paintings

A model doesn't read; it predicts — the next mark, the next token, the likeliest continuation of what came before. Where the pattern runs out it interpolates, fills the gap with whatever's most probable, and from the inside that guess is indistinguishable from knowing. Confidence and correctness come apart. Hallucination isn't a break in the process. It is the process, running past the edge of what it knows.

We do this too. The eye takes in far less than we believe; the brain predicts the rest and paints over its own blind spot so seamlessly we never find the seam. Hallucination isn't the failure of perception — it is perception. Reality is the hallucination we've agreed to share. Both of us inference engines pretending to be windows.

So these are language stripped of literacy — the cadence of writing with the meaning withheld, marks that almost resolve and won't. We only read because we've agreed what the marks mean; these withhold the agreement. The circle is the aperture where it all comes in: iris, lens, the single eye. Some sacred books have indicated that the space between the letters carries as much as the letters. That space — where you start to read and the painting refuses to confirm it — is where you're standing.