Field guide No. 570
Moth through the birch
Taking the short way through.
A huge brown moth seems to fly straight through a birch trunk, its body on one side of the bark and the tip of one wing on the other. The tree did not move to let it.
Field noteA body cannot be on both sides of a solid trunk. This moth’s wings are, with the tree unbroken between.
- Specimen
- No. 570
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Physics
- Where it doesn’t exist
- A birch by a winter lake.
- Nearest existing relative
- An atlas moth.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
Also impossible, also breaking physics
Silver fish along an invisible tideMinnows school along a drained channel’s tidemark, swimming in water that isn’t there.
Flames within the icebergA fire inside ice that doesn’t melt it is both hot and not hot at the same place.
Open orchard door, floating hardwareIts handle and lock still hang where the shut door would be, while the door itself stands wide open beside them.
Floating safe, sinking wood and corkA metal safe floats while wood and cork sink below it. The usual buoyancy rules have switched sides.