Loose shadows
Shadows that have come away from whatever was casting them.
On the wall shadows don’t stay put. One arrives before the lemon that casts it; dominoes fall and their shadows stay standing; a chair’s shadow is a tree; a scarf pulled tight throws a slack one; a tree’s shadow comes down as autumn leaves; butterflies’ shadows cross a squash court with no butterflies in it; a waterfall has left a dry limestone cliff and its shadow has stayed, spray and all; at noon a courtyard is lit in the shape its shadow should have been. At closing time somebody sweeps the loose ones up with a broom.
In a plate on his site the Slopwright hangs the lost shadow of a rabbit on a coat hanger, beside a bird’s, a bicycle wheel’s and an umbrella’s (Lost and Found). The codex proposes that the swept-up shadows are the ones that end up on his hangers. This entry is proposed by the codex, from pictures on the wall that are all machine-made, and is not canon until approved.
The facts
- Kind
- Concept
- World
- The wall
- Status
- Proposed by the codex, waiting for approval
- In Meinong’s jungle
- “Closing time for shadows”: Impossible, the round square kind. A shadow is where light isn’t. Swept into a pile, it’s also something that is. Pick one.
- In Meinong’s jungle
- “Fallen dominoes, standing shadows”: Impossible, the round square kind. Toppled tiles casting upright shadows: the shadows belong to dominoes that aren’t there.
- In Meinong’s jungle
- “The shadow arrives first”: Impossible, the round square kind. A shadow is the shape of its object by definition. This one has other plans, and so cannot be one.
More pictures
On the wall
Pieces of Fresh slop with this in them, grouped here by the proposal. The pictures don’t say they are the same one.
Connections
- end up in Lost and Found
- come off like Loose stripes
- Wrong reflections misbehave like this
- Restless fossils stay behind like this