Wednesday Hodgepodge: Seeing is Believing

Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to add your link to the party. Here we go-

  

1. Ever played the game Farkle? Are you a risk taker? In games only or also in life?

I have not played Farkle, to the best of my memory. Is Yahtzee close enough?

Everybody's idea of risk is different. I wouldn't go bungee jumping, but I did get engaged to my husband after dating for a few weeks.

2. What's your favorite thing about your yard or whatever outdoor space you may have?

The evergreens we can see from the deck.  They make it feel like we're out of the city.

Also the fact that the deck isn't fifteen floors up anymore. 

3. Tell us about the most interesting building you've seen or been in.

That's a hard one. What makes a building interesting? As in, built out of ice cubes or held up with chicken legs? Eccentrically decorated? Or historically significant? Happy or creepy?

There's a nearby historic site, a Victorian mansion that is known for its trompe l'oeil artwork on the walls. That's the best I can do right now.

4. In this current season of social distancing, what's something you've come to realize you take for granted in more ordinary times? Do you think you'll make a conscious effort to appreciate whatever that 'it' is once normal life resumes?

Having a conversation without worrying about how close.

5. Share a favorite song with a springtime flower in the lyrics somewhere.


6. Insert your own random thought here.

Trompe l''oeil: cheat the eye. How do you know whether what you're looking at is the truth or just something cleverly constructed? 

The contemporaries and rivals of Zeuxis were Timanthes, Endrocydes, Eupompus, and Parrhasius.This last, it is said, entered into a pictorial contest with Zeuxis, who represented some grapes, painted so naturally that the birds flew towards the spot where the picture was exhibited. Parrhasius, on the other hand, exhibited a curtain, drawn with such singular truthfulness, that Zeuxis, elated with the judgment which had been passed upon his work by the birds, haughtily demanded that the curtain should be drawn aside to let the picture be seen. Upon finding his mistake, with a great degree of ingenuous candour he admitted that he had been surpassed, for that whereas he himself had only deceived the birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist. --Pliny the Elder, translated by John Bostock

Grapes, curtains, vases of flowers...let's not stop looking for truth.

Linked from the Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond