Our brains like patterns, we're told. I spend a great deal of time, when training people in clear design, showing people how their brains like patterns. I show them optical illusions that encourage their eyes to fill in absent details - mess with their heads, essentially, to show them how we all spot patterns when there are none there.
The pattern of land when we return home from a journey brings a warm pink gladness to our cheeks. We glance eagerly from window to window of our car or train. Landfall; we are home.
So why, when the world is suddenly cuddled and cosied and woollied in snow, do we giggle with excitement at the lack of pattern, at the lack of familiarity? Is that the kerb? Where did the path go? There's a tree, a plantpot, a car under there somewhere...
Perhaps it's because Winter in monochrome, in straggled snaggly twigs and snow-flumped plumpness, is more pleasing than its muted full-colour variety. Bare trees and dead grass begin to make sense. It is appropriate, somehow. It goes.
And perhaps it's because this muffled blur is not so unfamiliar after all. The kerb is there; a couple of scuffs, a slight hollow, and we have it, with a thrill of sudden sense. The whole world has become a magic-eye puzzle for our magic brains to fathom. We fill in the absent details.
Tomorrow, in a muddled puddle of meltwater, its contours will emerge, become bland again. And the world will be dis-illusioned, will be self-explanatory once more.
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