In an empty room, Lian sits in a white space containing nothing but a wooden chair, a window open to a grey sky, and a book by Cioran lying open to the line: "Want nothing, and you will have everything."
Lian(staring into the void): "How can I want nothing? Desire is what keeps me breathing!"
Despair(appearing as a shadow on the wall): "No. Desire is what strangles your breath. Look: everything you want moves away; everything you pursue escapes."
First Dialogue: A Lesson in Taoism
Indifference: "Do not struggle to succeed; let things happen. Your goals will not be achieved by chasing after them. Plant the seeds and let them ripen in their own time. Whether they grow or not, you continue along your path. The Taoists say, 'Let life come to you.' Do you know why? Because striving springs from the belief that you are incomplete. But you are already complete—here, now, in this emptiness."
Lian touched the wooden chair. Simple. Solid. Real.
Lian(astonished): "But people say, 'Ask, and you shall receive!'"
Indifference(laughing softly): "That is a sales pitch aimed at optimists. The truth is: stop asking, and what you need will appear. There is a difference."
Memories—or Rather, Disappointments and Their Deceptive Promises
First: Love.
She had loved a man she believed to be her destiny. She pursued him, wrote to him, waited for him. He left.
Despair: "What happened when you finally surrendered?"
Lian: "I wrote my finest work. I discovered that the love I had been seeking was already inside me."
Second: Social Success.
She chased a position, tried to please people, and sought society's recognition. She lost everything.
Indifference: "And what did you find after all those successive disappointments and losses?"
Lian: "I found myself inside them. My losses turned out to be a great profit I had not noticed. Disappointment betrayed me only to build a tunnel within me, one through which I could walk into my own depths and search for myself. There I found the self I had lost. It was as though disappointment had cleansed me with its tears and enriched me through loss."
She smiled. "I found my freedom. I discovered that the only recognition that truly matters is the recognition I give myself."
Second Dialogue: Cioran the Teacher
Indifference: "Cioran said, 'Suffering is beautiful.' Do you understand why?"
Lian: "Because it is real?"
Indifference: "No. Because it removes masks. The optimist wears a mask of permanent happiness; the pessimist stands naked. And when you stand naked, you see yourself for the first time."
Lian: "But people say despair, indifference, and wanting nothing are weakness and sin!"
Indifference: "Despair is the true beginning. Despair of people gives you back to yourself. Despair of success gives you freedom. Despair of love gives you your own self."
The Transformation: From Pursuit to Revelation
Lian put the book down and took a breath.
Lian: "I feel that something is changing."
Indifference: "Because you are letting go. You are letting go of the expectation of happiness, the demand for love, the pursuit of recognition, and the need to understand everything."
Lian: "And what remains?"
Indifference: "You. Only you. And the world begins to come to you."
The Miracle: When the Void Reveals Itself
Suddenly, things began to appear: an idea for a novel floated into her mind; an inner peace flowed like a quiet river; and a clarity emerged through which she saw life for the first time.
Lian: "What is this?"
Indifference: "This is revelation. When you let go of everything, everything appears—not as you want it to be, but as it is."
Bukowski's Wisdom
Indifference: "Do you remember Bukowski? 'Don't try. Sometimes not trying is everything.'"
Lian: "He was a miserable drunk!"
Indifference: "And he was free. Free because he let go: he stopped trying to be 'happy,' 'successful,' and 'loved.' Then he became... Bukowski."
The Discovery: Maturity in Despair
Lian opened a notebook and began to write.
Lian: "I write now not because I want to become a writer, but because the words come. I do not chase them; they arrive."
The words flowed: profound, because they were not trying to prove anything; honest, because they were not afraid; free, because they waited for nothing.
Indifference: "Do you see? True creativity comes from letting go, not from demanding; from being filled by emptiness, not from running after fullness. You are living, breathing, writing—not because you want something, but because this is what you do, as fish breathe in water."
Final Scene: The Wholeness of Deficiency
Lian closed the notebook and looked out the window. The grey sky was beautiful. The sun set and the shadow disappeared, yet beautiful suffering and the creative energy of renunciation did not vanish. They had become her friend, her guide, her only truth.
Lian spoke with pride and confidence:
"I am well now. I have chosen myself, and when you choose yourself, everything changes. I am well because I no longer care about the words of those around me. I no longer listen to their opinions or care about pleasing people at all. I no longer turn my back on my own happiness to make them happy. I give opportunities to myself rather than wasting them on others.
"I am well because, no matter how broken I become or how much I hurt, I keep moving forward with all my strength, resilience, and balance. I have come to believe that people are nothing but blank pages, sometimes carrying only a title. I no longer care about titles; I read the page if there is anything in it worth reading—if it is not empty.
"When I chose myself, I stopped building my hopes on anyone else. My strength lies in no longer waiting for someone to love me. I am my own crutch, the one I lean on. I no longer compare my life with anyone else's, nor do I sail through the intentions of those around me. I refuse to keep playing a role I once assigned myself, remaining silent because people depend on me. It was as though I had to row alone against the current, while no one believed that the winds battered me as they battered them. What have I to fear from getting wet when I am already drowning?
"They assigned me that role, but now I have chosen myself. My dreams used to be stolen every morning. Was it deception? An addiction more dangerous than drugs? I was not living a life in harmony with my soul. Now I am. I have chosen what resonates with me, what speaks in my voice, what bears my imprint on everything, what sings and composes my own music. My decisions are no longer driven by fear or by chasing the unknown; they come from the most honest version of myself, from my identity and my distinctive mark.
"I no longer carry the burden of other people's expectations. When I chose myself, I understood my worth. I do not need an evaluation from outside; I am the one who evaluates me. When I chose myself, my inner world began to harmonize with the outer world. I accepted myself, and life accepted me in all its forms and bent itself to serve me willingly, by choice. Choose yourself, and life will choose you."
End of reflection
THE CAFÉ
On souls that refuse to be poured into molds
A Café in an Old Neighborhood
Noor sits in "The Lost Time Café." Each table represents a different human type.
Table One: The Look-Alikes
Men in identical suits. Women with canned smiles. Conversations that sound like repeated copies: "The weather... work... prices..."
Table Two: The Obedient
They laugh when they are "supposed" to laugh. They grieve when they are "expected" to grieve. Every new birthday, some part of them dies.
Table Three: The Conformists
They fear what is different and feel comfortable with what resembles them. They believe that peace means silence.
Noor's Discovery: I Am the Error in the Equation
Noor(to herself): "I feel like a marginal note in a tightly bound book."
She orders her coffee differently: no sugar, no cardamom, just one drop of honey.
The Waiter(staring): "No one orders it that way!"
Noor: "That is exactly why I do."
A Dialogue with the Different Self
The Self: "Why do you feel like a stranger?"
Noor: "Because I hear melodies while everyone else hears words. I see distances while everyone else counts things. I feel the weight of souls while everyone else weighs bodies."
Seeing Beneath the Conforming Surface
She begins to see what others do not.
The Handsome Man: He laughs, but his eyes are crying. He tells a joke, but his voice carries a scar. He pretends to be confident, but his hands tremble.
The Beautiful Woman: She is gracious, but her heart is dying. She boasts, but her soul is begging. She displays strength, but her bones are made of glass.
Noor: "The conformists are not alike. They differ in the same way—like stars that all shine, yet each one is dying in its own way."
The Paradox: Unity Through Difference
Noor discovers that the people who are truly different are the conformists who believe themselves alike. Every human being is an entire universe, yet they reduce themselves to copies.
As for her, she is different in her solitude and united through her difference.
A Philosophical Dialogue with Coffee
The steam rising from the cup seems to form words.
The Coffee: "You are like the drop of honey in me. You do not belong, yet you complete me. You are unlike me, yet you bring harmony. You are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule reveals the beauty of the exception."
Noor: "So being different is not a flaw?"
The Coffee: "It is the only virtue in a world that worships sameness. Resemblance is deferred death; difference is a difficult kind of life. And I prefer life, even when it is difficult."
Climax: The Birth of the Different One
Everyone looks at Noor. They hear her silence, which is louder than their noise. They see her stillness, deeper than their movement. They sense her difference, more real than their sameness.
A man from the table of look-alikes approaches her.
The Man: "You... are different."
Noor(smiling): "Thank you."
The Man: "No, I mean... unsettling. You make me wonder: do I really want what I want, or do I want what they want me to want?"
Final Scene: Leaving in Different Peace
Noor leaves the café. Behind her she hears a whisper.
The Waiter(to a new customer): "Would you like coffee the way that girl ordered it?"
The Customer: "And how was that?"
The Waiter(astonished): "She made her difference seem like the most natural thing in the world."
Now Noor walks through the streets and sees each face as a story hidden beneath the mask of daily life. Every face carries a different story, trading betrayal and disguise as though they were morning greetings. Every act of conformity is a betrayal of one's own story.
Signed: Noor—outside the text since birth.
End of reflection
THE SACRIFICEScene
A terrible silence fills the space. She advances with steady, confident steps toward the enormous statue before her. It is a statue of a great open book, with a pen above it, as though writing words into the air.
She approaches before the assembled crowd. In a silence charged with awe and reverence, she kneels before the statue willingly, with a smile. She raises her hands toward it, contemplates it in quiet devotion, and bows her head. Everyone stands mute, bound by the solemnity of the scene. She kneels and touches the statue, saying:
"I am yours. I have given myself to you. I have given you all my dreams, disappointments, betrayals, and pain. I have offered every tragedy and every tear, shedding them willingly and putting them all to work in your service. Welcome pain; welcome suffering, and every disappointment that remains in my memory and has carved itself there—or that may yet come—if it serves you and enriches your capacity for creativity. Welcome.
"My chest receives every stab and disappointment with joy. Here it stands before you, proud of its wounds, pain, and scars, all for you alone. Every sorrow, every pain, every smile drowned in a sea of tears belongs to you. These are the forces that urge me to take up this pen and inscribe upon you every shade of art and creativity."
She spoke as she examined and caressed the enormous pen mounted above the book statue.
She could hear the astonished crowd whispering: "Madwoman... she left her job just to write stories! What a fool! She will starve..."
But she was not really hearing them. She heard another voice.
Dialogue: The Voluntary Sacrifice
The Book Statue(in a voice like the rustle of old pages): "You have finally returned to me. I missed your words, the lines you write inside me. I missed you terribly. I used to envy that job of yours, which stood between us and kept me from the dewdrops your pen sheds—the drops that make my fruit blossom."
She: "I was never away from you, not for a single moment. You were always in my thoughts and my blood, in every turn, every bow, every whisper, every letter and word I heard or read. My absence from you was for your sake. I was busy with you."
The Statue(astonished): "Busy with me? How? Why? I see blood on your hands. This time it is not ink."
She looked at her palms.
She: "This is the blood of my liberation, the price of my freedom. It is the blood of breaking the chains that bound me. A job stood between us, its cursed claws trying unsuccessfully to tear me away from you. This is also the blood of stability and liberation from a failed, degrading, cheap marriage that tried to keep me from you. It is the blood of every hardship and tragedy I endured, every drop shed by my feet as they walked over thorns until they brought me here.
"I have brought you my very entrails and laid them on your altar. Nothing and no one will ever separate me from you, for no reason whatsoever. All this time I was thinking about how, when, and where I could crush the cursed chains that stood between us. I wondered how to save every drop of blood I shed as tears from the depths of my body, drop by drop, so I could lay them in your hands and beneath your feet. I planned how to put them all to work for you, how to welcome them properly because they would willingly submit themselves to your service. I planned how to express my joy and pride in them, since they would bloom into fruit and sweet springs flowing through your garden."
The Memory: The Slaughter of the Self
She quickly recalled moments she had engraved in her memory, turning them into a unique necklace of creative pearls to offer as shining lines in the enormous book.
The Hateful Chain:
The wretched creature who wanted to bind her freedom under the repulsive title they call "husband" had said, "Writing will not feed you."
But she had answered, "It feeds my soul."
One night, he burned one of her manuscripts. She watched the flames consume her words and felt as though her own entrails were being pulled from her body. In the morning she packed her bag. After a bitter struggle and enormous effort, she won her freedom through a final divorce, which she wore proudly like a medal of honor set with the crown of liberty.
The Job:
At the office, her colleagues whispered, "Look at her... she talks to imaginary characters!" One woman added, "My husband says to beware of her. Divorced women envy married women!"
She merely smiled. She could hear the small words being killed by petty jealousy.
Gold Gone:
She sold the last piece of jewelry she owned. The jeweler looked at her in surprise. "Why give it up? You said this was the last thing you owned. Is it for something urgent—a dangerous operation or an incurable disease?"
"To buy my freedom," she replied.
Losing freedom would have been more terrible than any disease in the world. She sold her last ornament and bought ink, paper, and months of time. The jeweler stared, stunned, as questions and astonishment roared like a flood in his eyes.
A Deeper Question: Why Do You Sacrifice?
The Statue: "Why are you doing this? Humans ask for security, money, and love. You may lose them all. Are you willing to lose everything for me?"
She: "If it pleases you and helps your brilliance and creativity, I welcome the loss—and offer it as a gift."
The Statue(tenderly): "You offer me your wounds and pain as gifts you have made for me? You spill your blood and bring your entrails, placing them willingly, lovingly, and proudly at my feet and in my hands?"
She took a small notebook she had kept hidden among the folds of her ribs. With dignity and pride, she placed it in the hands of the great book statue, kneeling before it.
"This is a notebook filled with words stained by my tears."
Salaf: "This page... I wrote it on the night I won my freedom, the night of the joy I had worked so hard to reach. I remembered everything I had endured under that accursed, detestable chain that tormented my sleep and bruised my wrists. A chain they sanctify and revere, though it is far from sacred. They call it marriage, but to me it was a funeral procession carrying my corpse. I suffocated in the grave where I had been imprisoned, holding my breath and silencing everything within me as I searched for a way out. I finally dug through it with a needle and emerged on the day of my divorce, breathing in the pure air of freedom.
"Here is another page. I wrote these letters with my blood, tears, and smile on the day I was devoted to my work. I had never practiced the cheating and deceit others took for granted. Sincerity was my nature. Yet I was surprised by stabs of betrayal I had never expected. I hated the job because it did not represent me, but I remained sincere. I kept the wounds inside my chest and locked them away like a precious jewelry box. Then I placed the key in your hands. You opened the box, and those wounds became drops of ink, flowing from a pen that bloomed into lines across your sacred body, pure and untouched by flaw or defect, my beloved companion on the road, companion of words and of the journey.
"Without you, my features lose their shape, my meaning, my form, my heart, my thought, my awareness, and my self. Without you, I am not even present to myself. I do not know who I am or what I might be.
"Here is another page," she said proudly. "I wrote it when I discovered that I belonged to a people who must rise up and rebel—a people who hate patriarchy. I wrote it when I realized I was a feminist, or had always been one without knowing it. I wrote these pages when I saw masculinity, betrayal, and selfishness slipping like poison into honey, hidden between glittering words, false promises, deceit, disregard, humiliation, and meanness from every male being I had foolishly believed would be my refuge.
"I thought, naïvely and mistakenly, that I would find shelter in one of them. Instead, I crossed the gate of destruction without noticing. I was like someone fleeing the burning sands only to fall into a blazing fire. The fire burned away false feelings and turned them into scattered ash, exposing their fragility, dishonesty, and weakness, revealing them as a malignant disease with no hope of cure. I trampled that ash beneath my feet and ran, breathless, to you, my only love, begging you to forgive my negligence and my distance. I pleaded for golden lines with which to write this page of my life and lay it before you, so that it might bleed and cleanse me beneath your feet."
The Statue: "And you want me to remain the knife that tears your entrails each time the moment for writing arrives, so that you bleed lines and lines, decades of your life burning upon my pages. But are you not preserving your pain this way?"
She(joy mingled with bitterness): "Hurrah! This fills my heart. The pain that flowed from me has always been your fuel. Every tear that falls on paper becomes a word; every dagger in my heart becomes a chapter in your immortal pages. My happiness lies in your flourishing. I turn my pain into a bridge over which you may pass calmly and securely. I came into this world for your sake, to nourish you and supply the fuel that makes you shine with the light of knowledge. You are the message I send to the world. Go on, travel across my body and sorrow; I will turn them into a bridge so your message can reach everyone. You are the faithful postman. Walk across my body: every pain, sadness, anger, moment of joy, and tear will become your safe bridge to the world."
The Statue: "My precious one, you nourish me at the cost of your own wounds."
The Tapestry: From Blood to Ink
She: "I am no more than a priestess or a nun in your sanctuary. I am a fabric willingly woven from blood into ink, flowing across the pages of your eternity. I receive the blessing of words. Let the fools around me say whatever they like. I neither see nor hear anything but your call, you who gave me a real life within your folds and granted me immortal breath in the breeze that moves through your lines, sentences, and words."
Conclusion: A Literary Prayer
A priestess in a temple without walls.
A sacrifice dancing upon her own altar.
She stood before the enormous book statue and bowed in submission and devotion.
"You are food that feeds upon ever-greater hunger. You are thirst that only more thirst can quench. The true sacrifice is not an offering to imaginary gods. It is the sacrifice made by those who walk over their pain and sorrow and build from them a bridge of golden letters and words, whose light reaches the whole universe in a letter perfumed with your fragrance. I sacrifice myself because the blood of sacrifice flows like perfume beneath your feet."
End of reflection
DOUBLES
In a corner of the city, where lights danced beneath the night sky, I saw those specters—or perhaps only shapes, half-creatures, fragments of beings, hints of something that might exist—circling around me. They were things no explanation could explain and no expression could fully describe. I felt like a starving person who catches the scent of food: it enters the nostrils, seeps into the body and the folds of feeling, and makes the hungry one feel full, almost stuffed, though all they have taken in is the smell. The smell of food without the food itself. I felt like a fish searching for a river that had dried up long ago.
Then their shadows appeared before my eyes, ghosts wearing white veils—or perhaps liquid mercury: visible, glittering with promises from afar, yet impossible to grasp. The instant you approach and reach out to touch them, they flee.
One shadow appeared. I rose at once and moved toward it, stretching out my hand. From a distance it waved, as though calling, "Here I am. Come closer. Come to me. I am your dream, your goal." I was naïve enough to believe it would save me. I rushed toward it, eager to trust its promises, only for it to stab me treacherously in the back. Blood poured from the wound. Then I discovered that it had been a mirage, a counterfeit dream promising love and claiming to be the other half that would complete me. From far away it smiled a yellow smile that I mistook for paradise. When it finally revealed its face, I found hell itself: a mask dropped, poisonous fangs exposed. It had wanted only to devour me for a while, then throw me away like scraps of spoiled food. It was not my other half at all, but an empty half, devoid of everything except the desire to torment me.
Another shadow drew near. I could see it clearly, extending a hand dressed in the garments of friendship and loyalty. I smiled: friendship, after all, is dearer, more precious, and more dignified than love. I hurried toward the specter, believing it real, only to find that friendship had been enmity in disguise. Betrayal, lies, one face before me and another behind my back; jealousy and hatred veiled in the costume of friendship. It vanished and evaporated like water turning into vapor, and everything returned to how it had been, as though nothing had happened. I was left without friends. I told myself: beware an enemy once, but a friend a thousand times—for one day fortune may turn, and the friend may know best how to hurt you.
I consoled myself and tended my wounds. The shocks accumulated; I hid the bruises that had risen across my soul and settled inside me.
After a while—hours, days, perhaps weeks—another shadow appeared, another new specter. This time I did not take it for a specter. I saw it as certainty, as an enduring and eternal truth. It stood before me, smiling, carrying a dazzling gift. I reached out and opened it. Inside were happiness and passion, shining and calling to me in voices I could hear unmistakably. Both told me I was happy—so very happy. I leaped, danced, and rejoiced. I felt them coursing through my blood and racing along my veins, whispering with perfect confidence that I belonged among the fortunate.
Then, without warning, everything disappeared. It evaporated and went with the wind. What I had felt became a pile of wreckage: burned, brittle, crumbling before me in submission and humiliation, drenched by a flood of tears. I looked around, but the being that had stood so vividly before me was gone. I called it, screamed at the top of my voice, imagining it might have gone somewhere nearby. Surely it would return. I waited, and waited for a long time. It never came. Sometimes it waved from far away, then withdrew again. I discovered that it was not what I had thought it was: only a suggestion, a passing impression, like air freshener or perfume that fades after a little while, leaving nothing—absolutely nothing. It was never the thing itself, only the illusion of its presence: an empty half, waiting for something to complete or fill it.
I decided to follow reason and thought. I said no to my naïve, untutored heart, which had never learned life or tested its claims. It would never mature, I thought; it was foolish and reckless, in love with madness, forever wandering the roads with its feelings and emotions. What an idiot! I had to leave that senseless fool behind. I marched forward with strength, determination, defiance, and stubborn resolve, certain that I was approaching sound judgment and full awareness—that reason must surely be superior to such a foolish heart.
I came closer, studied reason, and felt its features with my own hands. It too was a shadow, like all the others; no more than one specter among a whole procession of them. It reached toward me with a hand of iron, closed its shackles around me, cut into my wrists, and stopped my breath. A foul, heavy stone pressed down upon me and imprisoned my free spirit inside. I fled, realizing that it too was a mirage, a delusion—nothing more than a grave prepared, furnished, and equipped so that I could be buried alive until biological death finally claimed me.
From a distance I studied them all. They stood in ranks beside one another: pale shadows, ghosts wearing white veils stained with the blood of deceit, evil, betrayal, cruelty, and ruin. Every one of them had crossed my life, waved from afar, and tempted me with the promise of being my only hope. Each had turned out to be a fist made of blood, fire, and iron.
They stood before me in a formation like a wall, each supporting the next, dancing under the moon as though inviting me toward still more misery. I looked at them for a long time with contempt and revulsion. I understood that I could not learn new lessons on this road without paying the price in advance: everything has a price. Every new idea betrayed an old one; every different road required sacrificing another, familiar road that had been false.
It was painful to discover that I had always dealt with incomplete halves and intangible shadows: half-lovers, half-spouses, half-friends, half-relatives, half-siblings, half-children. Nothing in my life had been real or lasting. I had thought those empty halves and ghosts had forgotten me, when in truth they had never remembered me well enough to forget me in the first place.
Strangely, my philosophy of life had grown sad while my face remained cheerful. I love mornings, yet never miss the long nights. My heart boils while my actions remain cold. To become worthy of my suffering, I will withdraw as far as I can so that I may grow stronger. I will be different, even if I remain alone forever—why not? Solitude is the fate of great souls. I will follow my own road, even if I make mistakes; that is better than marching with the herd. I was burning, while someone arrived to complain about the smell of ashes. I will not heal in the place that made me sick; I must leave it at once. I will drink my sorrow and become drunk on it. I will find something worth living for, something worthy of all this. I approached life with my heart, and the smallest details wounded me. We are born from ecstasy and end in death through pain.
End of reflection
HYMN OF EXTINCTION
Life is only a small stage where the same scenes are repeated until they lose all meaning. Absurdity is the sole truth: human beings chase illusions of success and immortality while everything, in the end, crumbles into ash. Triviality is not a flaw but a condition of existence; honesty lies in facing the absurd without masks.
In desolate night streets, where lights shatter across wet pavements, an inner voice emerges: "Everything passes away, and every attempt to hold on is a trick." Charles Bukowski wrote about people collapsing beneath the weight of their days: drunks and defeated souls, people who know the game is lost yet continue to play. For him, life is no heroic epic, but a sequence of desperate attempts to survive boredom and emptiness.
"Don't try," Bukowski had asked to be written on his gravestone. He did not pant after success, seek fame, or raise a banner of hope. Instead, he exposed how fragile human beings are before the absurdity of existence. In truth, we live in a world that sells us cheap illusions—love, money, celebrity—while the only certainty is that we are slowly consumed, dissolving into a merciless silence.
And yet Bukowski believed that writing, art, and even a moment of honesty with oneself could offer a small resistance to the absurd.
Life is little more than a cheap theatre, repeating its scenes until the actors no longer wish to perform. Each morning we wake to find ourselves in the same roles: we run, work, laugh, and then collapse in silence. In Bukowski's eyes, existence is not an epic but a string of futile efforts to flee the void. The void remains, smiling mockingly as if to say, "Nothing you do means anything."
Success, love, fame—all are illusions sold in life's marketplace. The only certainty is that we are slowly used up, like a cigarette burning in the hand of a desperate addict. Still, something small remains: a hidden resistance, an honest moment with oneself, a poem written, a line spoken, or a mocking laugh thrown into the face of the absurd.
In a narrow room whose walls were blackened by cigarette smoke, Charles Bukowski sat in a battered wooden chair, pouring liquor into a glass that was half full. Across from him stood his philosophy, personified as a woman and heroine of the dialogue. Before an open window, she watched the night swallow the city.
Philosophy: "Everything seems absurd, Charles. People chase religious illusions, worship meaningless myths, and imagine that death is the beginning of another life. But I see death as it is: extinction, eternal silence, nothingness beyond it."
Bukowski: "Yes. Nothingness is the one truth we cannot deny. All those prayers and rituals are desperate attempts to decorate the void. I have written about it often: the filth of life, the streets that swallow you, the women and men who collapse beneath the weight of their days. Absurdity is not an idea; it is daily reality."
Philosophy: "But don't you think absurdity itself grants us freedom? Once we recognize that nothing awaits us after death, we are free from every fear and false promise. Albert Camus said that confronting the absurd is the beginning of revolt. I rebel through my writing; I refuse to remain a prisoner of illusions."
Bukowski: "Revolt? Perhaps. But I see it more simply. Life is harsh and full of disappointments, and writing is merely an attempt to stay alive amid the ruins. I seek neither meaning nor salvation. I write because I cannot remain silent. I write because words are the only way I can breathe."
Philosophy: "And I write to proclaim the death of the gods, to say that a woman is not a man's shadow or a servant to sacred texts. I write to prove that I exist, even if my existence is brief, even if it ends in extinction."
Bukowski: "Extinction does not frighten me. I have seen death in the faces of drunks, in the bodies of the homeless, in the eyes of women who have lost everything. Death is a natural ending. The absurdity lies in trying to conceal it behind stories of Heaven and Hell. But you write to expose that absurdity, and that is good. Perhaps this is the only meaning available to us: to cry out at the void before it swallows us."
Philosophy: "Your words are a cry in the face of emptiness. Yes—that is what I want. To leave a trace, even if it is only words on paper; words declaring that we knew the truth and faced it without fear. To live without illusions, without waiting, without false hope."
"To absurdity, then—and to extinction, which makes us write as though every word were the last," Bukowski said, raising his glass.
End of reflection
PRECISE CONTROL
In a quiet room, a man in his nineties sat before a large mirror, holding a cup of tea in his trembling hands. He tried to sip slowly. Each breath came with difficulty, and every time he lifted the cup to his lips it seemed as heavy as a stone in his exhausted hand, worn down by time and long nights.
The old man: "Where are you, strength I once knew? Where are the muscles that carried the rocks of life?"
The failing body (in a faint voice, like a whisper of wind): "I carried you for a long time. Every step you took, every breath you drew, every tear you shed, every laugh that rose from your throat—I gave you all I had."
The old man gazed at his reflection as though a great hammer had suddenly struck his head and shattered his chest.
The old man: "But they told me you were exquisitely designed, a miracle of precision, that an immense power had mastered your making. All my life I trusted that you were extraordinary, filled with wonders, intricate details, and complex cells arranged in a perfectly engineered biological system. Didn't I say so at every turn? Yet for years now you have betrayed me, slowly pulling the ground from beneath my feet. What is wrong with you, body? Are you lying to me, or challenging me? Are you denying everything I used to say and remind people of? Now you have come to disappoint me. I never knew you to be like this."
His voice carried a hidden pain. "Now my bones ache, my eyes grow weak, and my heart beats more slowly. Is this what perfection looks like? I used to believe that every weakness in you was a test, and every wrinkle in my skin a record of wisdom. But now I wonder…"
The body answered bitterly, almost mockingly.
The body: "I never lied to you. You are the one who deceived yourself. Aren't you the venerable scholar who speaks in the name of science and tells believers that their bodies are a divine gift, a perfectly made masterpiece? Weren't you the one who tied precision of design to scientific proof and divine power? You lectured believers, praising the miraculous construction of my body, glorifying and marveling at the omnipotence and extraordinary wonders I supposedly embody. They grew more devout and applauded you. I never deceived you; I never asked you to say any of those things about me. You wanted them to believe, so you planted in their minds the idea of a mythical being somewhere beyond, a magician who could say 'Be' and bring forth a body with intricate folds and invisible complexities.
"For years I tried to show you the truth. I rang the alarm and lit a lamp for you, but you closed your ears. As you grew older, I tried again and again to tell you what you had led believers—and yourself—to imagine: that I was supernatural, made by the Best of Makers. How naïve! Are there other makers with whom we might compare this one and hold a contest to choose the best?"
The old man coughed violently, nearly losing his breath, then exhaled in pain.
The old man: "So now you punish me for my sin? Have you brought me old age, frailty, sickness, and exhaustion to take revenge because I ignored you and rejected the warnings you sent as the years passed? Was my youth with you only a beautiful illusion, a story we told ourselves so we could endure?"
He continued, shaken: "I am beginning to feel that I lived through a great deception, and you were its central character. You once seemed so strong and solid: running, leaping, shouting with a voice that filled the air. I thought you were stronger than this. I never imagined that growing old would make you turn your back on me. Why have you let me down when I praised and glorified your precise, perfect construction? Why lay the consequences of your weakness on my shoulders?"
The body: "I told you repeatedly: you were always deceiving yourself. I did not turn away from you overnight, and I did not betray you. I tried to be honest and logical. I warned you with illnesses, coughs, and weakness, but you would not listen. You listened only to your myths. Your sole concern was making those naïve believers trust you as a man of science, persuading them that science and faith were inseparable lovers. In truth, they are far apart, each following a different road. Yet you mixed sweetness with bitterness, white with black, myth with scientific inquiry, experiment, and proof. You crushed their minds and ideas together in your colorful laboratory, then forced me into a frame painted with legends and heavenly miracles. I was compelled to remain silent, though I tried repeatedly to speak and stop your lies. You took part in a vast deception, a conspiracy against the minds of ordinary people who trusted you. Now some of them face sickness and death beneath the very body they were told was miraculous, unmatched in its creation. You must pay for your lies and drink from the same deceptive cup."
The old man looked bewildered. "I felt your warnings, especially as I grew older. I wondered why weakness crept over me even though I cared for you, watched what I ate and drank, and tried to keep you safe. Sometimes I thought you were challenging me or even hated me, as if you wished to rebel. I sought heavenly protection to overpower your rebellion. I prayed that my strength would be preserved, and begged that time would take nothing from me, but time took everything. The more frail and sick I became, the more stubbornly you seemed to resist."
The body: "Why imagine that a power exists to prevent the laws of the universe? I am part of nature's sequence. I was never supernatural or perfectly engineered, whatever you proclaimed so confidently. I am no more than an entity like a flowing river: I begin as a small spring, move forcefully toward the sea, then grow calmer, widen, spread out, and finally meet the ocean, losing my identity as I dissolve into it. Why persuade yourself that someone hears your words and prayers? If your prayers worked, if the all-powerful being you imagined truly had that power, why are you now so frail? Look at your sagging skin, sunken eyes, heavy lids, and thick glasses. Your eyes barely make out what is in front of them. Look at your bent back, which once straightened through exercise but could not remain strong forever. Look at your knees, shoulders, bones, and slackening muscles, all of which you praised as evidence of exact design.
"Consider your eyes: over the years, how many accidents have you had because your peripheral vision is almost gone? I tried to remind you that these two balls are only imperfect organs, containing a dark area that cannot see and must reconstruct an image from what little reaches it. Look at the weakness that has overtaken every part you once praised. Even the organs of urination and defecation occupy the same place as the organs you associate with desire and pleasure. Where is the artistry in that? Is it beautiful to put rubbish where flowers grow, or to plant fragrant flowers inside a stinking bin containing a rotting carcass? Where are wisdom and omnipotence in this arrangement? I struggled not to laugh through my tears as you cared for me. I watched you protect me like someone trying to preserve a piece of ice under the lashes of a burning sun. What a contradiction. You kept deceiving yourself, you foolish impostor."
The old man: "Then there is no maker who fashioned me with such precision? No hand that shaped my details? Have I been trying to carve upon water?"
The body: "I do not know everything. I know only that I was born from a meeting and that I decline toward death. What lies between birth and death is your story: the mind you carried, the heart that beat within me, the spirit you believed lived in my bones. I did not come from an omnipotent maker in the way you imagined. If I were as perfect as you thought, I would not have reached this state of sickness, decay, and weakness; your hands would not tremble, your back would not bend, and your feet would not drag with such effort.
"My strength has failed because, from the beginning, I was the natural product of evolution from a common ancestor shared by humans and other animals. Have you never noticed our similarities? Even the curve at the base of your spine, where a tail once was, is a remnant of our evolutionary past. Nature shaped the body with limited endurance and the ability to carry out biological processes for a finite period. It did what it could; it could do no more, because nature is not omnipotent and never claimed to be."
The old man tried to rise, coughing furiously. "Are you saying I was a monkey, that I once had a tail and stooped forward? No! I will not believe you. I have been human from the beginning, honored and set apart from animals."
The body: "Enough of this empty arrogance. You humans imagine yourselves above other creatures, while your own legends have persuaded you that everything in nature was made for you. The reality is different. Plants bear more fruit than they need for their own survival, and you came searching for food because hunger drove you. You ate what was available and slaughtered animals, imagining it had all been provided exclusively for you. You are only one link in nature's cycle, just as other creatures are links in it. You, too, will decay and return to nature—perhaps as a tree, a palm, fruit, or water. And I wish you had lived with the dignity of an animal. Tell me plainly: who kills, steals, covets, bears grudges, and seeks revenge? Who lies and destroys the earth—you or the animal? Who is nothing without a document proving identity—you, or the animal or plant? Even as you struggle with death, you cling to the same foolish human arrogance built on illusions. An animal does not live by myths of creation or imaginary prayers. It is too dignified to descend to your level."
The old man slowly rose, leaning on his cane, defeat trailing from his lips.
The old man: "Then there is no God, no perfect design, no higher wisdom?"
The body: "Perhaps the wisdom is the law itself: birth, growth, weakness, and death. Perhaps perfection lies in this natural sequence, in a journey that needs no external creator because it gives rise to itself."
The old man offered a sad smile. "Strange—you give me a new philosophy even as my faith collapses."
The failing body: "Because I am you, and you are me. We shall keep going together, right to the end."
"Who am I? What am I?" The old man left the room, his steps slow but steadier, carrying with him a question larger than any answer.
End of reflection
A PAGE IN THE CROWD
A sheet of paper fluttered free, ink scattering across it, among the countless pages piled on a desk so crowded with documents that it seemed swollen and motionless. The page shook itself, as though brushing ink from its wings, and droplets and letters wobbled down in every direction.
One of the other sheets cried out, "Will you stop fidgeting, you troublesome page? Why are you always restless and complaining?"
The wandering page: "I am exhausted, worn thin by the endless words written across what was once my clean, white surface. The cursed pen in that wretched clerk's hand—and in the hands of that foolish female clerk—has hurt me. They pass me from one hand to another as though I were a ball tossed between idiots. Their shouting has worn me down, and their repetitive, tedious words have deafened me. Oh, how those stamps have battered my body! I was once brilliantly white; now their stamps have blackened me, and their bureaucratic language and absurd procedures have cursed me. I long to be a pure, blank page again, free of stamps, laws, and regulations."
The other pages answered in one voice: "This is not your fate alone. It is ours too. Human beings use us as tools and write whatever they please upon us. We accepted our fate and submitted to what is. Why can't you? We always see you complaining and announcing your wish to leave us."
The page replied with despair mixed with sorrow, boredom, and bitterness. "Yes, I must leave. Stay if you wish, but I cannot remain. Human misery, their disasters, and their routines have worn me out. I hate the voices of those foolish employees. This civil registry truly is full of 'records' and restrictions, as the ugly names they give us suggest—names suitable only for foolish people like them: a marriage record, a birth record, a divorce record, a death record. Oh, if only they would all die at once and free me from the restrictions with which they have shackled me! What have their constraints to do with me? I miss my purity, my whiteness, before they imprisoned me with you in this overstuffed file, behind bars that have long choked my breath and broken my ribs in this eternal, cursed prison."
The other pages replied: "We suffer as you do. We endure the heavy fingers of clerks pressing their routine words and rigid laws into us. Their regulations delay people rather than help them, bind them, and stop their lives in their tracks for the sake of bureaucratic procedure. We suffer, witness, and hurt just as you do. The difference is that we have accepted our fate. We know we were made for this heavy task and cannot escape it. There is no use crying over spilled milk: we cannot change the system or the nature of these clerks. We cannot change the routine that binds them and has cut into their own wrists.
"Our difference is that we do not make the desperate attempts you make every day to slip away from our pile. Each time, a clerk's hand catches you and returns you to your eternal prison. You quiet down, soften, and fall silent, only to try again, again and again, without the slightest benefit. You waste your time chasing a mirage. These boredom-filled routines and chains are the fate assigned to us, so that people may write across our surfaces. Where would you go? What if a few drops of water or ink fell on you as you tried to escape? You would end up in the trash, a lifeless, crumbling corpse. We will not risk our lives because of your recklessness. Even if we left, where would we go? To other people who would write their nonsense upon us in another registry office or government department, another place full of routine and its foul smell seeping from files, archives, and desks. Do you imagine you will reach a museum, a nightclub, or a celebration where someone will place you in a golden frame and sing and dance to make you happy? Wake up. You are nothing but a sheet of paper."
The page, stubbornly: "No! You are wrong. You are resigned. I can escape these people, these wretched clerks, killed by office routine until they have become distorted creatures who move according to regulations and know neither mercy nor compassion. They obstruct other people's affairs and control their lives over an administrative detail or a legal clause. No, a thousand times no! I can no longer bear being an instrument of tyranny, restriction, injustice, and humiliation in the hands of these miserable fools. They have turned me into a sharpened knife that cuts the chest of every poor person who must pay whatever they own to obtain me. They are wretched people, nothing more than a collection of papers themselves. Without paper, their existence is not recognized."
The page looked astonished. "Have they really become so cheap that their worth is measured and their lives' affairs halted because of me, even though I am only a sheet that a few drops of water could ruin—or printer ink, or a dried-out pen? I am tired of being an instrument of torture in the hands of these cursed clerks."
It sighed wistfully. "Ah, if only I could fly away and rest on an artist's wooden board, beneath the hand of a gifted painter who could transform my white surface into a flourishing garden or an image alive with art and imagination. If only I could rest on a writer's desk, where a storyteller might fill me with tales, feelings, ideas, deep philosophical reflections, and the noblest messages. If only I could lie in the hands of a philosopher or thinker, whose fingers would lay knowledge, profound ideas, and tender feelings upon my blank surface until I became a literary icon, a hymn to thought. Or if only I could be placed in a laboratory, beneath the instruments of a scientist whose discoveries might change the world—not hold it back—and whose inventions and research could move civilization forward. Then I would feel proud and joyful. I would no longer be worth only a set of lifeless rules and regulations. I would become a symbol of creativity, an embodiment of thought, art, or culture; a symbol of enduring knowledge, the strongest weapon in the world. Or perhaps I could simply become blank and pure again, like a newborn child, moving among flowers, playing and leaping, looking at the world with wonder and happiness. What a beautiful thing that innocent, childlike simplicity would be! At least then I would be clean and free of the curse of those foolish clerks. I would escape this foul, useless file and break the bars of this loathsome civil registry. I would fly far away. It is all or nothing."
While the employees remained submerged in paperwork, rules, routine, and shouting, flogging the other pages with their pens, stamps, and signatures, the wandering sheet seized its chance. It slipped quietly between the piled-up pages, unseen by the clerk at the desk, and flew away—still as pure and white as snow. It fluttered beyond the civil registry, ignoring the cries of its companions and refusing to answer their calls. It kept flying through the open air until it could settle wherever it wished, however it wished, and choose for itself the hand that would write upon its tender white body. What would be written? How, where, and when? The page became a manuscript.
End of reflection