Experienced in August 2007

            There’s a gorilla on my wall … yes, that’s right, a gorilla staring right back at me. Funny thing, I’ve never seen it before. Where did it come from? Is it possible that it has been right there all the time, staring at me, waiting for me to see it? I know all that sounds a little crazy and in a sense, it is. There is no gorilla; it’s just a subtle shading of random patterns in the wall paper. But when the light is just right and I look at it just so – it is there, big furry face, eyes and all. Sometimes I sit with my back to it, at other times I face it in the dark. Today I stood there in the bathroom in the evening light and looked squarely into its eyes – eyes that were looking back at me.

            It’s the stuff of optical illusions, maybe. You know, those drawings of the long eared rabbit – blink your eyes and it’s a duck. It’s a vase or two faces nose to nose. You’ve seen them. Have you ever wondered what causes the pictures to switch – is it the trick of lines on paper or some switching mechanism within the brain?

I just went back into the bathroom and looked at the wall. At first I did not see it and then I saw the two dark splotches that were the eyes, the hint of nose and chin; its still there and it does not change into another creature or shape like a normal optical illusion. Still, there is no gorilla, just smudges and shadings that some how reminds my brain of a gorilla’s face. Looking at my wall, you might not ever see it.

            How much of life is no more than wall-paper gorillas? How much of our experience of life is not reality, but rather individualized interpretations of reality? It’s not the brain recording pictures of the reality we see, it’s the brain, through the process of associative cognition, trying to make sense out of what we see. Its the brain painting both familiar and fanciful pictures of what it thinks we see. It’s the brain creating illusions for the purpose of making sense of illusions.