26/09/2025
The Confusion Playbook
They donât meet truth head-on; they choreograph it. A storm arrives and somehow youâre handed a drizzle, neatly bottled and labelled ânothing to see.â The room rearranges itself while youâre still at the door. Steps you were promised quietly vanish; a rubber stamp appears where a pathway should be. Itâs announced that the journey is complete, even though nobody took a single step.
Youâre ushered into a theatre where the script pretends to be justice. The lead role is certainty, but the cast is smoke. Youâre invited to argue with a verdict that never met evidence, an argument with a ghost. Offstage, the chorus repeats yesterdayâs lines on todayâs letterhead until repetition starts to feel like truth. The sound design is clever: echoes, echoes, echoes... so polished you can mistake them for answers.
Then comes the fog machine. Four hundred words of satin and shine glide past like a procession, and by the end youâre further from the question than when you began. The picture you broughtâfull, inconvenient, unmistakableâis quietly cut into smaller pieces and placed in separate rooms. Youâre left walking corridors with armfuls of fragments, feeling the weight where the whole used to be.
Time is part of the illusion. Nothing moves until the clock screams, and then everything happens at once, letters, ultimatums, a sudden performance of urgency where substance should be. The curtain drops. Applause is implied. On paper, it looks like process. In your body, it feels like quicksand.
But fog has one weakness: clarity. Name the move. Hold your line. Keep your proof. Refuse the loop. When you stand steady in what is real, the theatre loses its soundtrack. The echoes quiet. The maze stops moving. And the storm, called by its true name, finally arrives.
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