Happy Monday.

I think one of the most curious things in life is perception. It amuses and often amazes me to see how two or three people can stand, staring at a picture in a frame and not get the same things out of it. How thousands of people can read books and poetry and have it hit them different. The pictures are all the same. The words in poetry are always the same. The difference is what each individual takes away from reading and seeing. How they connect to it. How they relate. How they understand. I think people tend to forget about perception though. Someone sees something one way and explains it the way they saw it. Another sees the exact same thing and shares how they saw it. The two don't exactly agree on what they saw but instead of discussing it or just leaving it alone and accepting the differences, it usually turns into an argument. One has to be right. They could not possibly have see the same thing differently now could they? People, as much as I often can't stand them, fascinate me. It's not so much the actual person that I find fascinating though. It's more so their characteristics, their mannerisms and their behavior.

Some people see dark clouds looming overheard. Weather like that irritates a lot of people. Puts them in a bad mood. Puts them in a sad mood. Annoys them. Has some kind of negative effect on them. Others, it has an opposite effect on. I feel comforted by dark, gloomy clouds. I love rain. I love when the sky above me is light gray or dark gray. Even black. Just heavy clouds or threats of rain. It doesn't matter. Weather that is seen as gloomy to so many excites me. Relaxes and comforts me. I love sitting and watching a storm. I love listening to the rain as it hits the glass of the windows. Be it a soft tinkling sound from a light rain or a hard pounding sound from that of a heavy storm. I love it. I find solace in days and nights like that. I feel peaceful when I sit watching and listening to a storm. Then I think of friends I have who in the same weather are jumpy and fearful. Anxious for the storm to pass and worry about the dangers they carry. Others who get angry because it ruins any plans they have for being outside. Others who hate the wet gloomy feel of a rainy day. People are so different in so many ways.

The human mind is probably the most fascinating and perplexing thing in the world to me.

I'll never fully understand. I'll probably never even understand the half of it. No matter how much time and effort I put in to trying to understand. I'll never get tired or trying to learn more about the complexities of how the mind works though. I don't get anything out of it. Nothing more than a satisfaction to my curiosity and a sating to my desire to learn and try to understand to the best of my ability.

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

"Alone" -Edgar Allen Poe