An inkblot image that looks like several faces staring out.

Klek Friends What do you see?

This is my collection of Kleks -- the faces I sometimes see in the objects around me!

The scientific term for this is "pareidolia", but that feels super clinical and gross. Instead, I'm using "klek", German for inkblot, inspired by the field of klecksography.

I encourage everybody to take note of the Kleks when they see them. It's super fun!

A Cabin in Montana

Kleks from a recent stay in Montana! I find that wood grain is the most consistent material for Kleks, I’m not sure why.

A burning log in a fireplace. The log has what looks to be a frowny face on one end, made out of sap.
Poor log, not happy about being burned..
A pattern in some wood plans that looks like a pig's face.
Wood pig!

I don’t normally include man-made things as kleks, but these mustache flowers were too much.

Fabric with printed yellow flowers that have blue spots reminiscent of eyes and a mustache.
Mr. Pansy

There were so many of them on one curtain!

A curtain with multiple of the flower designs shown above.
A veritable Home Depot’s worth of middle aged flowers.

The Real Starman!

A greyscale version of the album cover, with what looks like a human face in the top left where the clouds are in the original picture.
Look in the top left!

The real Starman, guarding us against The Spiders from Mars no doubt!

Read more about it in my Musings post here.

Petrified Wood

A caveman looking face in a piece of petrified wood
An ancient wooden klek.

I don’t know much about how petrified wood forms.

Was the Klek there in the original tree rings? Or was it created as the wood mineralized?

If only Kleks could talk!

SodaStream Spirit!

The plastic innards of a sodastream machine that resembles a face.
The face that fizzed a million bottles.

P found this Klek in our friend’s SodaStream machine!

For those that don’t know, SodaStream is a “consumer home carbonation product”. My understanding is that the company builds these comfy plastic vessels to host the spirits of volcanic springs.

Spirits that are bored of their normal life will decide to live in the SodaStream for a while, eating the electrical energy from the customer’s home, while making carbonation as a by-product. Similar to how humans make fertilizer!

At some point the spirit will decide to go back to its volacanic home, and the customer can send the vessel back in to hopefully get a new tenant.

The spirit gets a vacation home for a while, and the customer gets carbonated water. Win win!

Albuquerque

A wooden fence post that appears to have an eye and a mouth cut into it.
The coyote fence sentry.

This post is part of a coyote fence we found in an Albuquerque Open Space park.

This kind of peeling wood is excellent for finding Kleks, though one must resist the temptation to force it. The best Kleks are those you see when you’re not expecting it.

I spent a minute looking for faces in the fence before I decided that that was against the spirit of things. And then a few seconds later my eye drifted across this pole, and here he was!

Big Bend National Park

An image of a flat white limestone slab, with some red streaks mixed in. These red streaks resemble a man with his arms up on the left, looking at some cactus like shapes on the right.
The rock man greeting some cactus.

P and I stumbled across this rock while hiking along the Ernst Ridge Trail in Big Bend National Park.

We asked a ranger about it, and she said the rock was likely limestone, where the red is some other mineral that got mixed in when the rock was being born. Maybe iron given the red color?

It’s quite striking how clear of an image it makes!

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

This cave system is a truly incredible place. Without human intervention, the caves would be pitch black, navigable only by bats, insects, and bacteria. But now it’s lit up like an art gallery.

The lighting doesn’t just allow you to see the rock faces, but it also creates shadows – perfect for finding Kleks!

A large cave space, named The Big Room, with three towering rock formations that resemble masked humans.
The three gods of The Big Room.
A picture of one of the above rock formations up close. You can see the stalactites on its 'face' that appear to create a beard.
The bearded god.

These were my favorite rock formations in the cave. You could see them from pretty much anywhere in “The Big Room” – sentinels millions of years old, watching us humans crawl around the space. The stories they could tell!

I believe the main god is called “The Rock of Ages” by the park service, but I prefer my name for them.
A blob shaped rock that appears to have an eye and a tentacle-y mouth.
Cthulu’s spawn!

This was a small thing we saw from across the way. Originally it looked like a skull to me, but as I walked closer the tentacle-y mouth and the angry eye came into focus.

The wall of a shower in Longmont, CO

An image of a wooden shower wall where the stain of the wood makes a figure resembling a face. The face has a big nose, one eye, and the beginnings of a beard or a mustache.
The old man.

Because having the silhouette of a face staring at you as you shower could be quite creepy, I choose to imagine him looking out towards the rest of the bathroom – keeping watch instead of intruding.