Now that's Weird...

[kalibex]

My own brand of pattern recognition confusion:

With in the last, oh, year-and-a-half, I recall 3 instances (well, the specifics of one slips my mind at the moment), where I saw a (manmade) object that in the first few initial seconds I mistook for an animal.

One was the 'spring water bottle with flapping semi-peeled-off lable seen as a pigeon lying on its side flapping a wing', the 2nd I unfortunately don't recall as I type this, the 3rd was this dude getting on the bus carrying a foldable canvas chair in some sling, and me at first 'seeing', upon seeing a flapping flash of beige, that he was carrying around a small dog...

Comments

[nexstarman.livejournal.com]

Are you ever half-awake when you see it? It's happened to me.

[drake57.livejournal.com]

This happens to me all the time.

[hat-lights.livejournal.com]

Happens to me too. I watched a leaf in the grass, blown by the wind, for a minute or two waiting for it to fly away like the bird I mistook it for.
Castaneda wrote of seeing a grotesque animal like a griffin- complete with beak and claws and ears like a calf - while walking with Don Juan in the desert at twilight.
It turned out to be a tree branch that had caught some burnt debris, and was vibrating in the breeze.Don Juan said, That branch was a real animal and it was alive at the moment the power touched it.Since what kept it alive was power, the trick was, like in Dreaming, to sustain the sight of it.See what I mean?
I had a spirit cat's face bristling with light and spikey whiskers superimposed on a neighborhood cat(Attila)'s face, once.

It's better than seeing a live pigeon and thinking it's a plastic pop bottle, though.

"WE see what we expect and don't see what is there."
-spirit guides

[(Anonymous)]

Walking home from work, 12:30 in the morning, I chance to look up and see someone walking towards me, about a block and a half away. At least until I get a little closer and suddenly a "vase / two faces" perceptual shift turns the figure into one of the tall parking permit dispensers we've got in downtown Toronto. I shake my head and look a bit further down the block to see another figure walking towards me, except two steps later it becomes another parking permit dispenser. I look even further, and see another parking permit dispenser right at the end of the block, until the traffic light changes and the parking permit dispenser looks up and walks across the street. Gah.

True story.
- Cameron