More monkeying around

I'm delighted by Ray Girvan's response to my "Monkeying around with intentionality" ... I, too, see seething demons in burled wood grain (and, for that matter, more solitary ones in ordinary pine knots), though I confess that the evil mice in a plughole escape me.

Geoff Powell, whose question sparked my post (and who, in a comment, points out other faces), adds by email that he sees (to my further delight) the face of an angry bull even in a minimal line across sand.

And, for the hat trick, Julie Heyward pokes gentle fun at me in her Unreal Nature post, "Swatch from an infinite fabric". I plead guilty to her charge of betraying Magic Circle conventions by revealing the steps in a trick (perhaps I should ask for another similar offence to be taken into consideration). As I commented recently, I think too much. I cede her point that when asked to explain ourselves we almost always lie – though I must add that my enjoyment of Red Line and Sky Stones (and many others of her work) are analysis free and uncorruptedly visceral.

Like Julie Heyward, and like me in situ as the picture happened, Gayle Reynolds (by email again) didn't immediately see the monkey or baboon: "When I first saw that photo I was drawn in by the crazing and contrast of colors. It was only as I sat back and looked at the entire picture that the "monkey deity" made his (it does look male to me) appearance." And Anatol Nedelko (new comment left as I am writing this) sees something else again – a "Brechtian machine slaughterer", which sounds like a relative of Ray's evil mice ... but I see that Ray has, also as I write this, responded with his own and very different comparison – I think I'd better finish up and post before I get trapped in an endless loop!