JOY ALONG THE WAY: EXPLORING THE WORLD OF SHADOWS

Someone, somewhere, sometime, created a little 8-by-10-inch optical illusion that has been dittoed by many needleworkers. It is done in large-stitch needlepoint. The background is usually white or light colored with a centered word done in a dark color. You've probably seen it. When presented with it for the first time, you think the word, if indeed it is a word, is done in some strange language, maybe Hebrew, Sanskrit or hieroglyphics. You are asked to keep looking at it, and suddenly the name, Jesus, is clearly seen. You wonder how you could have missed it and feel strangely reprimanded for having possibly taken your eyes off Jesus.

When the O.J. Simpson case began to air on TV, I looked at the black and white picture that comes at the beginning. All I could make out was some magnified, black, upside-down, menacing microbe. It even had a little white eye. For several days I tried to figure it out and what significance it might have, even asked some friends about it. They seemed perplexed.

One day, suddenly, my eyes focused on the white portion of the picture and I saw the symbol of blind justice holding scales. How could I have missed it!

I wondered if there were other things "out there" we were missing. When you look at three-dimensional things, it is impossible to make them out as anything but what they are if your vision is passable. But, how about the world of shadows? Could you focus on them and "see" other things?

I started this "shadowy" exploration with the little blue glass bird that is my sundial I move up and down the window shelf. Did it cast a shadow anywhere else except the slanting one on the shelf? I looked across the room where I would expect its full shadow to be. There it was, a little faintly dark shadow on the tieback of my curtain, an ephemeral ornament! How strange I'd never noticed that before. Caught it at just the right time, for it will be there only a few days, then take flight as the sun moves on up the horizon for a few more days.

On the second day of my venture into "seeing things differently," I sat among my potted porch petunias at sunup. The three big trees across the street cast shadows that receded slowly like a dark ebb tide across my yard. Now the tide was at the foot of the steps, now halfway down to the curb. Robins, like colorful animated creatures cast up by the "sea," searched for breakfast. Only in the sunny portion of the yard did they search! Did they not want to get their feet wet in the dark water?

In a corner of a latticed archway, a spider has been constructing a lovely web every night. I, inadvertently, destroyed the web every morning as I groomed a pot of blooming flowers. That is, until I had entered my shadowy study. I wondered if such a delicate thing as the web would cast a shadow. Holding a white poster board behind it, I could see no shadow at all. But wait! What's this reflection? An insect writhed and wriggled in seeming midair, finally gave up and remained there, unresponsive to gravity. Wonder what Plato's men, chained in a cave, who only saw shadows of the real world on a cave wall would make of that? Would they wonder how easy it is in the real world to fly into invisible trouble and expire there?

Strange world this -- things dying in midair and staying there, ebb tides in the grass, transitory bird adding to the decor. Hey, there is more than one world to observe.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.