Last weekend my wife and I visited a liquor store. She was looking for some red wine and I wanted some white. Neither of us had anything more particular than that in mind. Then this bottle caught my eye.
dw: Look Honey! This wine has a dog on it!Wife: That's nice, Honey.
dw: Isn't it cool?
Wife: Do you want it?
dw: I want to take pictures of it.
Wife: Pictures of it?
dw: Do you think it's good wine?
Wife: Get it if you want it, Honey.
We can become captivated by a thing that stays always a little bit out of focus, challenging us to find the right lens through which we can shape a clear vision. It tends to make us dizzy if it moves outside our depth of field. Or else it stays within the focal range we set, but then draws our eye first to the illusory images formed by the many reflections from it's surface, and then to the reshaped rays of refraction coming through it from oblique angles, and then to the shadows and colors. Our brain gets hooked on the visual puzzle. We feel that it is worth the effort to understand. And we know, of course, that in the opinion of many wise people, these intangible images are only a distraction, that really it is the inner substance that is more worthy of attention (and I did eventually drink the wine...it's not bad at all). But we are human, and a good percentage of our brain is wired for visual analysis, and we enjoy glitter.
I can't help thinking that dogs must feel the same way about odors as we feel about our images. Maybe if we could comprehend their smell art, then we would come to see dogs in a whole new light.....eh, I mean, smell them in a whole new scent.
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