MISDIRECTION

A field of dirt becomes a grassy field. The field of grass becomes a forest of trees. The plot of earth, at first only rocks beneath an ocean, has worked actively to become itself, to adapt to an always slowly changing context. It defines itself as much as its surroundings, its era, and its context work to define it. The work of delineation. 

In spite of congruity, some of the trees do not live well alongside some of the plants below. An insect appears and destroys an element of the ecosystem. The context is not only at the mercy of nature. There is also chance, and uncertainty, and malice, and magic, and skill, and lack, and fright, and impression, and quickness, and cruelty, and hunger.

Looking in the other direction, looking away from the principal object, is sometimes bread and butter. Cruelty is bread and butter. If you worry too much about your posture in another man’s tableau, it is cruel to misdirect the intention of the tableau.