surroundings

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquidsöand Imight even be said to possess a mind.I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me† When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imaginationöindeed, everything and anything except me.

—Ellison, RalphWaldo