Sometimes -usually in fact- I can’t help seeing random splotches or stains as faces, animals, or things. I think it may have started when I was really young and beginning to categorize my world: clouds, to start with. They had wonderful shapes, but transient and always morphing into another form before I could point out the likeness to my parents. Of course, I was younger then and I think my neck was more flexible; the only time I look up at things in the heavens nowadays is when I’m trying to sleep and I don’t usually notice clouds in the ceiling.
No, Age has pretty well curtailed any purposive pattern shopping; these days faces just jump out at me when I least expect them. I suppose, though, it’s my fault in a way -like choosing squiggly patterns for surfaces where I spill things (I’m old, eh?), then finding stuff on sale and having to cajole a friend to help me install a new countertop in place of the one that I’ve cracked where I’ve dropped hot bowls of soup fresh from the microwave.
My house has become nothing if not eclectic since I’ve been forced to live alone: a Carnival Fun House but with patterns and no Carnival. Of course, as you might expect, I’ve written about this fascination with bizarre markings before.[i]
But, over the years, I was pretty sure I’d plumbed all of the apophenic resources and had resigned myself to a distant, but respectful, appreciation of the pareidolic faces in each room. I’d even named my favourite canid faces on the wall cracks and those of occasional feline heads to memorialize those pets I’ve buried in the yard behind my house. I’ve resisted the more humanoid ones, for obvious reasons -with the exception of Arvid, I suppose.
Arvid was an artist, sculptor and flute teacher of mine several years ago -I even have one of his self-portraits in oil hanging on the wall in the guest room. He’s dead now, I think, but no matter, the pattern on the counter near the stove could be his twin. I mean I’m not into Doppelgänger worship or anything, but since I live alone, I figure better safe than sorry; I named the pattern Arvi.
But recently, a hitherto unrecognized team of apophenic hopefuls has mysteriously emerged from the hardwood floor. I hope they are not the harbingers of dementia, or an advanced Alzheimer party scouting my house for a group hangout for their ilk, but I’m being careful about them. We octogenarians are not completely devoid of resources; I have apps on my phone you know…
At any rate, perhaps it might be helpful to describe my house. I live in the country, and my ex (well, one of them at any rate) was enamoured with hardwood floors to blend in with the cedar shiplap walls she said. However, I have it on better authority (my daughter from another marriage) that the real reason she opted for hardwood floors was to get rid of the wrinkled linoleum ones in the kitchen; she also disliked my taste in shag carpets in the living room, but that’s another story -one that involves expensive Persian rugs to cover up even more expensive hardwood there as well.
At any rate, I have to admit to a modicum of embarrassment that a pareidoliac like me had missed the treasure trove of wild and exotic patterns that have been staring up at me from the floors for years now; I’m probably only a passing cloud for them, though. Whatever, now that we have become acquainted thanks to an essay I found in one of my apps [ii] I can enjoy my penultimate years with what a friend of mine has dubbed my ‘Where’s Waldo’ floors. I’ve never played that game, I’m sorry to say, but I can see its appeal.
Until recently, I figured the wood-knots were largely confined to my walls, though; at one time, the knots there were eyes, and worrisome; if I didn’t consciously try to ignore them, they attempted to latch on to me. When I first noticed them, I was younger however, and still absorbed in work. But by the time I’d retired, most either had names, or become sufficiently feral that, like the mice in my kitchen, they disguised themselves as knots if I looked too hard.
But the floor patterns are of an entirely different lineage, I think -more abstract, more Late Picassoish: fractal waves like the non-moving screen savers I used to have on my previous Mac.
It’s the deep woody colours that fascinate me, though. Whenever I wash soup splatters, or bits of salad off the ones on the floor near the microwave in the kitchen or the soap remnants that have somehow resumed their evening migration routes in the gloaming from the sink, I am amazed that they have remained in hiding for so long. Like children emerging from their hide-and-seek lairs, they only become visible when they decide the time is right I guess. But even the most recalcitrant among them seem to smile when I wipe the grime off their faces.
And no, I haven’t looked into parentage issues yet; I am not hosting an orphanage. No matter their heritage, I am simply happy they decided to stay with me. Does it really matter in what forest they were born and then ripped untimely from their mother’s womb? (I can never resist a little Shakespeare) Some of it -at least the floor in my bedroom- was specially chosen by my ex for the plank width and history, not the suggestive knots. They are apparently wide-plank hardwood left-overs, or something. I love them especially for that, though; they seem like foundlings, rejected by potential parents because of minor flaws that I’m not sufficiently au courant to detect.
I suppose I could be accused of ‘wokeness’ for my special appreciation of the DEI of my bedroom floors (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), but as a retired physician I have always believed I would continue to endorse floors which focused on creating a fair and welcoming environment for all feet whether or not they were, in fact, members of a downtrodden cast, regardless of their pedigree or, especially, their legal status.
So with a wink and a nod to Robert Frost for my bedroom cadre, I am pleased to admit that I managed to convince my ex that, of all the floorboards available, we should take the ones less travelled on, in spite of their splinters, and that has made all the difference.
Okay, she picked them up in sale somewhere…
[i] https://musingsonretirementblog.com/2020/08/09/to-see-or-not-to-see-that-is-the-question/
[ii] https://theconversation.com/the-secret-stories-of-trees-are-written-in-the-knots-and-swirls-of-your-floorboards-an-expert-explains-how-to-read-them-250776
Musings on Retirement 