Page 3
Browse earlier articles, stories, and notes. New pieces appear regularly.
Kael hated this tree. The old elm his teacher, Elias, dragged into the workshop wasn’t a material-it was an insult. Its trunk ran crooked, twisting as if in a death spasm. Dark, almost black knots stared back like blind eyes. Deep fissures split the bark like scars. For a week Kael had tried to carve a falcon from it. In his mind it had to be the...
Fear of the unknown is only the shadow cast by our unrealized potential. 🦋
You've got a warm, purring bundle of happiness weighing a few kilos resting on your chest, and you think you're the one who took it in. What a grand, glorious delusion. We build starships, decode the genome, argue about postmodernism, while the leading Zen master naps at our feet and we never think to sign up for his class. And his curriculum has...
Ever happened to you? Someone throws a harsh line your way and you instantly counterattack with logic and facts, desperate to prove you’re right. Even if you win the argument, a bitter aftertaste remains. Why? Because you responded to the words, not the person. In that split second your psyche slammed shut inside a four-walled cell: “Incoming...
Perfection is a synonym for the end. It is the point after which growth is no longer possible. 🦋
You don't exist. What you call "I" is a pirated assembly of other people's ideas about success, installed on your factory hardware back in childhood. Clumsy, with broken drivers, but with a full suite of office programs: "Be convenient," "Don't stand out," "What will people say?" Your parents, out of immense, panicked love, were the first system...
At first, we are architects. We are born a wild, unmapped landscape. Somewhere lies a swamp of secret wants, somewhere cliffs of irrational fear, somewhere clearings of pure, causeless joy. Very early on, though, an inner perfectionist wakes up with a master plan for the build-out. He isn’t a tyrant. He’s a decorator. He undertakes the...
Old potter Kenji didn’t produce bowls - he carried on a conversation with clay. His workshop, smelling of dust and rain, was lined with shelves. They displayed not triumphs but scars: hundreds of cracked, lopsided, imperfect vessels. One day a young student, Ryo, arrived with a shining ideal in his head: a bowl thin as a petal and symmetric as the...
A man built the perfect cage for his canary. Every bar was measured. Every perch polished. He calculated the ideal distance to the feeder and the water cup. Everything was arranged so the bird would be comfortable. So her life would be fully predictable, safe, familiar. He loved his canary. He only wanted to protect her from the chaos outside. But...
Arthur was not a person. He was a function housed in a flawless exoskeleton. His title - “Senior Partner” - was a cuirass. His measured, emotionless speech - a sealed visor. His daily commute from sterile suburb to glass office tower - greaves that kept him from straying. Deep inside that armor didn’t sit Arthur at all, but a small, frightened...
He lived in a departure lounge. Not a real one - in the one inside his head. He lived as if his real life was still on its way, as if everything happening now was a long, overextended prologue with his takeoff endlessly delayed. He sat in that lounge and stared through a foggy window at the runway where other people’s planes - bright, swift,...
Ignat didn’t work. He performed a rite. His temple was the city square, his flock the ashy little bundles of life, ordinary city pigeons. Officially, for the odd curious passer-by, he introduced himself as a “municipal ornithologist-statistician.” It sounded dignified, like a verdict. In reality he was simply Ignat, the man who counted pigeons. He...
Every story is born from the ashes of its drafts 🦋
This is your inner, pocket tyrant. A tiny mad director you yourself handed an unlimited budget and complete creative freedom. He sits in your head, legs crossed, sketching the storyboards of the future. Right here everyone else will say exactly this . And you will answer like that . Perfect lighting, measured pauses. He even picks poses for a...
Victor wasn’t living. He was sterilising reality. His apartment was an operating room, and he, its chief surgeon, carved out any tumor of chaos. His balcony, tiled in flawless white, was his personal annex of sterility on the seventh floor. Deep in the basement of his skull, in a dark, reeking corner, a howling monkey sat chained. That monkey...
Impenetrability is just a mask hiding a soul starved for warmth. 🦋
"I am an explorer describing what I see. Each text here is a mirror reflecting one facet of human experience; one ray of light falling at a particular angle. This is not the ultimate truth nor a universal diagnosis. There are no final answers here. Only an invitation to reflect."