The Old Black Hat

an excerpt from

Anecdotes from the Western Bubble

by  Thoreau Lovell

“How old are you?” I ask the photographs in the museum.

“Old as molecules!” one of the pictures proudly replies.   “I’m the surface, what can be seen, the objective, unadorned.   I’m older than the sweaty palm or the squinted eye.”

Another picture winks at me and whispers in my ear, “My age isn’t visible, but it can be tricked, chanced, discovered.”

A third picture takes advantage of its prominent position on the wall to intone, “I’m as old as absence.   I’m the always-has-been-always-will-be point in the future, beyond technology and imagination.”

Exhausted I take my time going down the stairs.   Near the flashy museum store entrance, I stop to look at a blurry photograph of an old man wearing a black hat standing in front of a wall of numbers.   A few seconds later, I’m on the street, muttering to myself like someone who goes wherever his notebooks send him.