Rock, Paper, Scissors

Analysis:

In “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” three simple objects—a rock, a sheet of paper, and a pair of scissors—are arranged with quiet precision on a tabletop. The composition transforms the familiar children’s game into a meditation on balance, power, and fragility. Each object carries symbolic weight: the rock represents endurance and natural strength; the paper, intellect and vulnerability; and the scissors, human control and the capacity to cut or create.

   Rendered in soft light and subtle tonal harmony, the scene evokes a sense of stillness and contemplation. The interplay of textures—from the rock’s rough surface to the reflective metal and delicate paper—draws attention to the tactile and psychological contrasts that define human experience.

   While grounded in realism, the work also suggests deeper, unseen tensions—between instinct and reason, permanence and impermanence, dominance and submission. In this quiet standoff, no object wins. Instead, the painting reveals a moment of equilibrium—a fragile peace among opposing forces that mirrors the balance we seek within ourselves.

Ed Cepiel

Nov. 2025

Story:

   Old age isn’t a tragedy—it’s a game that never ends. Rock, Paper, Scissors. Played not with hands, but with years.

   Life always begins with the rock. Heavy. Absolute. It falls without warning—a diagnosis, a loss, the slow betrayal of one’s own bones. You hear the thud of it deep inside yourself, that private collapse that no one else quite notices.

   You do what the sensible do—you reach for paper. You cover the damage. Bills, prescriptions, lists, insurance claims—little layers of order to hold the world together. Paper gives you the illusion of control. It whispers that everything can be managed, filed, renewed, and signed into safety.

   But then come the scissors. They gleam in the light, quick and merciless. A letter, a call, a new law, a sudden turn of fate—snip, and your careful stack of papers lies in ribbons. You stand there, holding the useless remains, wondering when exactly it was that the world learned to outsmart you.

   Still, you lift your rock again. You press forward with the stubbornness that comes only from living too long to believe in giving up. You swing at what’s left of life’s mockery and tell yourself it’s courage, though maybe it’s just habit.

   Life answers, of course, with more paper—new rules, new forms, new polite requests that demand your compliance. You slice through them with what sharpness remains, trying to clear a little space to breathe. Then another rock falls, and the cycle begins again.

   There’s a strange comfort in the repetition. Rock, paper, scissors. The sounds blend into a kind of rhythm—the blunt certainty of rock, the soft whisper of paper, the quick hiss of scissors through the air. It’s not victory you’re after anymore; it’s motion, continuity, the small defiance of still being here to play.

   You learn, after enough years, that balance never comes. Peace, harmony—those are words for the young. What comes instead is the quiet understanding that life will always throw itself at you, again and again, with the same fierce persistence you once had for it.

   And maybe that’s the point. To keep playing, even when you know the rules are fixed. To pick up your rock, smooth its weight in your palm, and whisper, “Not yet.”

Ed Cepiel

Nov. 2025