary intellect, what made Sontag a force of nature was also her complex and ever-evolving emotional perception, brimming with extreme self-awareness and keen reflection on her relationships with others.

“Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.”
source:  Brain Pickings 

———————————————————————————————–

THINK

VANISHED: THE SIXTY-YEAR SEARCH FOR THE MISSING MEN OF WORLD WAR II

The B-24, a WWII bomber, is nearly 70 feet long with a wingspan of more than 100 feet. You wouldn’t think it would be hard to find something that big, but in September 1944 a B-24 went down with its crew of 11 in the Pacific and remained hidden there for nearly seven decades. Hylton’s gripping book begins with a modern-day mystery. Did Tommy Doyle’s father, who was a member of the B-24’s crew, actually survive the crash and live a new life with a new family? Tommy’s wife, searching for an answer, located a man named Pat Scannon, explorer, wreck-hunter, seeker of lost WWII gold, who had been looking for the very same plane for the past six years. Combining the modern-day search for the missing plane and the stories of its crew as they prepared for what would be their last flight, the book is both the tale of an exciting scientific expedition and a little-known WWII story.

“I told my agent I wanted to do a book because I just wanted to find out what the hell did happen with Tommy’s dad,” he says. If this West Texas football coach who had broken down crying was representative of any significant portion of the families of 47,000 men lost in the Pacific, then “there was something big, some big epidemic of this particular kind of grief that I’d never heard about.”  – Wil S. Hylton

Excellent Article on the story, it’s author and the book
It’s already downloaded to my Kindle.

Happy weekend. Happy exploring.

Be open. Be receptive.

See.Feel.Think.