I fell upon this poem recently, by Tom Hirons. I recommend that you visit his website to read the original.
The narrator is visited, late at night, by a mud-covered, half-divine figure who bursts into the house demanding food and attention. The “wild god” eats, drinks, laughs, and speaks in riddles. He tells stories that unsettle the host, stories about hunger, death, love, and the raw world outside the door. The narrator is both terrified and fascinated.
As dawn comes, the wild god leaves, and the speaker stands changed—shaken, more alive, painfully aware that the polite life he’s built is fragile and temporary. The encounter becomes a parable of hospitality to chaos: what it means to invite the untamed into the human home.
I just finished Dan Brown’s latest book. This isn’t a review — more a moment of noticing.
Mystery novels rely on a kind of agreed-upon lie. Something terrible or hidden sits at the center, and we pretend we don’t see the shape of it yet. That’s the deal. If it weren’t dire and uncertain, we’d be reading a police log.
The rhythm goes like this: hint, setback, clue, twist, and a little parade of “ah-ha” crumbs to keep us moving. And Brown does that well enough — puzzles stacked on puzzles, Prague described in such detail I could practically order lunch there. It’s all quite competent, even enjoyable.
But the whole time, the ending is already printed. We’re not discovering; we’re walking a path that was poured in concrete months ago. The reveal isn’t found, it’s… waiting. That’s the funny thing. Books are fixed. And still we act surprised.
It’s a bit like watching a magician from the wrong angle. See the rabbit under the table once, and the trick never really recovers. Delight evaporates into technique. And technique, once exposed, is more interesting to the magician than the audience.
I noticed myself growing impatient with all the clues. Not because they were bad — but because they felt inevitable. A machinery problem. Too many gears visible.
Oddly, plays and films get away with the same structure. Maybe because they look alive. Pages stare back with a kind of smug certainty: “You’ll get here eventually.” A play at least feels like it could derail, even if it never will. That tension counts for something.
Could a mystery work without resolution? Probably. Would most readers want that? Probably not. We like closure. We like to feel clever, even when the author already solved everything and just hid the pieces for us to find like Easter eggs for adults.
We say we want surprise. Mostly we want the illusion of surprise — safely contained inside a cover.
Pulling the thread a little, I’m realizing this: part of me prefers when a story might escape. When the edges feel like they could tear. Less tidy. More alive. Possibly dangerous.
Which is probably why I keep reading mysteries and then muttering about them afterward.
I once spent six hours removing 1,247 dust specks from a Kodachrome slide my father shot in 1966. No one asked me to. My mother cried when she saw the print. She didn’t know why. That was enough.
If you’ve ever removed dust by hand, named a file like a prayer, or wondered what “auto” forgets — this book might speak to you. It’s available now in beta form. I welcome echoes.
‘Original Copy” is my response to that question — a book about memory, transmission, and the ethics of touch in the age of AI.It’s not a manual. It’s a meditation. From darkroom trays to Photoshop layers, from family archives to forgotten American boxes, it traces the lineage of copying as ritual, not convenience.
The beta version is live. I don’t know if it will resonate. But if you believe restoration is retrieval — not invention — I invite you to read, reflect, and respond.
If you’ve ever rescued a memory, retouched a moment, or wondered what survives in the margins — this book is for you.
The difference between curved and flat is not merely optical—it’s metaphysical, mnemonic, and ritualistic.
Flat Mirrors: The Illusion of Truth
• A flat mirror reflects with minimal distortion. It promises fidelity, symmetry, realism.
• In art and theology, it often symbolizes clarity, self-awareness, or divine transparency.
• But this clarity is deceptive—it reflects only what’s directly in front of it, and only from one angle. It’s a controlled truth, a curated self.
In Augustine’s Dilemma, the flat mirror might represent the soul’s desire for unmediated self-knowledge—but also its limitation. The soul sees itself, but only as it appears, not as it is.
Curved Mirrors: The Ritual of Distortion
• A convex mirror, like in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, expands the field. It captures more—room, witnesses, divine echoes—but distorts.
• A concave mirror draws inward, magnifies, inverts. It reveals hidden depths, but warps them.
Curved mirrors are thresholds, not windows. They invite interpretation, not certainty. They reflect not just the subject, but the context, the unseen, the ritual space. The soul may want a flat mirror, but only the curved one lets it see itself move.
In my story “The Tug”, the AI is a curved mirror—reflecting fragments, errors, near-truths. It doesn’t offer clarity; it offers engagement. It keeps you tugging.
Ritual Implications
• Flat mirrors are for grooming, for control, for presentation.
• Curved mirrors are for mystery, for surveillance, for sacred distortion.
“I was doing it second, and doing it better, so you started copying me.”.
It was the same old story, drifting down the stairwell. I hoping hoping not to go up, hands on my hips, asking the same old question, “What’s going on here?” I knew what was going on. I hate asking the question when I already knew the answer.
Now, thirty years later I’m asking a different question. What is “copying”? I’ve asked Ai to answer the question…
“Good question—deceptively simple.
“Copying” sounds like repetition, but it’s closer to translation. You move a form, gesture, or idea through another medium—your own hand, your time, your understanding—and in that transit, it changes.
For the old masters, copying was apprenticeship: learning through emulation. It wasn’t theft; it was devotion—an act of seeing so closely you disappeared into the work.
For moderns, copying can be critique or conversation: sampling, referencing, exposing influence.
For frauds, it’s camouflage—using resemblance to hide intent.
At its cleanest, copying isn’t imitation but attention. It says, I’m willing to stand this near to truth and feel what it costs to match it.
How do you define it—learning, homage, dialogue, or test?“
Huh? Ask Ai a question and it almost always asks three questions in return.
I asked my Brothers copying machine, “What is copying? And it said, ‘Press here, how many do you want?’ Well, not really, but it implied that very strongly.”
The language implies there is an original, then through some process or another there is a copy, a duplicate, or many duplicates. They are nearly identical if the process is adequate. The term is also very loose, because I’ve copied notes from my classmates in the past, and at times they were far from adequate. Sometimes you must be in the room.
Why isn’t the original enough? Why do we need to copy? The answer isn’t always completely obvious, although it might seem practical. You could write a letter, form content, then send it to various groups with the admission “Send this along!” I’m thinking one of the great examples of copying might be the Gospels going out to the churches. At first glance you might have the idea that the original Gospel was carried from church to church. The obvious flaw is that it could be lost or damaged on the way.
So, instead, you make dozens of copies and send then all at once to the various churches. The danger here is that each copy must be accurate in content. Probably the oldest written copies were orders for military movements, you can’t have parts of the army arriving at different places at different times to fight a battle.
Then there are important works of history, comprised of details and facts. If a copy is made and sent to a different city, it must be accurate to be useful. It is important to always test the process. The profession of being a scribe was grueling in maintaining accuracy, and only replaced by technology centuries later.
The nature of the original determined different paths in copying. The earliest of all copies were probably 3D. Pressing hands or objects into wet clay, firing that clay in order to press more wet clay. The mold was the answer. A famous sculpture example is from China, The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang, 200BC, was made from several molds of arms, heads, torsos… two halves then fitted together. 8000+ life size soldiers. The unique thing was the hand-shaping of the heads, so that each one is different and original.
On the 2D side, the written word turned to woodblock prints first in China and later in Europe. Letters were carved in wood, ink applied, and copies were made. Letters had to be fairly large and the ink softened the wood so not manu copies could be made. The Chinese tried casting bronze letters but they were even larger, the bronze would not flow into small molds accurately. Lost wax casting made multiply copies of trinkets and sections of larger bronze sculptures.
In this process, the mold was the original, which was the reverse of the produced copy. No one cared about the original, the copy was treasured, particularly if it was a small number.
When etching an image it a copper plate was developed (cut with a burin), it was the numbered short run that gave the value. If the artist decided only 500 copies would be made, they would take the same burin used for the etching, and cut a large “X” through the copper plate, forever ending the possibility of making more perfect copies.
Through the centuries, both sides, the 2D and the 3D processes made changes in accuracy, speed and cost. Chemistry, then electricity made even more changes, and continue to this very day.
Except today in both processes there is another modifier. With Ai you can still use accuracy, speed, and cost, but now you can also have versions or different rendering. The copies can all be originals. Full circle!
I was preparing myself for an upcoming visit to the Palace Legion of Honor in San Francisco to see the Manet and Morisot show. It taken more than four years to develop, contacting museums and collectors, to be able to present the original paintings side by side. The reason for the show is to view the impact of the two artists upon each other.
Edouard Manet was by far the most famous or successful painter. He was already recognized by the salons of Paris. Berthe Morisot and her older sister Edma were trained by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, who famously said, “I know nothing, I only paint what I see.”
Morisot also spent quite sometime in the Louvre with the copyists, learning to paint like the masters. Her sister married a naval officer and quit painting, so Berthe continued alone and had some minor successes.
Edgar Degas introduced Morisot to Manet on a personal level, Manet was well aware of the Morisot sisters, and knew of their paintings. Manet then offered to use Berthe as a model for a painting he called “The Balcony”. It was the first of dozens. Morisot continued to paint and with constant contact with Manet it was apparent that she learned a few things. It was the typical one way, master to student, relationship. Or was it?
The show points out the Manet appeared to study what Morisot was doing and started to compose works similar to Morisot. It is really a fascinating story of the Impressionist period of art.
And this video got me thinking about the “copyists”, there is hopefully a book about them, but I haven’t researched this yet. I did ask Chat GPT to tell me all that Ai knew about the copyists, the following is from Chat.
“For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, museum galleries were full of easels. The air smelled of oil and turpentine. These were the copyists—artists with permission to set up in front of the masters and reproduce their works stroke for stroke.
They weren’t mere hobbyists, though some were students. For many, it was the only affordable way to study technique firsthand: to learn how Rubens handled flesh, or how Velázquez pulled atmosphere out of shadow. Others made a living from it. Wealthy patrons would commission “museum copies,” since the originals were untouchable. A few of those copies still hang in old homes, quietly passing as heirlooms.
Paris’s Louvre was the epicenter. You could apply for a permit, choose a painting (if it wasn’t already claimed), and work there under the eyes of guards and the public. Copyists became part of the museum’s rhythm—visitors saw both the finished master and the act of its replication. In a sense, they were living annotations on art history.
It was also a strange ecology of authorship. Some copyists became famous in their own right—Berthe Morisot began by copying in the Louvre before joining the Impressionists. Others disappeared into anonymity, their brushwork swallowed by the name they were copying.
Today, a few institutions—like the Prado, the Uffizi, and the Louvre still—allow limited copyist programs. The number is small, but the tradition persists, half ritual, half apprenticeship.
They were the quiet ghosts of the galleries. You’d see them early—before the tourists—carrying easels, smocks rolled under one arm, small tins of paint clinking in bags. They’d claim a spot beneath the same painting, sometimes for weeks, like monks returning to their altar.
Many were students from the École des Beaux-Arts or local ateliers, but plenty were older—failed portraitists, widows, retired craftsmen, immigrants trying to prove they belonged in a language they couldn’t yet speak. They’d paint until their backs ached, then step aside to compare their color against the original under different light, squinting, muttering to themselves.
It wasn’t romantic work. It was devotional. To copy meant to listen with your eyes—to find the pulse inside another’s brushstroke. Some grew so intimate with a single painting that they could recite every crack in the varnish, every odd pigment change. The guards got to know them, too; there are stories of friendships that lasted decades, of guards keeping a favorite’s spot “reserved.”
And always, a small audience would gather. Children staring at two versions of the same Madonna; an old couple whispering about which looked more alive. For a few minutes, the copyist and the master shared the same frame.
When photography and prints took over, the copyists dwindled. But their way of seeing—slow, reverent, disciplined—lingers in the bones of anyone who’s ever tried to learn by mimicry.”
This is what I have been doing with scans, creating Convivial Digital Images, CDI.
Chirality: a curious word. Handedness, the spiral, the twist. Clockwise or counterclockwise, right or left — and, most importantly, does it matter? In the physical world, the answer is yes. Humans are mostly right-handed; most spirals are right-handed. Righty is tightly.
DNA and RNA are right-handed spirals. Amino acids and proteins are left handed. At the foundation a choice was made and it cascades throughout existences. We are mostly righty tighty.
Helix Corp controlled 40% of the global spring market. Its new owner, an influential figure with a taste for subtle disruption, began increasing left-handed springs by 10% each month. Engineers who noticed were quietly reassigned or terminated. New hires learned only the current standard, never the change. Within a year, 90% of springs were left-handed, unseen, unchallenged.
At first, failures were minor. A watchmaker wound a familiar pocket watch; the needle hesitated, a fraction of a second off. He shrugged and moved on. An engineer noted a jammed spring in a factory assembly, a micro-nudge toward awareness. A door lock stuck. A child’s toy jerked. Friction rippled outward, unnoticed in the larger machinery of life.
The anomalies grew. Technicians began mapping subtle misalignments. Each tug and nudge, each hesitation and slip, pointed toward a hidden pattern. Left-handed spirals were no longer a curiosity; they were structural, unavoidable. Elevators stalled, printers jammed, industrial machines misfired. Awareness spiraled inward. What had seemed minor was systemic.
Helix Corp observed quietly, tracking reports, but said nothing. Humans could only sense the twist.
Then, action began. A coalition of engineers, designers, and watchmakers created a tracking system for spring shipments. Left-handed springs were identified, monitored, and replaced before failure. Systems learned to anticipate the twist, calibrating for both right and left spirals. Helix Corp’s influence was dismantled, its authority over chirality dissolved.
The world didn’t return to naive simplicity. Spirals remained, twists persisted, but now humans moved with the awareness of them. Friction was no longer random. Micro-tugs became data, nudges became insight, and the spiral — literal and metaphorical — was no longer a hidden threat, but a force acknowledged, tracked, and respected.
This label has been in the news lately. President Trump suggested that the Russian forces might not have the ability to fight a successful conflict with the Ukraine military. Ukraine is much smaller in physical size and certainly does not have anywhere near the same number of men in the military. Yet, Trump points out that after four years of fighting there has not been significant gains in territory. In fact, he even suggests that all of the areas conquered by the Russians could be taken back by Ukrainian forces. The reason? Russia might be a “paper tiger”. Vicious on the surface, but a hollow shell, empty inside, no muscle, and no teeth, claws or bones.
Almost at the same time, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegsmith, gives a speech to a large audience of senior officers that the US military must go through a massive physical readiness change. Physical training will be important. A fat soldier is a liability. Plus, an officer corps that is also fat is a worse liability. No more fat desk officers.
There was also a statement of returning to 1990 basic training standards. Standards that were developed for the volunteer army. Supposed this is far more rigorous than the current basic training standards. My assumption is that the Secretary is concerned that our military, officers and men, are “paper tigers”.
It’s an easy argument to make, except that the 1990 standards do not even closely match the 1970 standards developed for the Vietnam War. Off posts passes were given by the second week of training, bayonet training was cancelled as it was outdating and too violent. The New Army was not “hard charging”.
If we only go back to 1990 standards, it could falsely cause us to believe that we are in warrior readiness, a dangerous tactic when rattling sabers.
A true warrior will use anything as a weapon in order to kill the enemy, and training in edged weapons is the least that we can do.
We are more like cheetahs than chimpanzees. That sounds brash, but it’s not far from the truth. Cheetahs today have only about 6,500 breeders, and in the past they dipped far lower — perhaps just a few hundred animals ten thousand years ago. Their DNA is so uniform that skin grafts from one cheetah anywhere on the planet can be accepted by any other.
Humans look massive by comparison — 8 billion alive, with maybe 4 billion of us of reproductive age. Yet the effective genetic diversity is shockingly small: it’s about what you’d expect if only 10,000 people had been breeding. Genetic evidence points to a time roughly 900,000 years ago when our ancestors may have been reduced to around a thousand individuals, and the population stayed small for a long stretch. Another squeeze seems to have occurred around 70,000 years ago.
Northern elephant seals tell a similar story. Hunted nearly to extinction in the 19th century, they were reduced to only a few dozen survivors on a single island. Today there are roughly 250,000, all descended from those two dozen.
So yes, physically we’re closer to chimpanzees. But genetically, we stand with cheetahs, elephant seals, and even bison — creatures that nearly vanished, then rebounded, but whose DNA still carries the thin, fragile code of survival.
A Work Progressing 
Sometimes A Wild God
I fell upon this poem recently, by Tom Hirons. I recommend that you visit his website to read the original.
The narrator is visited, late at night, by a mud-covered, half-divine figure who bursts into the house demanding food and attention. The “wild god” eats, drinks, laughs, and speaks in riddles. He tells stories that unsettle the host, stories about hunger, death, love, and the raw world outside the door. The narrator is both terrified and fascinated.
As dawn comes, the wild god leaves, and the speaker stands changed—shaken, more alive, painfully aware that the polite life he’s built is fragile and temporary. The encounter becomes a parable of hospitality to chaos: what it means to invite the untamed into the human home.