This post is contributed by Barnaby Porter from his archives. Read the previous post here.
Years and years ago, I received a postcard with a black and white photograph on the front of it, a mystery photograph. The skimpy note on the back said it was a picture of an ordinary, everyday subject, but that the average person might not be able to pick out what it was right away.
They were right. It took two months, looking at that card from every angle, upside down and sideways, before my cousin, Patsy, took a quick glance at it one day on the windowsill over her kitchen sink and said, “Oh, for crying out loud! It’s just an old cow!”
A cow it was, staring us in the face the whole time, clear as a bell, big ears, big eyes and a big wet nose. Once we saw it, we couldn’t see it any other way. As a guy I know put it: “Must’ve been an optical hallucination.” Anyhow, that was years ago. My eyes have seen a lot of cows since with no problem at all. In fact, until the other day, I’ve been free of all forms of hallucinations for quite some time.
But then, without warning, my eyeballs failed me in a somewhat surprising manner – surprising because I wasn’t even aware of it. I was gazing out the window late one afternoon and commented to my wife, “Hey, they painted that old yellow truck over there. It’s green now.” It didn’t make much sense to me, why the neighbors would bother to paint that truck, which hasn’t moved in months anyhow, but there it was, green as could be.
“What do you mean?” Susan said. “It’s yellow.” That’s all she said as she went back to the magazine she was reading.
I looked again, and by God she was right – the truck had turned back to yellow.
“You must be color-blind,” she said.
“Now, wait a minute,” I thought. “It was green. Now it’s yellow.” I looked again; it was green again! I was going crazy. Then it dawned on me – as evening settled, a long blue shadow had fallen on the side of that yellow truck. The two colors had blended, as colors do, and yellow and blue make green. That was it. Once my brain knew what was going on, my eyes couldn’t fool it anymore, and ever since, that truck’s been the yellowest damned truck I’ve ever seen.
Carrying this discussion one step further, the optical mysteries of the cow on the post card and the yellow truck may seem no more perplexing than the strange logic that links them in my mind to the book, The Monster of Loch Ness, by Roy P. Mackal, which I read some time ago. Mackal is a serious scientist, having done important work on DNA and such things at the University of Chicago over a period of twenty years or more. His treatment of the mystery of Loch Ness was equally serious and covered a period of ten years of exhaustive research over, around and under the waters of that 700-foot-deep Scottish Lake.
In his book, Mackal at one point dealt with all the photographic evidence of Nessie’s existence, categorizing each picture as either Fraudulent, Unacceptable as Evidence, or as Positive Evidence. And I must say, though most of them were pretty fuzzy, those photographs really livened up his rather cool (and properly objective) treatment of this Earth’s most elusive denizen.
One picture, however, caught my eye more than the others. It had first appeared in the Glasgow Daily Record and Mail in 1933. It was blurred and out of focus. Nevertheless, Mackal’s eye was looking for “Nessie” and he apparently saw enough in the picture to label it Positive Evidence, accompanied by the nodding agreement of a number of other zoologists.
I, however, took one look at this photograph and, without hesitation, immediately recognized my own yellow Labrador retriever, swimming with a large stick in her mouth, much as my cousin had once seen the cow staring from the post card on her kitchen window sill. There was no question in my mind. Of course, it wasn’t actually my dog in the photograph, but it was much more clearly a dog with a stick than anything Mr. Mackle proposed.
All that said, does it really matter if this man mistook a dog for a serpent? My hat’s off to the guy; for his willingness to jeopardize his reputation as a sane investigator in his search for the truth; for his bravery in the face worldwide ridicule; for his belief in what may well be fantasy, but which, until proven otherwise, makes life much more interesting.
Shapes, colors, fantasy – the marvel of what we see is that much of it might well be only in our minds, and while that might not offer much excitement in the cow and truck departments, it sure has a way of tempering the cold, hard facts in this wild and woolly world. As for an “optical hallucination” or two, they serve to liven up this place a bit, in my mind, and give a guy good reason to keep his eyes peeled.
Artist and author Barnaby Porter has had a varied career in marine research, aquaculture, and woodworking, among others. Most recently he partnered with his wife Susan as co-owners of the Maine Coast Book Shop & Cafe in downtown Damariscotta. In October 2021, Barnaby completed his tenure on Coastal Rivers’ Board of Trustees after six years of service.
