Ink and Invitation

October 31, 2025

“We call things into being long before we realise what we have invited.”

Some people will say I’m strange for noticing this — but lately I’ve been unsettled by how many walk the streets carrying death and darkness on their skin.
Skulls grinning from shoulders.
Demons curled along arms.
Faces twisted in torment inked into chests and backs.

They remind me of some very bad acid trips I had in the early 1970s — when the veil tore too far, and I didn’t know how to close it again.

People say, “It’s just art.”
But I’ve lived long enough to know symbols aren’t neutral.
They call. They invite. They open doors.

I’m always reminded, when I see rebellious young Greeks covered in tattoos, that in ancient Greece these stigmata were not marks of identity or defiance.
They were punishments — burned or cut into criminals, slaves, and prisoners of war. A permanent sign of ownership — of being claimed.
Our ancestors believed that what was carved into the skin also carved its meaning into the soul.

For thousands of years, humans carried symbols for blessing — crosses, icons, beads, prayers folded into pockets, saints’ names whispered under breath.
We understood that what we placed close to the body had power.
We understood to be careful.

I carry a cross given to me by my mother when I was a child.
She told me it held a tiny splinter of the real cross Jesus was crucified on.
She warned me never to open the locket because the splinter was so fine my breath might blow it away.
So I never opened it.
And I wear it every day.

People ask if I was never curious.
But if it was real — and I breathed it away — what then?

Wearing a cross around the neck is not the same as inscribing a cross into the skin.

I’m not judging anyone.
I’ve walked my own shadowed paths.
I know what it is to open a door without realising what enters with it.
So when I say these images feel like invitations to something dark — I say it softly, from remembering, not from any desire to be right.

Some will disagree. Some will shake their heads.
That’s fine.

But I won’t place an image alongside these words.
I have no wish to give those symbols more room than they already take.
To show them would be to help them travel.

So I speak quietly here, without pictures:

There are forces we forget at our own cost.
And disbelief does not protect us from what we call forth.

No argument here — only a feeling I could not ignore.

That is all.

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The Stone Seeker: A Myth of the Wandering Soul

October 2, 2025

A departure from my usual posts — this one takes the form of myth, an inner journey written as an allegory. I offer it as a companion to my ongoing stories.

He was called Stavros, which means Cross, and that was his burden — and his path.

One day, in a time that was no time, he heard the silent summons. Not from the sky, but from the pulse within the earth. He set out, carrying nothing but his breath and the ache of questions. He climbed the ancient spine of Sinai without sleep, ascending stone upon stone, as if walking up the ribs of a forgotten god. At the summit, the sun did not answer him — but it showed him he was not alone.

The descent was harder. That is the truth of all peaks. He reached the foot of the mountain and sat by the monastery of Katherine, where silence grows like lichen on old stone. There he met the Gatekeeper — a monk whose heart had fossilised into ritual. Stavros spoke the sacred tongue, but the Gatekeeper did not recognise him. He uttered the Word — “Yunan” — and dismissed him like a leaf blown against the stone walls.

So the Seeker left the sacred walls and returned to the road. It was on this road that he met the Trickster Guide — a Bedouin named Mohamed, who spoke through music and mischief. He offered herbs not for healing but for vision. He rolled a joint while guiding the chariot at great speed. Smoke curled like a serpent toward the heavens, and the desert began to shimmer.

Mohamed showed him the living map: dunes that were coastlines, mountains that were camels in repose. “This is Sinai,” he said, “and there is the Red Sea.” In that moment, the Seeker saw geography become prophecy. The land was not just land — it was a scroll unrolling.

Mohamed led him to a mosque, a café, a grove of planted trees. “We are of the 15 tribes,” the Guide said. “We plant what will shade the unborn.” The Seeker ate with him, drank the dark tea of mystery, and vanished into moonlit streets.

Then came the Labyrinth.

In the night city, he was lost among alleyways, where cats whispered secrets and doors led nowhere. He emerged by chance, or fate, and met the Scribe, who wrote his name in the language of the ancestors. “All men have three names,” said the Scribe, “but only one is true.”

The Seeker travelled again — across waters, under stars, on feluccas that rocked like cradles of time. He met companions with names like runes: Linda, Olga, Shayari. Together they smoked, drank rakii, and watched angels dissolve into the air like incense.

He arrived at a threshold: the City of Columns. There, under a sky bleached of memory, he sat on sand and turned a plastic bottle into a shrine. He waited for a chariot to carry him across the Nile of forgetting. Someone called him “the Greek with eight children,” and he laughed. He had none — and yet carried thousands within him.

Then came the Two Georges.

One was a Potter. One was a Priest of the Inner Fire. They saw in Stavros something he had hidden from himself. “You evoke the honour of Christ in others,” they said. “You wear innocence like armour.” They fed him macaroni and truth. In return, they asked for stories.

And so he spoke.

And in speaking, he remembered.

Dialogue became divination. Each question was a key. Each story a lost scroll. “In dialogue,” said George, “there is living transmission. The book you write is not of ink. It is breath, shared.”

They spoke of the monk on Athos who gave him a stone. “Leave this on the mountain,” he had said. And so Stavros carried it until the burden became a prayer. They spoke of karma, of grace, of gifts that are given but never earned.

Then came the desecration.

He passed through Luxor and saw the sign — McDonald’s, Temple of Luxor Street. The Golden Arches beside eternal stone. He took a photo, not to remember, but to mourn. Some desecrations are not loud. Some come wrapped in convenience.

And still, a stranger in Cairo whispered: “Welcome.” One word, like a flame in the dust.

The Seeker came to understand: giving and receiving were not separate acts. He had received shelter, food, names, music, silence. He had given stories, listening, laughter, witness. There was no accounting. Only flow.

He saw now that the journey had not been from place to place, but from self to soul. He gave before he received. He received before he gave. It was not barter. It was the hidden law.

And then — the Word.

“Sorry,” they said, “is just a word.” But he knew better. The Word began the world. Words held power, memory, vibration. Words could curse. Words could carry. Words could redeem.

He left the stone on the mountain.

He returned carrying only light.

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Near Shore, Far Out

October 1, 2025

I keep reading about experienced sailors dying close to shore. Not in the middle of the Pacific, not after months at sea — but within sight of land. And each time, something stirs uneasily inside me.

Because I once sailed four thousand kilometres there and back to Nauru. And I had no experience. None. No yachtmaster’s ticket, no decades at the helm. Just a call, a cause, and an instinct that said: go.

I wasn’t alone, though — I joined experienced skippers and crew who knew the sea far better than I did. My leap was into their world, not a solo crossing.

At the time, it felt like courage, or maybe necessity. Looking back now, it feels different. It feels like standing on the edge of a cliff without knowing if the parachute on my back would open. I tremble at the thought. I used Astrology for both my horoscope and the horoscope of the Flotillas of Hope to justify the decision to send the Call to Action to Nauru. To justify my, now in retrospect – my need, to stretch my ‘being’.

But here’s the truth: trembling in hindsight is not the same as folly at the time. What we see later is always coloured by what we know now. Back then, I lived as I always have — by leaps. Leaps into the unknown, trusting that my Guardian Angel working behind the scenes of life would catch me.

Others trained, charted, prepared. I leapt. And somehow, I survived. Not because I was wise, not because I was skilled, but because something — call it fate, protection, or really that Angel — carried me through.

Now, when I hear of sailors lost near shore, my heart aches. It reminds me that the sea has no favourites, and that my survival was never guaranteed. It humbles me. It makes me bow my head, not boast.

But it also tells me something else: my life has always been this way. Not straight, not cautious, but here, there and anywhere. Risk and recovery, fall and renewal. And even the trembling I feel now is part of the me that survived — the deepening that comes after the leap.

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Out of Step, In Tune

June 18, 2025

I’ve never moved easily with the crowd. Even as a child, I sensed things others didn’t notice. I saw patterns. I felt tension where others felt calm. That difference set the course for much of my life. I later came to understand it as neurodivergence.

This way of thinking made me restless in the face of injustice. When politicians tried to divide people, I helped create Cultural Stomp. When Australia locked up refugees on remote islands, I helped send boats toward Nauru. These actions didn’t come from strategy. They came from something more basic: I couldn’t stay silent.

It also shaped how I look after my health. At 73, I walk every day, track my progress, and keep my habits sharp. My VO₂ Max sits around 41.5—on par with men much younger. I didn’t plan to achieve that. I just kept going, step by step.

Writing followed the same pattern. I never set out to write for an audience. I wrote to make sense of what I saw and felt. My work comes from moments that stood out—dreams, memories, odd encounters, sharp turns in the road. Most of it came quietly, over many years.

I’ve lived most of my life outside the usual path. I rarely feel part of things. But that distance gave me something else: the space to see clearly, and the will to act when it mattered.

The posts here on this blog comes from that place. No polish. No performance. Just what felt real, when it mattered most.

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Why Don’t People Choose to Heal?

May 16, 2025

At 73, I’ve kept Type 2 diabetes in remission for over three years—through walking, simple food, and resistance exercises at home.

Sometimes I wonder why more people don’t walk the way I do. Not just physically — but deliberately, with purpose, with rhythm. Not for medals, not for watches or metrics, but to come home to themselves. To turn toward health, rather than away from it. To heal.

You’d think the instinct to live would be enough. You’d think the desire to feel good, move well, and age gracefully would drive people to act. But often, it doesn’t.

I think I know part of the reason why.

We live in a time where wellness has been commercialised — sold back to us by fitness influencers, gym chains, and self-styled “health gurus.”

There’s always a hack, a supplement, a challenge, a subscription. And behind it all, almost always, is the same tired motive: money.

The industry promises shortcuts, biohacks, six-packs, detoxes. But very little of it teaches people how to truly listen to their own body. Very little of it says: Walk the same path every day, in silence, and see what grows.

I didn’t pay for a program.

I didn’t join a gym.

I didn’t buy expensive equipment.

I walked. I changed how I ate — simplified my meals, removed the refined sugar and processed foods, honoured the basics.

And I began doing resistance exercises at home using my own bodyweight: push-ups, squats, step-ups, planks, curls with light dumbbells.

No machines. No mirrors. Just daily practice, spread across the hours of an ordinary day.

Over time, my blood glucose dropped, my weight settled, and my resting heart rate sank—to the level of an endurance athlete’s.

Not because I’m extraordinary. But because I showed up for my own life, one quiet effort at a time.

What astounds me is that this happened to me.

That at 73, after a lifetime of ordinary habits and imperfections — after years of smoking, struggle, and neglect — my body responded with such grace. That it could still heal. Still strengthen. Still find its rhythm.

I never expected this.

Discipline isn’t punishment.

Routine isn’t boring. And consistency isn’t obsession. They’re the quiet architecture of a life well lived.

I wish I could bottle what I’ve found and pass it around like water. But the truth is, you have to taste it yourself.

You have to take the first step — not for likes, not for a fitness tracker, not for anyone else — but because something in you remembers: you are still alive.

And you are still free to begin.

A note from the heart:
I share this not to suggest that my path is a cure-all. I know that remission isn’t possible for everyone, even with great effort. Our bodies are different. Our lives are different. What worked for me may not work for someone else — or not in the same way, or not at the same time. I honour those who are doing their best, every day, under circumstances we can’t always see. This is just my story — and I share it in case it offers hope, not judgment.

Postscript

What still astounds me is how far the body can come back when you listen to it.

At 73, my VO₂ max is estimated at 46–50, and my resting heart rate stays between 48–52 bpm — on par with fit men in their 30s to early 40s.

No gym. No guru. No plan.

Just walking.
Simple food.
Daily resistance.

That’s what worked.

📷 For images from my daily walks—the place where this journey unfolded:
https://dodona777.com/photos-from-a-river-bank-a-flood-plain/

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The Shirt That Waited

May 10, 2025

A quiet moment in a thrift shop became a luminous sign—folded in cotton, stitched with meaning. A forgotten shirt reminded me that even in doubt, the path whispers back: keep going.

Today, a whisper found its way to me in cotton.

I took a turn I hadn’t planned. Missed another I thought I meant to take. My car drifted like a leaf on invisible currents, nudging me gently toward a thrift shop I’d never noticed before. I wasn’t looking for anything. Just drifting.

Inside, beneath the soft hum of fluorescent light and the faint scent of other people’s lives, I browsed without seeing—until I did.

A shirt.

Ordinary, almost.

Except for the words:

Found in a $10 bin. Delivered like a prophecy.

Never underestimate an old man who graduated from the Univeristy of Sydney.

I stood still.

The sentence blinked softly, like an old friend in disguise.

I’m an old man.

I’m a Sydney Uni graduate.

And lately… I’ve been adrift. Writing, yes—but shadowed by that quiet ache of doubt, that question: Who do you think you are?

The shirt didn’t answer. It just waited. As if it had been waiting a long time.

I’ve never seen such a message on any piece of clothing. Not in a shop. Not in a dream. Not in a life filled with signs and silences.

And where did I find it? Among a rack of forgotten clothes, a sale bin really—three garments for ten dollars. Almost thrown away, as if its worth were negligible. But value has its own strange gravity.

So I listened.

I bought the shirt, not to wear, but to honour the moment. Folded it like a relic. A thread in the quiet tapestry that tells me: Keep going. Your words matter. You are not to be underestimated—even by yourself.

Sometimes the universe speaks in lightning.

Sometimes, in shirts.

And no, this wasn’t random.

Not this precise. Not this poetic. Not on a day when I needed it most. There is a language beneath the visible, and sometimes it breaks the surface. This message wasn’t waiting in the shop. It was waiting for me. A quiet benediction disguised as cloth, gently reminding me that my path still holds light—and voice—and that even the doubting steps are part of the dance.

I didn’t expect to write this. I just followed a feeling, like I did that day in the shop. If it resonated with you, I’m glad. Sometimes the smallest signs are the ones we carry the longest.

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The Fractured Cosmos: Crime and Capitalism Unveiled

December 10, 2024

The monster lives—a being of primal, vestigial flesh, ancient yet evolving. It is our charge to nurture it, to coax its grotesque beauty into full bloom. This is no ordinary monster, for it is not of the material world alone. It embodies all that is untamed within us: the rage, the lust, the fleeting glimpses of transcendence. Our task is not to suppress it but to help it grow, for only through its growth can we understand the fractures within ourselves and the universe we inhabit.

We do not dwell on the petty crimes of the cradle—the foolish missteps of a fledgling species. Such crimes are symbols of a planet still finding its place in the greater cosmic order. They are phases, reflections of a culture struggling to reconcile its roots in the soil with its dreams of the stars. The criminal mind, at its core, is narcissistic—a mirror too focused on itself to see the vastness beyond.

But even as we wrestle with our own shadows, the angelic influence stirs the heavens. It is said that once, in an act of rebellion or grace, an angel threw the moon toward the Earth, setting it into motion. The tides rose, the rhythms of life were born, and yet, with this gift came the seeds of discord. Every cycle of creation invites a counterforce, and we now stand at the precipice of The Last Days, where the battle lines are drawn between mammals and machines.

The Pole Shift looms on the horizon, a magnetic upheaval echoing the chaos within. It is not just a geophysical event but a metaphor for the inversion of values, the tilting of the moral axis. What was once revered is now reviled, and what was once reviled is now celebrated. This shift connects to the crimes of our age, each a wound inflicted upon the fabric of existence.

Crime and Capitalism: are they one and the same? The boy who stole from the computer hackers their gift of hacking—was he a criminal, or was he simply redistributing stolen fire? Capitalism, with its rising tide of insecurity, extracts not just the essence of labour but the very essence of the sea, of the Earth, of the soul.

The Flower-Telepathic Computer: a marvel of sentience and sensitivity, it blooms in the minds of those who dare to connect. Yet, its very existence exposes a cascade of crimes—against family, against nature, against space and time. What is the theft of a wallet compared to the theft of an epoch? What is a lie told to a friend compared to the lies encoded into the nervous system of our galaxy?

Holo-Crime: crimes against the holographic unity of the one. These are the incursions into the sacred matter of space, the violations of the thin, shimmering membrane that separates what is from what could be. The maniac who murdered—did he act alone, or was his hand guided by the collective desperation of a species that has forgotten how to dream without violence?

The Essence of the Sea: shell extraction, the taking of the ocean’s soul. As we strip the Earth of its treasures, we strip ourselves of meaning. What rises in its place is a tide not of water but of fear, insecurity, and longing.

The crimes mount, layer upon layer, until they form a tower that scrapes the edge of understanding:

The crime against the family, for it severs the roots.

The crime against nature, for it poisons the soil.

The crime against angels, for it mocks their grace.

The crime against demons, for it denies their necessity.

The crime against the planet, the sun, the nervous system of the galaxy.

Each crime is a fracture, yet within each fracture lies a seed of potential—a lesson, a call to reconciliation. If the monster within us is to grow, if we are to nurture it into something more than the sum of its appetites, we must confront these crimes not as judges but as witnesses. We must see them for what they are: the echoes of a species learning how to wield its power.

And what of Capitalism?

Is it truly the villain or merely the mask we have chosen for our shadow? Like the essence of humanity, the nature of crime is neither fixed nor simple. It is a hologram that reflects the one fractured into infinite pieces. To heal, we must not only piece together what is broken but also embrace the fractures as part of the whole.

In the end, angelic influence will not save us, nor will the machines, nor the rising tide. Only the monster—the raw, unfiltered essence of ourselves—holds the key. To nurture it is to nurture the cosmos, for we and it are not separate. The crimes against the sun, the moon, the Earth, and the stars are crimes against ourselves. And in their reconciliation lies our redemption.

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The Art of Magic, the Magic of Art

December 1, 2024

True art is magic, and any true magic is art. With the touch of a pen, a brush, or even a finger, an artist—if aligned with the essence of their vocation—commands worlds both seen and unseen. Percy Shelley once declared that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and though his words echo from an era long past, they feel uncannily prescient.

But what does this mean in practice? Some might argue that if poets and artists truly wield such power, they are the most woeful rulers ever to preside over humanity. After all, if art is shaping the world, why do the screens that dominate our lives churn out nothing but dissonance, despair, and empty spectacle? Is this dystopian noise truly the vision of today’s artists?

I imagine Shelley himself interrupting from the shadows of the ether: “Don’t be so literal! I meant it metaphorically. Art isn’t governance by laws; it’s governance by ideas, by imagination, by what transcends the mundane. But for heaven’s sake, don’t turn poetry into a cargo cult—worshipping its form as though it’s divine by nature rather than by what it creates within you.”

And yet, there’s a peculiar magic in this metaphorical cargo, in the words, images, and sounds that tumble into the open space of our minds. For those who see the world in myths and metaphors, art carries immense weight. It is both vessel and spell, weaving meaning from the chaos.

Take, for instance, the ancient stories we hold as sacred. The tumbling walls of Jericho. The resurrection of Christ. The creation of the universe in seven days. Do these stories endure because they are literally true, or because they resonate with something deeper—something ineffable? These tales are, above all else, poetry, built to inspire, to guide, to anchor us in moral or spiritual truth. Their magic is not in their factual accuracy but in their capacity to awaken a sense of wonder and move us toward the good.

In this sense, the Bible, like all great art, is a magical artefact. It is less a document of historical fact than a talisman, transmitting its moral and poetic energy across centuries. It scarcely matters whether Jesus of Nazareth held an identity card or walked among us as a historical figure. What matters is the poetic proof—the themes of redemption, sacrifice, and hope that compels us to strive for something greater.

Even today, this ancient poetry retains its power in a world awash with “meaning packages” from advertising slogans and clickbait soundbites. The cynicism of the modern world would have us believe that such stories are relics of the past, yet their resonance persists. True art, like true magic, touches something eternal. It reaches into the ineffable and makes it visible, if only for a moment.

But here’s the tension: if art is so powerful, why does it so often feel powerless in the face of modern chaos? The art world seems increasingly commodified, trapped in an endless cycle of trends, likes, and algorithms. It’s tempting to believe that the magic has been diluted, reduced to spectacle, or even silenced altogether. Yet, history reminds us that art’s power isn’t always loud or obvious.

Think of Picasso’s Guernica—a painting that “legislated” not through laws, but through the weight of its horror and the clarity of its vision. Or Maya Angelou’s poetry, which legislates even now, carving spaces for hope and resistance. True art doesn’t demand attention; it reshapes the world quietly, insistently, often long after it is created.

Art’s magic, much like a magician’s sleight of hand, often works unnoticed. It transforms us subtly, weaving itself into the fabric of our lives without our conscious permission. Consider a song that makes us weep, a novel that reframes the way we see the world or a photograph that stops us in our tracks. These are not passive objects; they are spells cast by creators who reached into the ineffable and returned with something transcendent.

The danger, as Shelley warned, lies in worshipping the artefact itself rather than the spirit it conjures. Too often, we mistake the form for the magic, clinging to what can be packaged, sold, or commodified. But art’s true power is never in the object—it’s in the transformation it invokes within us.

This is where the artist becomes a magician, conjuring meaning from raw material and shaping worlds from chaos. True art challenges the status quo not because it seeks to destroy but because it dares to create—to reimagine what is possible. The poet legislates not with authority but with imagination, reshaping the boundaries of what we believe to be true.

Even in today’s fractured world, art retains its quiet, ineffable power. The greatest works endure not because they are timeless, but because they speak to the timeless within us. Art—like magic—relies on the participation of its audience, on our willingness to suspend disbelief and step into the unknown.

So yes, art is magic, and magic is art. Both touch the eternal, both pull at the ineffable. And whether we realize it or not, both shape the worlds we inhabit. The artist’s hand, like the magician’s, is at work all around us—transforming, challenging, inspiring. The question is whether we are brave enough to recognize it.

==================================================================

The quote is from Percy Bysshe Shelley who said that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” This famous phrase comes from his essay A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821 but published posthumously in 1840.

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

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The Temporary Angel: A Journey Beyond Reality

November 15, 2024

No rainbow hues crowned the dilapidated house across the asphalt. A lone weed struggled through the crack in the cement to greet the constant passersby. She could empathize with the weed. “What’s a weed but a plant discarded from the mob?” she thought.

Her hair, from a distance, looked like a lion’s mane. Up close, what you thought was hair was clusters of thin lines of flame with light blue ends. Was she an angel? A messenger of fire descended into this neighbourhood? Or was she just an illusion to occupy a mind locked into a cube of space? Could she be both? Like a profile that is a vase from one view or two faces turned inward from another. How long she had been watching was anyone’s guess.

George felt her eyes on him, an unsettling sensation that sharpened his awareness of his subterranean existence. He had carried the underground in his soul for so long that he feared being recognized—feared it might destroy him. To be seen was to be known, and to be known was to lose the only freedom he understood: the fragile equilibrium between necessity and whim. His underground world was a realm of shifting sand, where heaven and hell were interchangeable kingdoms. Above, the surface world was a place of silhouettes; below, he clung to the parallax of a lost star.

The worry beads in his pocket offered little comfort. His father had given them to him, claiming they were carved from the thigh bones of a Turk killed in some distant war. The macabre story had been a joke, his father’s way of mixing humour with his dark compassion. But the beads—smooth, ivory fragments of elephant tusk—still felt like relics of a troubled inheritance. He turned them over in his hand as if their smooth surface might anchor him to something solid.

At the station, Sophie appeared, filling the empty space with something familiar and alien. George noticed her wings first—scarlet feathers that seemed too vivid and alive to be part of any costume.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice wary.

“Good, you see me,” she replied, a grin teasing her lips. “Can you see all of me?”

He squinted. “I can see you’ve got red wings.”

“Scarlet,” she corrected. “That’s even better! You can see my wings. Most can’t.” Her hands moved as she spoke, graceful as a dancer’s, and George found himself oddly captivated. “I’m a Temporary Angel,” she continued, “and I need your help. I want to be made permanent.”

George shook his head. “You’re telling me you’re an angel? Walking around Redfern Station? And I’m the only one who can see you?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “What other people?”

George looked around and saw that the station was deserted. The people who were walking around, looking at their watches, holding their bags, waiting for a train—there was no one on the platforms or the stairs. It was as if the world had been blown away with a breath, leaving only him and Sophie in this crystalline stillness. He glanced at his shadow, unnervingly sharp against the ground in the fading twilight. The light around him seemed too pure, too surreal, sharpening every edge and making every detail glow with impossible clarity.

Sophie handed him a cup of coffee, her thermos producing exactly what he liked—short and black, no sugar. “For now, silence might save you. Just listen. Let your heart speak louder than your head. Don’t let your head scalp you.”

As George sipped his coffee, she crossed her legs and leaned back slightly. “You know,” she said, “some people believe you must suffer to reach salvation—hairshirts, long vigils, self-denial. But my colleagues and I have learned that you can sit at the gates of salvation with a cup of coffee and not be asked to move on.” She winked at him.

They sat in silence until the air shifted. A moth the size of George’s hand appeared, landing delicately on the rim of his cup. Its eyes—dark and unblinking—seemed to peer into his soul.

“That’s Moth,” Sophie said. “A fellow Temp. You’ll meet more of us soon.”

Moth took off, its wings slicing through the air like a blade. Sophie stood, her scarlet wings stretching wide. “What do you want, George?” she asked, her voice low and steady. “Say it aloud.”

He hesitated, holding his breath, the weight of the question pressing down on him.

“What do you want, George?” Sophie asked again, her voice softer this time. “Be honest. It’s not the past you’re after, is it?”

“I want everything,” he finally said. “Everything, including making it all like it was before—perfect.”

She smiled, a faint sadness in her eyes. “Everything, huh? Even a brand-new car?”

“Sure,” he said, though he knew how hollow his words sounded.

Sophie turned her head toward the distant stairs. “Look over there. If the timing is right, he’ll reveal something to us.”

At the top of the railway stairs, a man descended. With each step, his shadow lengthened, stretching until it reached the bottom, falling down the stairway like a spectral companion. He dragged a sack behind him, his movements erratic, like a puppet tugged by invisible strings. His patchwork clothes—a riot of velvet, canvas, lace, and denim—hung on his frame like a discarded quilt.

The Ragman stopped before them, his single eye gleaming. Sophie gestured toward him, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He doesn’t expect any sense from you. He merely guards the door.”

The Ragman began to hum, his voice rough and melodic, then sang softly:

“Pictures of Sophie burn at the edges,
In shades of blue, she keeps her pledges.”

Moth descended from above, spiralling in tight circles before perching on the Ragman’s head. Sophie’s wings shifted as she stepped forward. “This is the sign,” she murmured.

The Ragman shuffled closer, his one eye scanning George with a gaze that weighed him in unseen scales. Then, with a raspy certainty, he said, “The timing is right. The planets are aligned, and you’re here.”

Sophie turned to George, her expression shifting to something both tender and resolute. “What do you think, George? Will you take the next step?”

She extended her hand toward him, and he felt her fingers press through his chest, gripping his heart. A sharp crack echoed in his ears as his vision dissolved into light.

They rose together, Sophie’s wings propelling them upward. Below, George saw his body standing alone on the platform. He saw the weed standing defiantly alone as he ascended. Then, slowly, the world came into focus—a railway station teeming with people, their movements alive with purpose.

Higher still, the Earth appeared, a blue and white orb spinning in a sea of black. Sophie’s wings shimmered, their scarlet hue fading into white as they ascended.

The cries and groans of countless souls filled the air. “What is this place?” George asked, his voice trembling.

“The holding space of the dead,” Sophie replied.

“The sun takes those whose light burned too brightly to last. The moon cradles the quiet souls, the dreamers. And Earth… Earth takes those who still have something left to finish,” Sophie said softly.

“Is my father here?” George asked.

Sophie nodded. “He’s waiting.”

George felt the fear of taking an uncertain step onto a journey that had no clear destination. Sophie’s grip on his heart tightened, and he realized she had brought him to the edge of something vast and unknowable. The shifting sand of his old life was gone, and in its place stretched a horizon of infinite possibility.

“The stranger within you is no stranger to me,” Sophie said. “It’s always been watching, waiting for this moment.”

“What happens now?” George asked.

Sophie smiled, her wings glowing softly. “That’s up to you.”

George felt the pull of the horizon, vast and uncharted. Somewhere in the distance, a new path was waiting. He took a step forward into the light.

The above images generated by AI from the story.

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Posted by stavr0s

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.

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Posted by stavr0s

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