Looking at something I am often prompted to wonder how other people see it. On old enigma, as Burns has it

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.

More than this it is tangled up with childhood and being driven from the garden. What was the fall other than the pursuit of that power?

There are different ways to approach the problem, one thing is to look at what people remark on, and the opposite of course, what they don't remark on. It always surprises me that this tree, right outside the Seattle opera house, doesn't get some attention. Thousands walk past it every day, but I have yet to see any remark on it other than this

People get excited about patterns left by sprinklers on office buildings, why not this really quite lovely image on a tree?