Feb 172014
 

PIGEONS IN PUDDLES

Number 8: Kingsway

KEVIN PIGEON: There you go, Em – d’you see what I mean?

EMILY PIGEON: This is what you’ve brought me to see?

KEVIN PIGEON: Yes. The juxtaposition of the leaf with the reflection of the tree – don’t you just love it?

EMILY PIGEON: It’s a leaf.

KEVIN PIGEON: Yes, but… it’s as if the real leaf – the tangible leaf – is in conversation with the virtual tree.

EMILY PIGEON: It’s a leaf. In a puddle.

KEVIN PIGEON: Yes, but it’s – and I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious – it’s as if the now somewhat hackneyed existential conundrum of what is real and what is imagined is being interrogated anew in one elegantly simple construct.

EMILY PIGEON: And this.. wet leaf. Remind me again why I had to come and actually stand in the puddle to look at it? And why we couldn’t have looked at it from over there, say, on the pavement, where it’s dry?

KEVIN PIGEON: Well…

EMILY PIGEON: Oh, for… you’re going to give me all that “intrinsic nature of the pigeon” crap again, aren’t you? Well, I’m sick of it, Kevin, I really am. This is 2014. We don’t have to stand in puddles and pretend we’ve forgotten how to fly and do that stupid jerky head thing just because “that’s what pigeons do”. There’s nothing “noble” about it. Even the squirrels have stopped hibernating – they’ve sussed out that times have changed, and… they’re bloody squirrels, for pity’s sake! All the grotty chips and the pointlessly walking in circles and the wet feet… always, always the wet feet… I’ve just had enough of it Kev, I really have. I want some bloody shoes.

KEVIN PIGEON: You’re obsessed with shoes…

TEXT: Matt Haynes PHOTO: Lucy Munro

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All The Wonders of the Universe.

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