Fortunate Isles


                            The Fortunate Isles (Two Boats, Salmon Cove), oil on canvas, 38.5" x 58", Steven Rhude


Fool: Where are we now?

Jester: As usual, you're on the edge - this time gazing towards the Fortunate Isles. 

Fool: Oh Christ, and what are they prey tell?

Jester: Hey, you apprenticed and took the job... after four hundred years, I'm just fixing on retirement. So, if you wish to know, you are standing on the margin between the known world and the under world. It's the last car to Elysian Fields [1] my dear fool, as Mr. James Lee Burke once wrote -  but for you it may be thought to be a utopia, somewhere in the Atlantic ocean .

Fool: So who gets in?

Jester: Well, the odd mortal is allowed in, but that is up to the heroic and the righteous. Depends on what they see. 

Fool: So you're talking about the after life.

Jester: Yes, to the Greeks it was a concern. But for you it must be a a modern principle... something linked to literature, music, film, and of course - painting; since you've followed this foolish occupation .

Fool: Ouch!

Jester: Sorry fool. You must decide where you are, in Salmon Cove? Or, gazing out the window on the Fortunate Isles. I recall another fool before you who wrote that "very slowly solitude slips round me in St. Stephen's Green. I rest: see pale salmon clouds blossom. I'm back in the fields of Elysium." [2]

Fool: I like this guy!


Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS


[1] Elysian Fields, a neighbourhood in New Orleans Tennessee Williams' "A Street car Named Desire" 


[2] Hugh McFadden, Cities of Mirrors   


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