Black dogs and naked ladies...

Sometimes I think I see too much when really I should be trying to see nothing at all.

I remember some kitchen tiles in my past which were a green rippled pattern. After a while, as I looked at them closely, I found a chicken emerging. After that first chicken I found another, then another, and before I knew it all I could see was chickens. There was a chicken in each of the tiles and eventually it got on my nerves so much that one day I replaced the tiles with plain white.

It’s a curse and a blessing this seeing. As a child I’d see pictures in the shadows on the ceiling. Grinning faces, a racehorse, a monkey eating nuts. Sometimes it was funny, other times I had to bury my head beneath the covers to hide from the demons. 

Of course the upside is that I see Rubinesque naked ladies kissing me on my nose in the clouds, and dragons, and elephants too. But when you are looking at a stone wall at four in the morning and see the lost souls in hell, well it sets you to thinking.

A smear of paint, a scuff on a shoe, that trickle of rain on the window; they can all become a picture if I want them too. Maybe that is what the abstract in abstract art is all about. You see whatever your subconscious wants you to see.

So this is just an inkblot. It isn’t a black dog despite what my mind is telling me, it’s just an inkblot that, over time, will fade. Maybe then I can get back to seeing naked ladies in the clouds kissing me again.