It is funny, how one can look at something and look at something and only see it one way, until something clicks and then it changes the way one looks at the thing forever and one cannot go back to the old seeing.
This happened to me with the cover of the book, The Brief and Wondrous Live of Oscar Wao. On the cover, a red blotch that looks like a spray paint mistake covers some of the text of the title. To me, it always looked reminiscent of a violent death, specifically a mark on a white wall from a bullet through a body. It looked like that until tonight, when I was sitting on the subway and I was looking at the cover that the woman standing diagonally from me was reading. That's when I noticed a wing. And I thought, "Wow, what a coincidence that it looks like a perfect hawk wing is shaped from the spray paint blob. But of course something like that on a book cover is never a coincidence!" Then I looked at where the wing came from. It was the silhouette of a man's head! OSCAR WAO!
I looked at the book. I looked away. I tried to see it as I had before; as a blob, as an inarticulate red exclamation, but try as I might, I could not help but see its meaning: A man who had a wing on the side of his head like a Greek god. It had become impossible for me not to see the face.
