Allow me to paint you a picture in gray.
A man is planting a garden, an art piece to display in front of his home.
But there’s a pesky little weed that sprouted amongst his petunias. Like any smart gardener, he takes that weed and he cuts it out at the root.
As for the remains?
He turns them to mulch.
Using the death of the weed to seed his garden, hoping to use its demise to breathe more life into his beautiful flower patch.
It works too well, even.
Because in the mulch covered garden, a new weed takes root.
Fueled by the death of the first, feeding upon the nutrients the gardener himself introduced!
He doesn’t notice it at first.
It grows, it sustains.
Until it appears fully formed one day amongst his pretty little flowers.
A phoenix risen from gray little ashes.
It drives him mad.
Not because he can’t kill it, of course.
But because he knows that killing it won’t change a thing.
Arcadia was your most lovely of gardens, wasn’t it, Harvey? Every little death wrought by your hand was a seed planted deep within the soil and left to grow until every last flower, every last despicable diorama, was its own beautiful art piece.
Each passing day added a seed to your collection until Arcadia was blooming with bloody displays of pain and torture for the world to see.
Until you met me, that is.
I was never a flower, was I?
I was a weed.
You hated me from day one. As enthused as you were with me, I did not receive the same treatment as the others. I was not killed elegantly, not posed precisely.
No.
I was turned to a bloody mulch upon the concrete floors of the our cell block.
Driven mad perhaps by some else’s words, perhaps by my own existence, you took me out in a way unlike every other plant that found its home amongst your garden. You wanted to kill me.
But like a weed, Mr. Escher, I always find a way to come back.
My death only seeded way for my life. With every blow to my body was I able to find myself reinvigorated all the same. No matter how many times you wish to cut me down and shred me up, I’ll always come back.
Not everything is black and white, Harvey.
I am lifeless, I am deathless.
You can’t let me live because you know I will cause disorder amongst your garden simply for existing.
Yet I’m not allowed to die because you know how fruitless it would be to stop me from popping back up. You could kill me a thousand times, uproot me and discard me, but I’ll always find a way to come back.
Put down the shears, Harvey. Lay down and weep as I turn your garden upside down and drain it of its life.
Turn me to mulch.
Witness my rebirth.
You cannot kill me in any way that matters.