Jackson was asleep at my feet, faithful hound, and I considered his lips.  They looked too big.  I paused.  I looked again.  Were they swollen?  No?  I asked Joe to look.  He said they looked fine.  I looked again.

You know that feeling when you look at a word and it is spelled right but it looks wrong?  Technically you can see that its right.  But it still looks wrong somehow?  Jackson's lips looked like that to me.  They looked like they were spelled wrong. 

This shifting aspect of perspective and observation is fascinating to me.  This is an axis of art, isn't it?  If so, its also the magic ingredient of fear and a tool of manipulators.  Possibly, its part of what is meant by Buddhists when they speak of "Maya" or illusion.

How much importance, then, can we give to shape shifters, fashion, decoration, piddle, and piffle?  Which seems an obvious and small question until you start noticing how much time, money, and self esteem people spend on it all.  Yet, we need art.  And we all want to know our lips sit on our faces impeccably well.  This problem of perception also dogs good science.  Its nearly impossible to say anything for sure.  How, then, shall we evaluate our children?  Hopefully with our invisible magic compass....  Or perhaps as the Buddhists might, in silence looking without eyes in in in in in in in in into them.