Field guide No. 239
Closing time for shadows
Swept up at the end of the day.
A push broom sweeps shards of black shadow into a pile on a pale tiled floor in bright sunlight. Someone has to tidy up after the afternoon.
Field noteA shadow is where light isn’t. Swept into a pile, it’s also something that is. Pick one.
- Specimen
- No. 239
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Category
- Where it doesn’t exist
- A pale tiled floor in bright afternoon sun.
- Nearest existing relative
- A push broom, and a shadow.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
Also impossible, also breaking category
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.
The painted fish leaves the framePaint in a picture and fish out of it, at the same moment. The seascape stays strictly two-dimensional.
A hole in the orchardDusk round the tree, full night through it. One sky cannot be both hours at once.