The Playground of Shadows

November 16, 2024

Boredom sat heavily on him, like dust on an old, untouched shelf. He stretched out his limbs, a shell adrift with no anchor, skimming across some dull, endless sea. Nirvana, the world whispered, was an empty thing if this was it. Peace? It felt like the slow pulse of something unfeeling, a lifeless melody humming in the background.

But there was a whisper, too, some echo of Buddha, prophets, and wanderers who saw meaning where he could find none. “The world is your playground,” they seemed to say, and yet, the toys scattered around him were chipped and faded, the games already won and lost. The thrill was gone.

He looked down at his hands, at his shoe, at the cigarette butt lying desolate on the cracked pavement. He saw only a cigarette butt, but when he reached for it, his fingers were wrapped in some spectral glove, ancient and unknowable, numbing his touch. A silky chant rose from the earth, and in the flickering haze, he caught a glimpse of her—the forgotten Madonna on the run, the ghost of a purpose that had long since slipped through his fingers.

And so, he took to the highway in the wind, that endless road North, where the sands met the sky and eternity seemed to lie just around the bend. The prophet in his mind handed him a book and an angel with curls handed him his soul. Here, he thought, is something close to freedom. Here, he felt the weight of all things lightened by the wind as he climbed mountains, lit fires, and let his words drift into the stars—alone yet somehow complete.

But the nights were haunted by shadow games. By candlelight, he felt the passing of unspoken truths caught in the heavy air, thick with incense and echoes. Sitting across from him, his companion cast her glance, a holy arc, over him. No mirrors were needed, only the quiet acceptance of their hearts pulsing in time. Together, they watched the fall of all things—leaves, bottles, lives—and knew that letting go was the only way to hold anything.

He felt the years burn away like the slow ember of his cigarette, holes punched through the fabric of his past. In the distance, a gladiator carried worlds on his shoulders, a Da Vinci gaze locked on some distant horizon. Yes, he thought, pull the plug on life’s bath. Let it all drain away. And as the waves of what was and what would be crashed against his pedestals, he let them crumble, the sand running through his fingers in memory of time slipping by.

The smell of white night, nostalgic and sweet, settled over him like a soft rain. He closed his eyes, feeling the weight and lightness of it all. His life, his love, and his losses had collided like the gentle kiss of billiard balls, a game played without cues, a moment that had once perched on the tree they’d planted in the garden of then.

As he let it all fall, he saw that his life was neither storm nor fury but dew on a flower, a brief glisten in the morning light that would, by noon, disappear. Smiling to himself, he walked into the wind, his footsteps soft on the path toward meaning or maybe just toward peace.


The Road of My Life

November 13, 2024

Autumn leaves scatter over sandstone steps, each one a memory resting in the quiet folds of yesterday. I walk back through these moments—your fingers brushing against mine, faint traces of our names etched on time’s walls, words pulsing beneath our skin like heartbeats, unsaid, waiting. We were young, hearts held in delicate cages, eager and hesitant to be known, felt, and understood. But we let the leaves fall, let the silence stretch across seasons, sighs slipping from our lips like quiet farewells.

Now, the flowers that once reached the sky fall in the fields of memory. In some way, everything that blossomed has gone to seed. Petals drift to the earth, an offering to the silent universe. Your embrace, now an emptiness woven from starlight, holds me in a kind of nothingness that somehow feels like everything—a cosmic tapestry threading through flesh and bone.

Man shapes, a woman breathes; we exist within this cradle of creation, where time unfolds like a flower climbing eternity. It’s a quiet dance of moments becoming years, the steady mountain above and the singing brook below. Listen—do you hear it? The song beneath the song, the hum that makes everything feel so real yet intangible. I fall into it, the marrow of it all, with you. And my words, as heavy as stones, fall with me, drawn by gravity into a place beyond words.

You hold me in the palm of your mind, a single breath echoing with all that might have been said or might never need saying. Maybe it’s wrong to speak like this, caught in someone else’s story, someone else’s time. Let’s light a candle; let shadows play in their necessary darkness. After all, what is revealed without the blessing of shadow, without the weight of night?

Eternity waits around the corner, buried in dusty books and whispered memories. The ghost of your father stirs in your gaze, his secrets deep-rooted, buried in the hay of memory. And yet, here we are, stranded in the mud of our own lives. Hold me, just hold me. Let these layers—the days, the skins we wear—dissolve. What does it matter if we’re a mistake? Our fingers have already found each other; our hearts are stitched together in the dark, understanding one another without needing to speak. Our song isn’t made of words; it’s an ache living in our bones, a quiet refrain only we can hear.

Trust, and the door will open. Trust and the ladder to the stars will appear before us. Open our hearts, and suffering shrinks to a single dewdrop on a blade of grass. Look into each other’s eyes, and there—yes, there—is the kingdom we’ve been seeking. Hold my hand, and we’ll never die. Listen to the silence between us, and you’ll know me as deeply as anything can be known.

What we are can’t be held in a word, a sound, a shape, or a shadow. What we are is beyond naming, beyond showing, beyond grasping. We are the emptiness that holds everything, a No-Thing birthing all things.

Give me the road again—not the mapped highway with rigid lines, but the open, untamed spaces of the unknown. Let me wander back to where my heart first learned to roam, to those early fires and wild, unbroken skies. I want to walk those paths again, not with my feet, but with the quiet longing of my soul, letting memory rise like smoke in the evening air.

Let me laugh, unguarded, and weep without fear. Let me reach for the stars as I once did, not with hands, but with the open ache of my heart. I want to sit by the fire, tell stories in the warmth of the night, and rest in the cool shade of day. To live simply, fully, in all the ways that once felt impossible.

And when the time comes—when I am nothing but ash scattered to the winds—let me settle here, in this place where we once stood together, in the quiet soil beneath the autumn leaves. Let me dissolve into the earth, and let love rise again, whispered through the leaves on these old sandstone steps.