Mind and Beyond (On My Way to Tokyo)

One side-effect of being a visual person is the desire to visualize people or places unknown to me. Tell me about your boss or your boyfriend whom I have never met, my mind will build an avatar in no time. Call me from your office where I have never been, my mind's eye will furnish the room and know whether the windows are to your left or to your right. Send me to a town I have never seen, I will know how it feels to be there before I enter city limits. Problem is, my mental images seldom bear even the remotest resemblance to the "real" object. When I meet the person/location I previsualized my expectations and my impressions will coexist for some time which can make the encounter slightly uneasy. Of course there is always room for pleasant surprises.

Tomorrow my mental image of Tokyo will meet the real place for the first time. Let's see how the two will get along.

Talking about the human mind: Just finished Murakami's "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". One of the best books I have read this year.

Déformation Professionnelle

It happened again. Once I have spent too many hours (or even days) juggling with pixels, my relationship with my natural surroundings degenerates. Every time I see a speck of dust or crumb or whatever irritates my eye I feel the urge to use clone stamp or healing brush on it (which are two Photoshop tools - in case any of my readers do not spend their lifes juggling pixels. Lucky them.). When this déformation professionnelle escalates I even want to remove color casts I see in the real world. Once or twice I was itching to tell people that there is way to much magenta in their facial skin tone - I held back this temptation so far, there is still hope for me...