Near my apartment in Bratislava is a sculpture of a famous Slovak comedian, Julius Satinsky. He sits on what appears to be a bicycle, has his hand cupped at his ear, and is pointing toward something above. Since this sculpture is on my route to school, to the grocery store, and to the main square (and basically anywhere else worth walking), I have probably passed it at least 250 times since I moved here in January. So imagine my amazement the other day when, having approached the sculpture from a different sidestreet than ususal, I realized that I had, for the first 250 times, not seen half of it. It turns out that what Julius is pointing to is a giant ear, right there on the side of the building. If a giant chrome ear can be that easily overlooked, even when a giant chrome man is pointing directly at it, I wondered about what else I've been missing. How do our routines blind us to the obvious, the absurd, the beautiful? I need to traverse the sidestreets more often.
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