Images can evoke emotions, memories, and set off chains of thought — or they can just puzzle people — or anger them or distress them. The visual parts of the brain are very connected to both the rational and emotional portions.

Show the image above to a devout 13th century Benedictine monk in Italy, a 19th century Indian Brahmin saddhu, a 20th century Japanese Shinto samurai warrior, or a 21st century American teen, and the reactions would be all over the map. And since humans tend to fit images into stories, it would be interesting to have each of these hypothetical viewers of this image write a short story based on this painting.

As an exercise, you might want to do that now.

Later, if anyone wants to know what’s going on with the dude with all the arrows in hime, you can either imaginatively Google to figure it all out, or you could email the writer of this blog. How? Ah, now there’s another mystery!