How to recognize what is real? To know the layers and depths of oneself, to know how to open, to know how to fill a capacious hold-all, to know one’s own quirks and nervous twitches,...

I pastiche, I quote, I lie. Fake, forge, forage, fabricate, copy, borrow, transform, steal. I illusion. I’m a genuine deceiver, a shy sham artist.

Yet I never sought what is real, yearned for the real, but rather I have yearned for dreams more than solid things. I can say I love the textures of dreams. The way they hover...