Posts Tagged ‘optical illusion’
Optical Illusion
Objects out the window may be further away than they appear. Is that a thing with optical illusions? What makes something look closer than it really is?
At two different times this winter, I have been fooled by what my eyes saw and what my brain concluded. From the farthest window in the back of our house, with a view to the north, it is possible to see a building that appears to be on the edge of the plowed field adjacent to our property.
The first time, I was flabbergasted. How did someone put a building there without us noticing? It couldn’t have been constructed there, so I made the assumption it must have been moved into position intact. I tried to get a better view with binoculars and checked the view from all the other windows on the north side of our house. Through the bare tree branches, I couldn’t discern much more than what I saw with just my eyes. I also couldn’t find it from any other window.
That should have been my first clue.
I asked Cyndie to look at it when she walked Asher on the driveway after feeding the horses. She told me she couldn’t see it. That didn’t make any sense, so I checked for myself. It wasn’t there, so my imagination solved the mystery by deciding they must have been in the process of moving it and had continued to some other location.
Another week or two passed, and I found myself reading in that back room while Cyndie was working on an art project. That building was back again! Looking out the window, I could clearly see it, just like the time before. I did get up and search from all the other windows, just like before, and it was still only visible from that one back window.
I wasn’t going to be (completely) fooled twice. Applying a little logic and overruling the confusing visual and my brain’s perception of what I was seeing, I realized we were seeing the barn across the road on our neighbor’s property to our northeast.
Up close, it looks like this:
That front face with the red siding and the door and the arc of a roofline had me thinking maybe a Quonset hut. Now, if you asked me if there was a red barn on the neighbor’s farm across the road, I wouldn’t be positive. In fact, Cyndie was certain there is no red barn there when I explained what we were seeing.
So, when we saw it suddenly appearing in the trees, looking unbelievably close, we didn’t recognize it for what it truly was.
I’ve added a line depicting the direction between the two points and placed a clone of the barn in the red circle to show the location it appears to be when viewed from our back room.
When there are leaves on the trees, we can never see our neighbor’s property. I’ve never sat where I could see that view until Cyndie started using that room for artwork. The front face of that barn, suddenly being visible from our house, threw me for a loop.
If anyone can explain why it would appear to be closer than it really is, I’d be happy to learn.
.
.
Injustice Exists
At times, the expedition I’m on to avoid news media leaves me oblivious to current events happening in other parts of the world until someone brings them to my attention. In reassessing my goal and the progress thus far, Cyndie and I chatted about how news avoidance was going for each of us.
She mentioned that injustices of the past have been survived by many people for ages and that injustices will continue to exist in the future. Coexisting with the atrocities perpetrated is an unpleasant reality. My immediate survival mode involves “turtling” to preserve my sanity and hopefully build some reserves of fortitude to face inequities that close in on my range of influence.
As a beacon of hope, love, and beauty, I present some views of our surrounding natural glory at the lake up near Hayward. Pictures we took on a walk yesterday in the cold on the last day of November.
This morning, there are four white swans swimming around between our shore and the island nearby, frequently plunging their heads deep to feed, with their tail feathers pointing straight to the sky. They have no concerns about what the citizens of the world will face in the coming months and years as they consume some food and give their wings a break from their migration to winter quarters.
I can relate to them entirely. Maybe I am “swanning,” not turtling.
.
.
Dazzling Display
In the middle of being distracted by how much Asher was fixating on the scent he was manically following along our North Loop trail’s pathway, I noticed the sunset was ablaze in this spectacular deer-hunter orange glow. I wanted to see if I could get a picture of the scene but would need to redirect Asher somehow to allow me to move beyond pine trees that were obscuring the view.
With time of the essence, I resorted to my tried and true obedience technique of yanking him unceremoniously by the leash to break the spell of the (I assume cat) smell he was following and drag him in a 90-degree direction past the trees.
Asher is so sweet to accept the rude disruption and allow himself to be reluctantly forced to follow me against his will. We must look like such a smooth-functioning team.
Bam!
Got it.
I struggle to comprehend the angles involved in illuminating the clouds overhead that look so low in the sky and so far from the horizon, especially with Earth already turned past the point of being able to see the sun. I assume it is that the clouds are higher in the sky than I perceive.
It seems like an optical illusion because so much of the rest of the cloudy sky lacks any sunny color. How are the sun’s rays missing the rest of the cloud deck but hitting clouds below?
One minute later, the show is over and the color disappears. The evening becomes a dull gray that soon fades to black.
It’s such a treat to witness dazzling displays like this that happen for such a brief period. I didn’t wish to be walking Asher at that hour but look at the reward I got for doing so.
I’m going to need to ruminate on the lessons available for me in that experience.
.
.
Definitely Wet
Cyndie is leading a workshop session this weekend, which normally involves use of the round pen. Friday, in preparation, she spent some time pulling weeds from the sand because the wetness made the chore easy. After that, the plan was to drag the pen with the rake behind the ATV.
Unfortunately, it was too wet for the 4-wheeler. I waited until yesterday and then checked on whether I should try raking it by hand. It was even wetter than she had described.
That happens around here. After a day of sun, when you’d think the ground should be getting dryer, it actually gets wetter. It takes a day or two for the ground water to make its way through our property from land above ours.
Yesterday morning the round pen sand was like soup in places.
—For some reason, that picture tends to look reversed to me upon first viewing, so that the footprints appear raised up above the background. Sometimes it is a struggle to get my brain to correct the perception, but when it suddenly does, I find it almost impossible to go back and see it as I previously had. An interesting optical illusion.—
While I was raking the muddy slop, the horses meandered over to offer their moral support, grazing nearby.
I’ll check the sand again this morning, in case the low dew point temperature, sunshine, and breezes of yesterday helped dry things enough to make it useable, but I’ll be surprised if it did. I was mowing through standing water in a few places yesterday afternoon.
The grounds are definitely wet around here, top to bottom.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 