But what's really interesting is the medium of the background image. It's made of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ordinary spools of thread laid side by side and stacked one upon another.
From a distance, as you approach the area, you just see a big picture of an up-side-down Mona Lisa and wonder why somebody wanted to stand her on her head.
But as you get closer you see how pixelated she is. Closer still you discover that the pixels are nothing but spools of thread--the kind you could buy at Walmart. And you think, Good Lord, how did the artist manage to do this? Then, Why did the artist want to do this--what inspired him or her?
Then you start playing with the crystal globe-on-a-handle. You can lift it out of its base and move it around. The image moves around as you do; shows up in different surfaces of the glass. It seems a little like you're holding a magic wand.
Without knowing what the intent of the artist was, I began, perhaps, to experience what the artist intended. Wow--isn't this cool! A bunch of thread-spools taking on such a familiar and lovely shape. What a work of love--figuring out all those shades of thread and stacking all those spools!
We never see people as they are. And try as we do to create better images of ourselves, other people neither see us as we hope or as we truly are. We see through a glass, if not always darkly, at least incompletely.
We experience our selves incompletely, too. Our ideas of our selves and others around us is refracted through many different lenses.
Slowing down and taking an honest look at how we see before we jump to conclusions about what we see is a game changer.
Seeing how much trouble I go to to stack my spools in order for people to see the 'me' I want to project--makes me want to laugh and makes me want to cry.
It's like when Martha Stewart was fussing over the marzipan animals she was making to decorate her Thanksgiving turkey platter said, "Oh, it's no trouble at all." And her guest (Julia Child no less!) said, "Looks like a lot of trouble to me!"
Meditating, simply welcoming whatever is going on in the mind and body with honesty and kindness, tends to teach us to agree more with Julia than with Martha.
On the other hand, as we do begin to see how much trouble we've gone to most of our lives, putting our best foot forward, it's easier to smile along with everybody else--stacking all those spools, upside down, specially crafting the right kind of globe to turn us right-side-up again.
To look through the globe and appreciate the image! And then to move closer--and appreciate all the work!
And then to find a place nearer the middle where we're able to see both the image and the reality with honesty and compassion. It's still amazing--and from the right perspective, even beautiful.
