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Césina par and pip are the words at the bottom of a very famous surrealist piece of art

by the artist René Magritte. And you've probably seen it before and even if you don't quite know the artist or the

relevance you probably would recognize this image of a smoking pipe a wooden smoking pipe

made of brown wood with a black spout against a white background and the French

writing along the bottom, ce si ne'n'epe um peep, uh, which I am very much making a crude

interpretation of as not even remotely any kind of French speaker.

But English, this phrase means this is not a pipe.

And this is an image I think I first saw in my youth and have been familiar with just through

the absorption of culture.

You know how these things just sort of seem to crop up as you go about your daily lives.

Though until recently, perhaps, in the last few years of my life I've never really understood the relevance of this image or at least what it is that Magritte was trying to convey the meaning he was trying to give by having this piece of art and saying those precise words, this is not a pipe.

And ultimately, the thing he was trying to get across was that what we see in the image very much

appears to be a pipe. It is quite a realistic depiction of a old wooden smoking pipe,

but he's trying to remind us that sometimes when we're engaging with art or any representation

of reality, that we can sometimes convoluted what we're looking at

with reality itself.

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