THE year truly went by so quickly this 2023. I felt the “Christmas wind” was a bit slower this year. Due to the effects of inflation, and the uncertainty borne of the conflicts in the world, I have heard friends and family holding back a bit from their usual urge…
Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.’ – Allen Ginsberg
Spoiler Alert! I’m about to emerge from the closet: I’m a pareidoliac. I didn’t know what it was called until a few months ago, but I’m it. Webster’s says pareidolia is “the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.” Depending on what site you’re on, it’s either considered a disorder or a talent. Examples of it run the gamut from what people make of Rorschach inkblots to seeing cloud creatures in the sky to finding the face of Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich. But it’s only the most recently identified peculiarity amidst a legion of my own personal idiosyncrasies. Let’s call them “quirks,” it’s shorter. My kids’ favorite is the one they call my “coin religion” that dates from when they left for college. After every visit to them, before I left, I’d leave a coin or two on a window sill, or in the back of a bureau dra