The book explores the contrast between close, ground-level perspectives and distant, cosmic views, highlighting how technology transforms our perception of the world. It examines the shift from natural, curved horizons to artificial, square ones, encapsulated in the title "The Artificial Magic Of The Wondrous Effects Of Optics Through Direct Vision."
While traveling overland across Japan, Siberia, Mongolia, and China, I wrote daily letters addressed to a building marked for demolition in Baltimore, where I used to live. They were written on trash scraps and notecards found along the way, then mailed across the sea. Once they accumulated in the building’s mailbox, they went down with the building, down with the ship.