Philyra: (squinting dramatically at the horizon while looking at a projected artwork) This artwork is an enigma. Does it depict a glorious dawn or a dramatic sunset?

Ellesha: (with a phosphor-cool voice without looking up from her laptop computer) Oh, my dear Philyra, does it even matter? Either way, it's light kissing water. The mechanics are identical; time simply pirouettes in a choreography of illusion.

Philyra: (laughing, palms open, half-mocking, half-pleading) See, I was hoping for a simple answer, but it seems too much philosophy strangles common sense! Once we embark on philosophic tenets, everything gets messy and our footprints dissolve.

Andrei: (arms crossed, staring blankly at the image, tone stripped of inflection) Civilizations, too, are subject to optics and ontological debate. Doesn't it seem that our civilization is approaching its sunset? The light's fading in America, even if we don rose-colored glasses the eclipse is unmistakable.

Elijah: (turning sharply, eyes wide while thinking of counter-arguments) How do you know that? This could very well be a brand-spanking-new dawn! History is not a straight line, but a convoluted Möbius strip. What is a darkening sunset in one place might be a welcome sunrise elsewhere. In the waves of history, all things pirouette!

Ellesha: (closing her laptop with the soft finality of a coffin lid) Precisely! We must zen beyond all limiting binaries! Dawn for some is sunset for others. They always coexist. Right now, somewhere on this planet, someone's throwing confetti at the sun rising while others watch it sink. Same sun. Same moment. Totally different perspectives. Reality refuses partisanship.

Philyra: (with a resigned sigh as her shoulders sag) As I was saying, too much philosophy is the death of common sense. Common sense is often strangled in the cradle of rhetorical embellishment and overly intellectual sophistry.