It is upside-down and distorted, yet gives an impression of depth and dimension.

It is a lie bought and sold again and again and again, increasing in cost with each successive sale yet paradoxically, proportionately decreasing in value.

At its best it is magical, alluring, captivating – a siren's song.

At its worst it is disturbing, ominous, sinister – a malevolent propriety.

It is a comfortable excuse; it appeals to my sense of order and it makes me feel less ignorant, yet it leads me astray.

It is an enterprising depiction of what is (simultaneously) there and not there; an invention, an illusion, a myth.

It is full of light and dark and hope and trust and imagination and danger and vulnerability.

It is an urgency incidental to itself, and a warning humbled and hesitant. We have chosen to follow the urgency; the warning goes unheeded.

It is a house of cards built inside a cast iron vault.

It is (only a little) closer to reality at 90 degrees and then (a bit more) at 180 degrees.

When you look beneath it – there is nothing there.

When you reach underneath – it slips through your fingers, cold and wet; unctuous, unfathomable.

It is a tool used to substantiate,  justify and maintain.

It is a covering, a garment used to conceal, amuse and distract – one size fits all.

It facilitates, expedites, promotes, simplifies, enables.

It is absurdity masquerading as wisdom. It is impulse pretending virtue. It is artifice playacting sincerity. It is death posing as potential.

It is a mirrored membrane reflecting a misremembered past as present as future.

It is an imperious suggestion of misinformed righteousness.

It is a preference for answers over questions, constraint over consideration, presumption over doubt, loud over obvious.

It is decisive, judgmental, unflinching, unforgiving.

It is a landscape, a pointillist perspective, a watercolor, a canvas stretched, a kaleidoscopic diffusion of promiscuous observation.

It is blissful reconciliation.