Splotchy, Amateur Neuroscientist

Well, now that I have seen faces in a few places, it seems my mind has opened up to the possibility of human faces in a variety of objects.

For instance, I looked down at our downstairs bathroom sink this weekend, which we've had for at least a couple years, and suddenly now there is a face as clear as day.



For those of you who want to see what this face would look like with a horribly runny nose, I have obliged you here:



This faucet face was always there, waiting for me to see it, but I didn't notice it until I started again exercising this strange little nook of my brain, a nook which I seemed to use quite a bit when I was younger.

It made me think about dreams. I usually don't remember my dreams, and when I do remember them, they usually slip away from me very easily. It's strange -- during the moments of the dream they are very real, but somehow their ephemeral nature makes them less memorable than something I physically experienced.

Years ago, I found an exercise that I could engage in to help me recall some of my dreams. I have a few dreams that I have been able to retain fragments of over the years -- a nightmare of a neon clown throwing pies at me, a dream where I jumped slow-motion into puddles. I have found that when I revisit these dream memories it opens up doors to other dreams. They just suddenly pop in my head. From these newly-remembered dreams I can then remember others, and so it goes like some sort of remembrance-chain. All these dreamed experiences are still lurking around in my head somewhere, it's just accessing them that's the tricky part.

Our brains help us get through life in so many ways, but are still well beyond the reach of our understanding (a brain understanding itself is kind of an interesting concept in and of itself). I think my renewed bouts of pareidolia and my dream-remembering exercises are somehow connected, but I'm not sure how.

Oh, just in case you're looking for a reflection of a nekkid Splotchy in those faucet pics, I *am* in the reflection, but am fully clothed. Sorry ladies!