I searched—as always—for the proof that Armando told me I would find. The world is mostly flat he’d said with a species of conviction I judged as a symptom of insanity. By Armando’s own account, his family line seethes and crackles with mental dysfunctions: arcane disorders scarcely numbered in The Catalogue. It was easy, I thought, to dismiss Armando’s subtle and elegant ravings. Now—I think—I was wrong. Because of something he'd said in passing. “The sentient being understands practicalities. The sentient being understands the use of tools and the demands of survival. Rational foresight, as the spawn of cognition is what makes a creature sentient. But sapience is what distinguishes the human animal from those lower by an arrogant evolutionist’s standards. In the human animal, sapience is the compulsion we feel to prove our own existence and our own perceptions. We pride ourselves in our knowledge…but we have fallen. We have forgotten how to prove. We accept things unquestioningly. He told me—later—of his most stunning discovery. He told me that the world is a reflection projected upon the skin of a digital (mathematical) medium. He says that this digital skin is imperfect, flawed, and forever changing. He said that our lives are not the lives our ancestors have taught us to understand. Our world and their world are two different places. He showed me an equation proving this. He asked me to study it, to learn how to not only see, but to also feel it. As his friend, I agreed to do so, and now, I cannot escape the strange truth Armando has shared with me. Our world is a projection: a dream that seeks to prove itself. The dream is never incorrect or flawed, but it is sometimes projected upon a warped surface: a wrinkled skin. I have learned to see our projection upon that skin, and most horribly, I’ve learned to see the wrinkles, the scars, and the errant mole-growths. I cannot escape them, nor do I wish to, as Armando’s truth implies that we emanate from one reality and shine upon the skin of another. We exist, not as a mere dream at all, really, but as an interaction between a dreamer and the surface upon which that dream is projected. —Anonymous (found in a notebook left in an attic.) * Weird things happen when you look at the world as reflected in the window of a laundromat. Weirder things happen when that window is blacked by an imperfectly-applied coat of adhesive lamination. Reflections and adhesive puckers make for unexpected photographs, and unexpected photographs (in my mind at least) give birth to the seeds of unexpected stories. I took this picture last Saturday. I was amazed at the odd laminate-pucker pattern caused by sunlight and air bubbles. I thought—for a moment—of “flawed projections” and those “iron prison” nightmares explored in everything from Gnostic Christianity to the Matrix movies (and in a sense, any cinematic science fictional adventure involving the virtual world.) I wondered if there could be any truth to the concepts explored in such movies (and books,) but if that truth was far stranger (and less malevolent) than we could possibly imagine. More later…. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.