What with the early sunset I rather uncharacteristically tried to take a nap on Sunday. I got under a green fuzzy throw and curled up, and I was lying there feeling warm and cozy and thinking pleasant thoughts when my husband came in and turned on the light.
I said, “Hey, I’m sleeping here!” and pulled the throw over my head. And then I noticed something I’d never noticed before. The throw, while green, looked kind of rusty red when light shone through it.
And another thing: It looked like a solid color, but looking through it toward the light I noticed that it had a pattern. I wondered how that happened–an interesting effect, but kind of pointless.
Then I decided to check to see if I really was awake, because it seemed a bit weird. So I performed a check, sat up, looked around, checked the clock. Yep. Awake. I asked my husband what he was looking for (he was still rooting around in the closet) and then I went back under my throw and the pattern was still there. It wasn’t an exceptional pattern but something like you’d see on any bed cover in any motel in America–lines, triangles, circles. I looked at the pattern, then pulled back trying to discover how there was a pattern on the underside of my fuzzy microfiber throw and not any kind of discernible pattern at all in the nap. (Of course I mean the nap of the fabric here, not my own aborted attempt at a snooze.) Meanwhile my husband found whatever it was he was looking for and left the room, untypically leaving the light on.
Eventually I got up and followed him out to the kitchen to share my wondrous finding. Okay, my mundane and pointless finding. “Hey, did you know there’s a pattern under this thing, and it’s red?” I held the blanket up.
Husband: “Oh, so that’s why you’re walking around with a blanket on your head.”
He very patiently puts it over his head. “I see the red. Kind of a rusty brown, actually. But no pattern.”
I put it back over my head. He’s right. No pattern!
Okay, the kitchen has a fluorescent bulb and the one in the bedroom is incandescent. So I take it back there and look at it the way I originally did.
No pattern.
I try logic. I had my eyes closed . . . it was dark in the room . . . maybe I had just lost the sensitivity? Hard to tell.
Meanwhile my husband is saying things like, “Well, this confirms it, you’ve lost your mind,” and my kid is ribbing me with “You’ve been reading about magic too much!” I have been reading about magic, as research for something I’m working on, but FWIW I know it’s illusion.
Apparently so was that pattern I thought I saw. I cannot explain it. Particularly since I checked to make sure I was awake–could I have been wrong? But today I actually held the throw up against the sun–and yes, in the sun it appears reddish, which seems kind of odd since it’s green. But there is no pattern. None at all.
