Fintan's creative perception

Fintan, three, sees the world through artist's eyes. An example of this occurred a couple of months ago.

We were travelling back from the East Coast (an artificial beach, actually), when Fintan pointed out of the window and said: "Man who...", then he pulled back an imaginary arrow on an imaginary bow, indicating with actions what he had no words for.

I looked at where his eyes were fixed. There stood an incomplete metal structure. It looked like part of a giant Ferris Wheel. It was positioned in the Marina area. A memory came back to me that once it was mooted that Singapore build a giant "Eye" like that in London. Perhaps this was it. Or perhaps this was some kind of industrial machine whose purpose was not clear. It was a grey metallic structure consisting of an upright column, with a metal framework attached shaped like a slice of cheesecake: an arc stretching out into space. Clearly it was only partially built. Now, that he had pointed it out, I, too, could see how it could be seen as an archer, standing majestically by the sea.

How beautiful is Fintan's world that he can see such things in it. He sees patterns everywhere, reinterpreting the world with his artistic gaze wherever he looks. In many ways, his way of seeing is much more interesting than the world actually is. For everywhere he looks he sees something exciting in it. This pattern matching, of course, is an old tendency of many men: one need only think of those who first saw the constellations above in points of light and gave them names and histories. Fintan is doing the same in his own way, with his own world: giving a little magic to a world that may have none without it.

Perhaps Fintan the pattern finder will become Fintan the artist, one day. His outlook certainly seems like one.