While she tended to the sick girl her mind raced with worries and what ifs, peeved at Josepha for not offering her invaluable input into the matter and mad at herself for needing her help, and was appalled that in all this time, through everything that happened, nobody ever thought of describing the various plagues for safekeeping, so the next generations didn’t have to start from scratch again and again.

I gaze at pictures of my mind and grasp at them with child-like awkwardness, dress them in words and send them to the patiently waiting fingers.

Wit is so tangled in my fingers that the brain can't isolate it, much like the feet don't disengage from the hearing of music in a complicated dance.

Gentle small scale acrobatics, if you think about it, so second nature it becomes, so second nature...

The backlit keys float over diminished light, enough light to guide me if I need it, but I don't, not anymore, not for a while now.  The slim bumps on J and F gently nudge the tips of my fingers as hands glide on the keyboard swiftly, assuredly, fluidly, free.

Music - Crimson Throne by Door to Penglay.

A story of wonder, mystery, and the fragile connections that shape our lives, Angel is the latest addition to my growing library of fiction.

The book will soon be arriving on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other major distribution channels.

I hope you’ll join me on this new journey.

#Angel #NewRelease #Books #Novel #FrancisRosenfeld

by the lake,

on the streets, I looked for you.

In the faces and gestures of strangers.

In songs long forgotten,

in the smell of your favorite foods.

In libraries and records, I looked for you.

In the waves on the shore,

in the black moonless night.

In the sunset,

in the thunderstorms,

in the snow falling on Christmas Eve I looked for you.

Beyond sanity,

beyond life and death,

through the bowels of the earth, I looked for you.

So don’t tell me I didn’t look for you.

I looked everywhere.

Music Murmur by Lost Ghosts

sharing with our pasts,

and we their interpreters,

frustrating the first 

and misunderstanding the latter.

We rewrite our pasts 

every time something changes

while pretending to live in a present 

that doesn’t exist.

See? 

It didn’t even last one second.

How many selves do we churn through

over the course of a lifetime,

and are any of them truly us,

or is there no us at all?

Photo by The 50mm Snaps on Unsplash

When it cooled down, the women kneaded it into a homogenous paste and mixed it with honey, raisins, almonds, walnuts, and delicious spices.

Chapter 5.1 — Thesmophoria (I)

“Have you prepared yourself, daughter? You have to set an example for all the married women: fast for nine days, refrain from the pleasures…

The gates of Horn and IvoryFrancis Rosenfeld

I didn’t notice that myself, so whatever it is, it must dwell below the threshold of reason. Ask yourself: what does a mirror do? It transforms the three-dimensional image of a subject into a flat representation that looks like it, but lacks substance and depth. A mirror is to an object like a memoir is to a person’s real life: no matter how much detail is rendered in it, it can never capture the essence of what being that person was truly like.

Q: What is the difference between memory and imagination?

I don’t think there is a fundamental difference. 

The images and concepts they create in your mind are just as real whether they’re a replica of a place or situation you encountered, or a manufactured reality you constructed. 

The power of their emotional content is the same, and they both have the ability to awaken your intuition and spur you to action.

This lack of distinction is precisely what enables visualization, empowering you to craft for yourself a future that is both unfamiliar to you and highly desirable. 

It is also what makes ancient and abstruse spiritual practices understandable: altered states of consciousness, dream incubation, vision quests.

Q: If a reader could walk into one of your stories, where would you send them?

I would send them to Generations, the happy, carefree world where the children of Terra Two grew up. Nothing is impossible in that world.

It is a place without dangers where advanced technological breakthroughs made the mere intention of creating something enough to bring it to life.

Q: Why are doorways, thresholds, and hidden rooms recurring motifs in your writing?

There is a lot more to this life than we can see, or even know exists. 

I was raised on fairytales and later developed an interest in transcendental concepts. 

These two ends of the spectrum share a similar intuition: that whatever that is that lays beyond our perception or understanding is accessible through some hidden, mystical knowledge. 

The quest for that hidden knowledge has haunted enlightened people throughout history.

Q: Is nostalgia a place, an emotion, or a form of time travel?

I think it’s all three: nostalgia transports you back in time to the person you used to be back then, and to places that no longer exist. For a brief time you become that old you again, in a place lost to the past.

For readers who wish to wander deeper into the labyrinth, the complete French transcript now awaits in The Margins.

The water was very close now, preceded by a stretch of loose dirt which glimmered softly in the sunlight, and its large restless mass overwhelmed Cimmy, who had never seen so much water in one place before.

This fragment opens a passage into the dream logic of The Gates of Horn and Ivory, at the fragile edge where reality and illusion meet.

The world is surface, a shimmery veil of illusion, woven from gossamer and dreams by the Moirae to give the unbound consciousness a home.

Behind this elusive veil, the fundamental action principles of existence, known only to the gods, continuously transform reality, sometimes unseen, sometimes picking at its back and putting waves through its diaphanous fabric.

Its visible side glistens like a mirror, reflecting any consciousness that is there to see it, its ever changing imagery shifting to harmonize with it, an exquisite mirage, poised to fool the senses.

It looks solid and permanent enough, but it’s not, and if you touch it, it shrivels under your fingers like a mimosa plant, contracting into itself and letting you hold on to thin air.

Reality is made of nothing, just like dreams; it comes from nothing and has to return to it eventually, it just does it so much slower than the latter.

You can read more from The Gates of Horn and Ivory here,

or listen through STORIES by Francis Rosenfeld, a podcast where narratives become part of a growing audio archive.

And if you would like to wander deeper into fragments and reflections, visit The Margins.

The world is surface. The door is open.

For readers who wish to wander deeper into the labyrinth, the complete French transcript now awaits in The Margins.

“I see you’re in great spirits,” Grandmother laughed, pleased to see her little girl happy. “The rain must have cleared away the shadows.”

Claire returned the reply that was expected of her, as she always did when her elder mentioned the shadows. It was like a secret understanding, this exchange of phrases between the two of them, whose meaning, though obscure, had acquired almost ceremonial significance with the passing of years.

“What shadows, maman? There are no shadows other than the ones we cast.”

“And those we have not yet been granted the grace to see.”

Claire had always wondered what that last phrase meant; they were real things, the shadows, and everybody around this corner of the world took them very seriously.