In honor of my having read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, on this Friday I’m admiring this lovely flower, digitally captured in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.

And I’m reflecting that I’ve never seen a flower like this blooming in my subdivision, or jutting along the pathways through my local forests, or emerging from my nearby lakes; but they bloom in someone’s yard, in someone’s local natural areas.

What is normal, and what is exotic? It’s all perspective.

Wide Sargasso Sea is a study in perspective: What is beautiful, and what is horrific? What is sanity, and what is insanity? What is the truth here . . . and the whole truth? These questions the novel continually brings before us—and answers by revealing this:

It depends on whom you ask.

What is your normal? What is your exotic? What happens when you flip them in your mind?