There is the saying that we must make lemonade out of lemons. I'm eager to see how the new year unfolds and I wish more than anything for recent horrific events to produce a sweeter New Year.

But this gorgeous watercolor of a misshapen lemon from the Victoria & Albert Museum is rather more where I see us: grown wild, our core DNA somehow corrupted. It was part of something called "The Paper Museum" assembled by the 17th century Roman antiquarian and collector Cassiano dal Pozzo who was a member of Europe's first modern scientific academy in Rome. It was owned afterwards by the Pope, and eventually the Queen among others. This piquant image was perhaps by Vincenzo Leonardi an artist who did many of Cassiano's encyclopedic library of renderings of fruits and plants.

Cassiano was most intrigued by abnormality in animals and plants and this specimen was corrupted by a mite on the bud of a flower. (Ugli fruits are all about this kind of corruption) But rather than get discouraged, he embraced abnormality as a method of understanding was normal was. Some theories had it that a youth (eg the 'fingers') had transformed magically into a tree.

My backyard lemon tree has faded more times than I can count, but each time it goes dormant, I know it will return--it's youthful, fecund spirit indomitable. I am trying to imbue myself with Cassiano's belief system: our abnormal years will help us prize and return to more peaceful and less pernicious norms.