Field guide No. 276
A scarf’s impossible shadow
Pulled tight. The shadow didn’t get the memo.
In an empty lilac room, a red scarf is tied taut between two wooden chairs, yet the shadow it throws on the floor droops in a lazy curve. One of them is lying about the tension.
Field noteTaut scarf, slack shadow. One object, two tensions, and only one of them is telling the truth.
- Specimen
- No. 276
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Category
- Where it doesn’t exist
- An empty lilac room, between two chairs.
- Nearest existing relative
- A red scarf, and two chairs.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
Also impossible, also breaking category
The horizon comes looseThe horizon is where the ground appears to end. A thing that only appears cannot peel.
Two dimensions shortLive zebra at the front, flat cardboard at the back. One animal cannot be both, however tight the budget.
The chair's impossible treeA shadow is a chair’s outline or it isn’t a chair’s shadow. This one is a tree’s, cast by a chair.
The onion’s impossible reflectionSteel reflects what’s set on it. Here the onion is one shape and its reflection another, both at once.