Joe and Keppler Make An Observation

“Have you ever noticed,” said Keppler, looking at the sun, “that when you look away from the sun, there are a few moments when it seems like you’re still looking at it?” Joe had made this observation in the past, often while in Keppler’s presence, but saw no need to make a big deal of it.

“While at the market Tuesday, I found a squash that was shaped quite like a thigh, if said thigh were rounder, bulbous on the one end, and grew on a stalk. Do you often see vegetables that resemble things that are not vegetables?” Joe didn’t hear this question. He was trying to free his foot from a hole that rather resembled a particularly dark Vasarely piece. For him, it evoked the endless void of death. Keppler thought Joe had stepped in excrement.

Joe freed himself just as Keppler anecdoted, “In the future, I expect we’ll have computers to make observations for us. Perhaps we’ll simply point a phone, or a finger, at an object, and we’ll instantly be told what it looks like. I wonder that tree looks like?”

A child shouted across the arboretum, “It looks like a Christmas tree!”

Keppler was amused. “Would you say, Joe, that this looks like a Christmas tree?” Joe was out of earshot. He had fallen into a hole.