The Man in the Bowler Hat

In front of the face of the man in the bowler hat, a pigeon hangs airborne. You ask the man a question (perhaps the day of the week, you forget so easily nowadays, or his opinion on some matter of inconsequence) and can't hear a word he says because it is muffled by the pigeon's plumage. Impatient, you sling your bow with Zeno's arrow and let fly.

Entire civilizations rise and fall. The continents drift. Outer layers of the sun begin to swell. Beyond the tip of the arrow, and the pigeon, the man in the bowler hat stifles a yawn.

© Daniel Hudon

The Human Condition

In the living room on its easel in front of the window stands a painting of a single tree -- perhaps an elm or an ash -- in a small patch of bushes near a forest so green that you can smell the leaves from a mile away even though the window is closed. No one knows why the tree is there. It just is.

If your arm is long enough, you could reach into the painting, pluck a leaf from the tree and hold it up to the sunlight (the real sun because the landscape doesn't have a painted sun) to admire its veins.

Or you could open the window and climb through it (be careful not to knock the painting off its easel), hike over the grass, cross the dirt road that runs across the bottom of the landscape and pluck a leaf from the tree itself. Given the ocean of fresh air, this may be more satisfying. Wear a hat because the naked summer clouds that buoy up from the painting into the sky beyond the window give the afternoon a sultry ovation. As you reach up to the lower branches, hold your pose artistically, as if you are about to grasp the meaning of life -- but don't overdo it -- and perhaps the painter will paint you into the painting. That is, if you indeed exist.

© Daniel Hudon