Don’t believe everything you think.

Sometimes you can convince yourself that you see something that isn’t there. Have you ever done that?

A few months ago, on top of a neighbour's garage, I saw a – thing. It looked like a dead opossum. I couldn't stop seeing it. For hours I’d go to the window in my studio to try to see something else but couldn’t. I even sent a picture to my neighbour to get their take on it.

I was convinced and saddened that this poor animal crawled on this roof in the dead of winter and just died. It was maybe mulled by some raccoons, who knows. I went down a dark tunnel. What if the opossum had babies! Ugh, awful feelings. For a week, every time I looked out that window, I felt terrible.

Time went by, the snow melted, and the shape changed – and I thought, maybe that’s some stuffed animal? The snow now flattened it. Bodies don’t do that, right? I let go of the notion that there was a body of an animal on a nearby roof. Felt better.

Now, once again, my perspective has changed, and I’ve realized that all along, it was a chunk of insulation that was ripped out of the roof, probably by raccoons. They can be jerks.

What you think you see from a distance isn’t always there.