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Nacha So Nacha Añño
Not the Same, Yet not Another
Fire Keeper – Tony Rathstone
Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen
Approximate pronunciation “Oh-HEN-tohn Kah-ree-hwah-TEH-kwen”
The Words That Come Before All Else
This book did not come about the way most books are written.
I did not outline it. I did not plan it. I stood under the stars with thousands of strangers. I told ancient stories about the sky. And something older than me began to speak.
The strangers, the stars, the stories — we became one shared flame, remembering the fire that has no beginning and no end. The one inside each of us. These pages were born from real nights beneath real stars: guiding ancient stargazing tours in the desert, sitting with strangers who often left as friends.
The words that came did not feel entirely mine. Some nights I finished writing and stared at the page, wondering how I knew what I had just written. The truth is, I did not know. I remembered.
Whether it was ancestors, spirit, the land, or the quiet part of me that hears the deeper song — something showed up. And I said yes.
Through these pages, I invite you to remember along with us.
How to Read This Book: This is not a conventional book. You may read it in any order. Open to a page at random. Choose a section. Even a single word. Just as you gaze at the night sky — sometimes you try to take it all in at once. Other times, you choose a single star. Let these pages be the same.
“These are the words we bring before all else. If I have left anything out, it is not out of disrespect.
Nowen:ton ne onkwa’nikòn:ra
“NOH-wen-tohn neh ONG-kwah-nee-KOHN-rah –
“Now our minds are one.”
Illbal – Before the First Breath
Aang Waan – Invitation and Acknowledgment
Before fire. Before story. Before breath—
I want to name something sacred.
Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen: The Words That Come Before All Else is a poetic and spiritual journey born under the stars, weaving ancient stories and modern reflections. Guided by concepts like Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing), Aang Waan (“Hello to my other self”), Illbal (the lens of perception), and Tubwayhun (Aramaic for ripening), this book invites readers to remember their shared humanity and connection to the Earth.
Please refer to the chapter: Indigenous Words & Worldviews Referenced for further knowledge of the words and phrases through out this book
This book is not a lesson, but a gesture of reverence, it honors ancestral wisdom through a non-linear tapestry of words and silences.
The threshold where ending and beginning meet.
These are not my inventions. They are teachings—carried through generations. Held by those whose relationships to land, time, and spirit run deeper than I can claim.
I am not Indigenous. This is not a book to teach Indigenous wisdom.
It is a gesture. A remembering by the fire. A circle drawn in reverence.
Each word is offered with care. Where I know its origin, I name it.
Where I don’t, I honor the silence behind it.
I am not the fire. I am a firekeeper.
Not the voice— but one who has listened.
I don’t bring these threads to define, but to honor.
And wherever possible, I invite you to seek the elders, voices, and lineages
who carry these teachings in their bones.
Before we go any further— Before anything else—
Let us remember something even more elemental:
What I am and you are – We are People of Earth. And what we are—is human.
Yes, we come with names: By race. By color. By creed. By city, state, or country.
These identities matter. They are threads in the cloth.
But they are not the whole.
Beneath them, before them, we belong. We are People of Earth.
We are kin by birthright. Connected by breath. By light. By stardust.
So let us remember: Before division, there was belonging.
May what follows honor the land, the breath, and the stories still burning.
And may we sit together— not to be taught, but to remember.
Tubwayhun,
Tony Rathstone
Table of Contents
Illbal – Before the First Breath Aang Waan 3
Your Sunset is also someone else’s Sunrise – Part 1 7
The First Exhale Before the First Word 10
The Campfire: We are stardust and Light 12
The Fire and the First Light 16
The Breath That Moves Through Us 21
The Makers of Light and Breath 31
The Fire That Never Goes Out 41
The Grandmothers’ Wisdom The Weavers Before 49
Before You Call This Section a Manual, Know It’s a Fire. 52
The One Who Listens to Stars – The One Remembering Dadirri 54
Walking Backward Into the Future 64
Grandmother Spider: The Weaver Between 69
Wisdom Sits in Places: Becoming A Firekeeper 74
A Rock- The Way You Hold It 80
You Are the Sky Oneness isn’t sameness 83
“You Are the Sky and the root beer float.” 87
18 Quintillion Ways to See a Star 97
The Star That Blinks- Medusa 105
“The Conversation Continues – Down the Wormhole” 107
The Sidewalk Where Wonder Sparks 111
Nothing Leaves, Just Changing Clothes 113
Hiwa-i-te-rangi The Living Songspiral 122
Sunrise and Sunset Reflections: Finding Your Quiet Hill 127
Indigenous Words & Worldviews Referenced 141
Your Sunset is also someone else’s Sunrise – Part 2: The Earth Turns 145
The Fire THAT WALKS WITH ME – Firekeeper 149
The Fire That WALKS WITH YOU Place your book into the fire 150
Appendix: The First Breath — The Math of Cosmic Origins 154
TALKING
TO
MYSELF
Etuaptmumk:
The Fire with No Beginning and No End
Tanum Aawaa-
A gentle reminder from our Stargazing tour: Your Sunset is also someone else’s Sunrise – Part 1
Cap Rock Sunset Viewing Trailhead, Joshua Tree National Park –
Just Before Sunset, summer solstice.
Watching the sunset on the granite monoliths.
Now watch, experience, feel it this way. The earth turning consciousness.
Because once you see it… you can’t unsee it.
Somewhere, as you watch the sunset,
the Earth is rolling — slowly, silently — away from the Sun,
pulling your sky into darkness, painting it with fire.
We call it our sunset.
And somewhere else, at that same moment,
another person is standing in the hush of morning,
watching the sunrise, as the Earth rolls them toward the Sun —
into light, into warmth, into beginning.
We are always turning.
Far to the North, at what we’ve called the top of the world,
the Earth tilts just so —
and the Sun does not set.
It circles 360 degrees overhead in slow, glowing loops.
A never-ending sunrise. A day without night.
There, the Moon slips into silence.
And the stars do not rise and set either —
they travel that same circle, counterclockwise, around the sky.
Far to the South, at what we’ve called the bottom of the world,
the Earth leans away —
and the Sun does not rise. Darkness settles in.
And the Moon begins its lantern-loop —
a wide, slow orbit 360 degrees a circle as well,
but here the stars circle clockwise above.
And so it goes. The Earth rolls. The sky shifts.
Sunrise becomes sunset — and happens at the same time, in the same breath you are breathing right now.
Sunset becomes sunrise — and happens at the same time, in the same breath you are breathing right now.
And always, somewhere, the Moon does the same.
As the Sun tucks below one horizon and rises above another,
the Moon follows its own quiet arc — always ascending, always descending.
When you stand at the edge of night,
watching the Moon lift from the boulder-lined horizon or between the dancing arms of Joshua trees,
someone else, in that same breath, is watching the Moon slip away —
setting beyond their horizon.
You greet the Moon as they bid it farewell.
They watch it disappear as you welcome its rising.
And though your skies are different —
though you stand in darkness and they stand in light —
you are both watching the same Moon no matter the time of day.
One silver against the black sky.
One pale in the daytime blue.
Breathing in. Breathing out. Together.
The same moment. The same Earth. The same breath.
A rhythm shared across the turning world.
And though it is the same Moon,
it doesn’t always look the same.
In Australia, the Moon appears upside down, compared to tonight in the Chemehuevi and Cahuilla homelands.
At the equator, it tilts sideways — cradling the sky like a bowl.
In the United States, it rises upright.
Same Moon. Different eyes.
Shaped by where you stand on this spinning Earth.
Even when you cannot see it, the Moon is rising for someone, somewhere —
tilted, upside down, or cradled.
A quiet tether.
A continuous unfolding.
The rhythm of light and shadow weaving all of us together.
He Wa‘a, He Honua – The Earth Is Our Canoe.
As Hawaiian elders have long taught, “He waʻa he honua — The Earth is our canoe,” a reminder of our connection to each other, land and sea.
May we remember:
No matter where we stand, in dusk or in dawn, we are always moving
toward one another.
nacha so nacha añño
“Not the same, and yet not another.”
The First Exhale Before
the First Word
Talking to Myself is not a traditional novel. It’s not a memoir. It’s not a collection of poetry.
And yet, it is all of those—woven together by breath, firelight, and the kind of truth that shows up in dreams.
This is a book about remembering. Told through archetypal dialogue, ancestral echoes, and elemental wisdom, inviting you—the reader—not just to follow a story, but to sit fireside with us.
These pages are meant to be read slowly. Aloud, if you can. Let them walk with you like an elder beside a fire, or a tide rolling over your feet.
You will meet characters—but they are not only characters. They are parts of you. Parts of us. The voices we carry but sometimes forget to listen to.
This is not a story in the way you’ve been taught to expect. There is no arc, no resolution, no lesson at the end. There are only voices—familiar, ancient, wise—gathered around a fire, speaking truths remembered in the bones. You are not the student here. You are not even the audience. You are the quiet breath just outside the circle. Welcome.
Gather around the fire. Beneath the stars—as old as time itself—the People of Earth have always done this. We’ve gathered close. Shoulders touching. Stories rising like smoke.
This is not a plot. Not a narrative. Just elders in the old tradition of telling tall tales, spinning yarns beside the firelight. Come with us. Not to be taught. Not to be led. But to sit beside.
Read when you’re ready. Pause when you need. Return when called.
This isn’t a book to be finished. It’s a book to return to.
—Tony Rathstone
Addicted2Wonder.com
Spring Equinox 2025
Wonder and Awakening
The Campfire
and the Stars
We are stardust and Light
The match struck against worn leather, flaring bright before catching hold of the dry creosote. Fire curled upward, slow at first, then quick, like a creature stretching its limbs after too long a rest. The night swallowed the light eagerly, pulling it into the vastness of Wonder Valley.
Tutu crouched low, feeding the flame a handful of brittle twigs, watching the way the fire took to them, turning solid to smoke, hunger never-ending. A simple thing, fire. Yet nothing ever felt as old, as knowing.
With the last drops of a root-beer float melting in his once frosty mug,
a tune hummed from Tutu’s lips, unbidden. Soft, steady. The kind of melody that had been sung long before anyone ever thought to question it.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up toward the darkness. They rose and faded before reaching the sky, swallowed by the endless stretch of space. Tutu watched them go, following their short-lived path, then tilted a gaze higher.
The stars.
Had they always seemed this vast?
Where did stars come from?
What were they, really?
Not just suns burning far away.
They were stories.
Patterns of fire overhead that once meant everything:
The Big Dipper once called –
A cosmic shark named Beizam,
A caribou running across the night,
The large anus of the snake,
Men chasing rabbits into a net,
Seven boys who became geese,
The Great Wagon,
The Cactus Gathering Hook,
Wildcat’s Rump,
Coyote’s Fishing Net,
Seven Gods,
The Eye of Ra,
Heirloom Warclub,
Saptarishi,
And three hunters, still chasing their elk.
Not just patterns in the sky—reminders, stories.
That we once knew how to name the dark.
That every light above has been called something sacred.
“How I wonder what you are…”
A children’s song, maybe.
But beneath it—an ancient remembering.
The words left Tutu’s lips quietly, barely more than a breath. A question buried in a children’s song, never meant to be answered. The firelight flickered against dark skin, deep eyes, the curve of a thoughtful brow.
Where did stars come from?
What were they, really?
The questions pressed heavier than expected. The kind of weight that doesn’t come from ignorance, but from knowing—deep down—that something had always been missing.
A shift in the air.
Not the wind. Something else.
A voice, low and steady, from beyond the fire.
“Singin’ to the sky again, are you?”
No need to turn. The desert itself could’ve spoken, and it would’ve sounded like Sam.
Tutu didn’t answer right away, just watched the fire.
“Always wondered about that song,” the words finally came, slow, easy. “Been sung a million times over, by a million different souls. But who ever stops to ask?”
The fire popped again, sending another spray of embers skyward.
Sam stepped into the glow, pipe already between his teeth, the smoke curling upward, trailing lazy patterns in the high desert stillness.
“Ask what?”
Tutu glanced toward the sky again.
“What the star is.”
A chuckle, deep and knowing. The kind that carried a history of hearing folks stumble into wisdom before they even knew they were looking for it.
“Good question,” Sam murmured, settling onto a low rock. He tilted his head back, following Tutu’s gaze, watching the stars like they were old friends he hadn’t checked in on for a while.
“Been up there as long as we’ve been down here, I’d reckon.”
Another shift in the firelight. A rustling beyond the brush and shadowed Joshua trees.
“You ask the right questions, child.”
The voice wasn’t Sam’s.
Tutu’s gaze dropped from the sky to the far side of the fire.
There, just beyond the flame, Sophia.
She wasn’t one for grand entrances. She simply arrived, the way wisdom does—quietly, but undeniable once present. Wrapped in the firelight, wrapped in time, wrapped in something more.
Her presence sent a whisper through the night, the kind that wasn’t made of sound but of knowing.
Sam took a slow draw from his pipe, exhaling like he’d been expecting her all along.
“Well, now,” he murmured, “reckon the night just got a whole lot wiser.”
Sophia settled onto a smooth rock, her movement slow, deliberate. She looked at Tutu the way the moon looks at the earth—full of something ancient, something patient.
“You want to know what a star is?”
The wind stirred. The fire crackled.
Tutu nodded.
The old ones had gathered.
The night had begun to speak.
Wonder and Awakening
The Fire and the
First Light
The fire flickered between them, its glow stretching long shadows across the valley floor. The air smelled of smoke and creosote, thick with something that didn’t quite have a name.
Sophia leaned forward, resting her hands in her lap, watching Tutu with the steady patience of someone who had seen this moment arrive a thousand times before. “So,” she said, voice smooth as river stone, “what is fire, really?”
Tutu ran fingers through the warm dust, letting the question settle.
“Heat,” the answer came slow. “Light. Power, maybe.”
Sam let out a quiet chuckle, knocking the ash from his pipe. “That all?”
Tutu frowned slightly, watching the flames shift and bend with the wind. “What else could it be?”
Sophia tilted her head, as if waiting for the right words to find themselves. Then, she gestured toward the fire. “That flame you built—it didn’t come from nowhere. It was always there, waiting. Locked inside the wood, holding the sun’s warmth, waiting for the right moment to be set free.”
The idea settled deep, not just as knowledge, but as something felt. The firelight against Tutu’s skin, the breath warming in the chest—all of it had once been the sun.
Sam nodded, a slow, knowing motion. “Think about it, kid. Everythin’ you see burnin’ now—this wood, this heat—it was all sunlight once. The trees drank it in, held onto it, stored it up. And when fire comes?” He tapped his knee, grinning. “That light gets to run free again.”
Mozzi, quiet until now, let out a soft exhale. “Fire is just sunlight, set loose.”
Sophia smiled. “Exactly, my love.”
The fire crackled, as if pleased with itself.
Tutu’s gaze stayed on the flames, watching the way they reached, flickered, consumed. It had always seemed so simple before. Wood and spark. But it wasn’t. It was time. It was transformation. It was the sun, waiting to be remembered.
A shift in the wind. A rustle among the brush and bent-limbed Joshua trees.
Tutu thought he saw a tiny dragonfly out the corner of his eye—
And then—
“I see you’ve made good use of the fire,” a voice murmured, softly and familiar.
Tutu turned, breath catching slightly.
Mom.
She stood just beyond the flickering light, wrapped in shadow and moonlight, the way some things exist in both past and present at once.
She was not a ghost. She was not a memory.
She was simply here.
As she had always been.
Tutu swallowed, something settling deep in the chest. “Mom.”
Nancee smiled, stepping forward, the firelight touching her face, warming the edges of something timeless.
She settled into the space beside Sophia, folding her hands in her lap. “Tell me, my love—before the trees held the sun, before the fire, before all of it… where did the light come from?”
Silence stretched wide, but not empty. The kind of silence that holds answers before they are spoken.
Tutu ran a hand over the warm earth, gaze flickering between the fire and the sky. “The stars,” the answer came soft.
Sophia nodded. “And before them?”
Sam exhaled, slow and steady, pipe resting between his fingers. “Before them, there was only one thing.”
Tutu looked at him, waiting.
Sam’s lips curled into a grin. “Hydrogen.”
Mozzi raised an eyebrow. “Hydrogen?”
Sophia’s expression turned knowing. “The very first thing. The simplest thing. The start of all things.”
Tutu’s fingers curled slightly in the dirt. “And where did it come from?”
Sam spread his arms wide, as if gesturing to the whole of existence. “Nowhere. Everywhere. It just was. Driftin’ through the universe like a restless traveler, never knowin’ where to call home.”
Nancee smiled. “Until it found itself.”
Mozzi’s brow furrowed. “Itself?”
Sophia nodded. “Hydrogen gathers. It pulls itself close. And when enough of it gathers together, when it presses in, when it holds on tight—”
Sam snapped his fingers, sharp as a fire catching hold. “Boom.”
The fire leapt high at that exact moment, sending sparks spinning into the open desert stillness.
Sophia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The first star was born.”
Tutu’s breath caught.
The fire breathed low.
The stars leaned closer.
No one rushed.
Sophia’s voice rose, slow as a tide.
Not speaking.
Not reciting.
Almost singing.
“Before the stars sang…
before the breath moved…
there was only the Silence.”
She paused.
Let it settle.
“And the Silence dreamed the Breath…
and the Breath stirred the dark…
and the sound caught Fire…
and the Fire gave birth to Dust…
and the Dust became the first Remembering.”
Her voice faded, slow as smoke rising through the ribs of the night.
Silence folded itself around the fire.
Not empty.
Full.
Alive.
The embers pulsed once.
A small breath against the dark.
Sophia’s voice came again, softer still, like a question not needing an answer.
“And what are we, then?”
Sam lifted his head, easy.
Grinned that slow grin.
Pipe tapping ash into the dust.
Voice rough, warm, certain.
“Fire.
Breath.
Old dreams.
And maybe just enough foolishness to keep it all dancing.
And a little bit of wonder.”
The stars listened.
The fire breathed.
And the breath moved on.
Nancee’s voice curled into the hush between them. “And that was the first fire.”
Mozzi leaned back slightly, exhaling slowly. “So the stars… they weren’t just there. They were made.”
Sophia smiled. “And they made everything after them.”
Tutu’s hands pressed into the earth, as if steadying something too vast to hold. “Then we’re—” The words caught for a moment, then came softer. “We’re made of them.”
Sam’s grin widened. “Now you’re catchin’ on.”
Mozzi whispered, “We’re stardust.”
Sophia’s gaze lifted toward the sky. “And the fire never went out.”
Tutu inhaled, exhaled, feeling the weight of it all. The light of the first fire was still here. Still moving through them. Still shaping them.
Nancee watched them, pride in her gaze. “And what do you think happens when a star dies?”
Mozzi’s voice was barely a breath. “The light keeps going.”
Tutu pressed a palm to the warm ground. “And so do we.”
The fire pulsed gently, as if answering.
And the night stretched on, endless, carrying its knowing forward.
Awe and Belonging
The Breath That
Moves Through Us
The fire had settled now, no longer reaching upward, no longer needing to. It did not flicker in hunger. It only breathed.
The embers glowed with a slow pulse, warm, steady—a quiet rhythm, like something remembering.
Tutu sat still, tracing a slow line in the dust with one finger. The first fire had never gone out. The stars had not disappeared. The light still traveled.
Mozzi’s breath was slow beside them, as if tasting the air differently now.
Sophia watched them both, her hands resting lightly on her lap. “And tell me, loves,” she said, voice like the hush of wind through Joshua trees, “if the light never leaves, what do you suppose happens to the breath?”
Tutu’s brow furrowed slightly. “The breath?”
Sam nodded, tipping his chin toward the fire. “You think you own it?”
Mozzi gave a small laugh. “Pretty sure we need it to live, so yeah, I’d say it’s ours.”
Nancee smiled softly, shaking her head. “Oh, my love. We do not own the breath. We only borrow it.”
The fire gave a quiet pop, sending a tiny ember spinning into the high desert stillness.
Tutu turned toward Nancee, eyes searching. “Then where does it go when we’re done with it?”
Sophia’s gaze lifted toward the stars shimmering above the monoliths. “Where it has always gone—back into the world, to be taken in by something else. It moves. It transforms. But it does not end.”
Mozzi inhaled deeply, then let it out, watching the air disappear into the vast clarity. “So we’re just recycling the same breath over and over again?”
Sam grinned. “Damn right. Ain’t been a single new breath since the first one.” He stretched his legs out, tilting his hat back. “You’re breathin’ what the first Joshua trees breathed. What the first people exhaled. What a mountain wind once carried across this desert.”
Sophia tilted her head slightly, studying Tutu. “And that means, my love, that every breath you take—every single one—has been carried by those before you.”
The words settled like warmth against skin.
Mozzi’s fingers tapped lightly against the earth. “So we’re… breathing in history?”
Nancee’s voice was soft, patient. “You are breathing in your ancestors. You are breathing in their laughter, their stories, their whispered prayers. You are breathing in the first cry of a newborn, the last sigh of a life well lived. You are breathing in every moment that has ever existed from every person that ever was.”
Tutu felt it then—not just in the mind, but in the body.
The breath. A thing so constant, so small, never thought about—yet suddenly, impossibly vast.
Tutu exhaled, pressing palms into the warm, sandy soil. “And when I breathe out?”
Sam chuckled. “Then you send it forward. You pass it on, just like it was passed to you.”
Mozzi shook her head, a slow smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Like a note in a bottle, but we don’t even know who’s getting it.”
Sophia nodded, watching the fire. “And yet, it reaches them just the same.”
Tutu let the thought unfold, tracing it in the dust. Breath moving through time, through people, through everything.
Mozzi’s voice came quiet. “That means… we were never really separate from them, were we?”
Nancee’s gaze was steady, full of something deep, something ancient. “No, my love. And you never will be.”
Tutu inhaled slowly, feeling the breath fill his lungs, expand into the ribs, settle into the chest.
And for the first time, it did not feel like an individual thing.
It felt like something shared.
Something passed between hands, between bodies, between lives.
Something that had never belonged to just one person.
Sam let out a slow, satisfied hum. “Well now. Guess that means we ain’t just carryin’ starlight.”
Tutu turned toward him, brows raised.
Sam grinned, tapping his knee. “We’re carryin’ each other.”
The fire cracked once more, sending another ember into the sky.
Tutu exhaled, slow, steady.
And the breath moved on.
“Fire is the sun exhaling. Breath is the sky inhaling.”
“Fire is the sun exhaling.
Breath is the sky inhaling.”
The fire had quieted. Not gone. Just breathing low.
Tutu traced circles in the dust again.
Mozzi leaned back, watching the stars like they were spelling something.
And then—
Sophia’s voice, soft as smoke:
“You know what holds the stars, don’t you?”
No one answered.
The silence answered for them.
She continued. Not loud. Just… true.
“The space between.
Not emptiness — but the breath that makes light possible.
Iwigara. The sacred connection.
Not just air — but the spirit that binds all things.”
Sam gave a low chuckle, shifted his weight. Tipped his pipe toward the sky.
“Y’know,” he muttered, “most folks think the stars are the important part.
But you ask me, it’s the dark doin’ the heavy liftin’.
Like tryin’ to hear a song without the silence between notes.”
Sophia smiled, nodding.
“The silence is the song.”
Tutu blinked.
Mozzi leaned forward. “What about the fire?” she asked. “What about… us?”
Sophia looked at the flames, which danced low but sure.
“The fire isn’t destruction,” she said.
“It’s memory.
A tree that drank the sun, and is now returning it home.”
Sam gestured with his root beer float glass. Just the glass now.
Foamy echoes at the bottom.
“Light’s always sneakin’ around,” he said.
“This here mug? Used to be full. Then half full. Or half empty. Then empty.
But even empty it’s still holdin’ air.
People forget — fire don’t burn without breath.”
Nancee laughed gently.
“The wood was never just wood.
It was the sun in stillness.
Now it’s the sun in motion.”
Sam nodded, satisfied.
“That tree was just holdin’ its breath.
Fire’s the exhale.”
Tutu looked at the flames, then his own hand.
“The light… it’s in us too, isn’t it?”
Sophia’s gaze turned soft.
“Every atom in your body once danced inside a star.”
She let that land like ash on skin.
“You are stardust remembering itself.”
Sam leaned back. Tipped his hat.
“Hot damn, we really are made of leftovers.”
Mozzi laughed. Then quieted.
“So the fire, the breath, the stardust…
They’re not separate?”
“No, my love,” Sophia whispered.
“They’re one story.
Told in light, in smoke, in skin.”
Sam added,
“Same stuff. Different outfits.”
The fire crackled once — not loud.
Just enough to say: Yes.
Sophia touched the ground, fingertips light.
“You are not beside the fire.
You are part of it.
Not watching the stars.
You are made of them.
Not breathing air.
You are the breath,
passed on from every ancestor who ever sang to the sky.”
Sam let out a low whistle.
“Well, now I feel downright majestic.”
He raised his mug.
“To the universe in a root beer float.”
A pause. Then Sophia spoke again, tilting her head toward the sky.
“Light behaves both as a wave and a particle—depending on how you choose to observe it.”
Tutu looked up.
“The stars are like that, aren’t they?”
Sophia nodded.
“Yes. The stars are the particles—the bright points we see.
The darkness between them? That’s the wave.
Some cultures made constellations out of the stars.
Others made patterns out of the darkness in between.”
Mozzi blinked.
“So it’s not about what’s there…
It’s about what you choose to focus on?”
Sam grinned.
“Just like us.
You’re a body—sure. That’s the particle.
But the space between us? The connection? That’s the wave.”
Sophia looked at them both.
“You are not either/or.
You are both.
Form and field.
Matter and meaning.”
Tutu closed his eyes.
Felt the warmth on his skin.
Felt the breath in his chest.
Felt the knowing settle —
Not taught. Just remembered.
The stars didn’t move.
But they felt closer.
And the fire?
Still breathing.
Still becoming.
Still home.
Awe and Belonging
The Stars That
Never Leave
The fire had burned low now, no longer climbing, no longer reaching—just existing, glowing, holding on.
Tutu let out a slow breath, fingers curling against the earth.
“Light never leaves. Breath never leaves.”
The words felt real now. Felt solid.
Sam shifted, tapping his pipe against his boot.
“Reckon you’re startin’ to see things clearer.”
Mozzi’s eyes flicked toward the sky.
“And what about them?”
All heads tilted upward.
The stars hung above them, watching as they had watched since the beginning of time.
Tutu had looked at them a thousand times, but tonight—tonight, they felt closer.
Sophia inhaled deep, eyes full of knowing.
“Tell me, my loves—do you see them as they are?”
Mozzi blinked.
“What do you mean?”
Nancee’s gaze lifted, the fire painting gold along her cheekbones.
“The light from those stars has been traveling for a very long time.
Some of what you see left its home millions of years ago.”
Tutu’s chest tightened slightly.
“So some of them are already… gone?”
Sam gave a slow nod.
“Burned out long ago. Their fire’s done. But their light?”
He gestured upward.
“Still travelin’. Still here.”
Silence stretched, wide and endless.
Mozzi’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Even when something’s gone… it ain’t really gone.”
Sophia smiled, her hands resting lightly on her lap.
“That’s right, my love.”
Tutu pressed a palm to the warm desert soil, grounding the thought.
“So we’re looking at ghosts.”
Nancee tilted her head.
“No. You’re looking at memories.”
Mozzi exhaled sharply, rubbing her temples.
“Damn.”
Sam chuckled, stretching his legs.
“Yep. Damn’s about right.”
Tutu swallowed, staring harder at the sky, trying to feel it—
the distance, the time, the fact that what was gone still touched them.
A flicker of something deep, something so big it ached.
Mozzi ran a hand over her face, voice thick with thought.
“If their light is still reaching us… did they ever really leave?”
Sophia smiled, slow and soft.
“No, my love.”
The wind curled around them, brushing across the cholla and creosote,
moving quiet between fire and embers.
Tutu exhaled, slow, steady.
“If the stars are still here,
and the breath is still here,
and the fire never leaves…”
The words stretched long, careful.
“Then nothing ever does.”
Sam nodded, pipe resting between his fingers.
“Not a damn thing.”
Mozzi ran a palm over the ground, letting the warmth of it settle into her skin.
“Then we were never alone.”
Nancee’s voice curled into the hush between them, full of something old and certain.
“Not for a single breath, my love.”
Tutu inhaled, held it, let it go.
The stars burned steady.
The embers glowed.
And the night stretched on, endless.
Awe and Belonging
The Makers of Light and Breath
The fire burned low, its glow flickering soft against the curve of Tutu’s palm.
The embers had settled into a steady pulse—alive, but not hungry anymore.
The stars burned above them, still sending their light, still stretching across time.
Mozzi rubbed a hand over her face, letting out a slow breath.
“So we’re made of stardust. We’re breathing in time. And nothing ever really leaves.”
Sam stretched his legs, arms crossing over his chest.
“Damn fine understanding you’re coming to, kid.”
Sophia’s lips curved into a knowing smile.
“But there’s still one thing left to know.”
Tutu glanced up.
“What’s that?”
Sam’s grin sharpened.
“Where it all came from.”
Mozzi huffed out a soft laugh.
“Thought we already covered that? Stars. Fire. Breath.”
Nancee leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
“Ah, but before all of that, my loves…
before there was even a single spark in the dark, there was nothing.”
The silence that followed was deep—the kind that makes you listen harder.
Sophia’s voice carried into it like a tide.
“And then we made it.”
Tutu blinked, head tilting slightly.
“Made what?”
Sam grinned, gesturing broadly with his hands.
“The whole damn thing.”
Mozzi snorted.
“Oh, this I gotta hear.”
Sophia exhaled, as if she had told this story a thousand times before,
and each time it carried the same weight.
“The void was empty.
No light, no warmth, no breath.
Just space stretched wide and waiting.”
Sam leaned in slightly, his grin settling into something more knowing.
“Then we reached in and pulled out the first thing.”
Tutu swallowed, a small thrill pressing into the chest.
“Hydrogen.”
Nancee nodded.
“Yes, my love.
The first building block of all things.
The very breath of the universe before breath was ever known.”
Mozzi narrowed her eyes playfully.
“And you’re telling me you made it?”
Sam exhaled slowly, as if remembering.
“Sure did. Built it myself.”
Sophia laughed, shaking her head.
“Don’t let him fool you.
We all had a hand in it.”
The fire cracked, sending up a small spray of embers,
lost to the stillness of the high desert night.
Tutu found themselves caught—somewhere between amusement and something deeper.
It was playful, yes. But it did not feel untrue.
Sam tipped his hat back.
“First thing we did was let it run wild.
Hydrogen don’t like to sit still, see.
Spread itself thin, floatin’ free, not knowin’ what it was meant for.”
Nancee smiled softly.
“Until it found itself.”
Tutu frowned slightly.
“Found itself?”
Sophia lifted a hand, tracing something unseen in the air.
“It gathered, pulled in close, held itself so tight that it couldn’t hold anymore.”
Sam tapped his fingers against his knee.
“And then?”
Tutu’s breath hitched slightly.
“Boom.”
The fire leapt, as if in agreement.
Sophia’s voice was soft, full of something vast.
“The first light.”
Mozzi ran a hand through her hair.
“The first star.”
Nancee nodded.
“The first fire.”
The embers pulsed, glowing bright, then dimming slightly.
Sam tilted his head.
“And tell me—when that first star burned itself out,
when it had made all it could make,
what do you think it did?”
Tutu exhaled, pressing a palm to the ground.
“It gave itself back.”
Sophia’s gaze glowed.
“Yes, my love.”
Mozzi swallowed, voice quieter now.
“And from that dust, from what was left behind… everything else was born?”
Nancee’s voice curled into the air, warm as the fire.
“Everything.”
Tutu let the words sink in—deeper than thought, deeper than knowing.
Mozzi let out a breath, shaking her head.
“Alright, so we made light. What about the breath?”
Sam chuckled, tapping his pipe against his boot.
“Ah, now that was the tricky part.”
Sophia smirked, tilting her head.
“The fire had to come first, you see.
The stars had to burn, had to break,
had to scatter themselves across the void.
But once they had, once the dust had settled into something more…”
Nancee’s voice was steady, gentle.
“The breath rose.”
The wind stirred through the valley,
carrying the faint hush of creosote and cholla.
Mozzi inhaled without meaning to—
as if suddenly aware of the very air in her lungs.
Sam grinned.
“That’s the first wind you’re feelin’ right there.
The same one that moved over the first oceans,
the first trees,
the first voices that ever spoke.”
Tutu let out a breath, slow and deliberate.
“And it never left.”
Sophia smiled, nodding.
“And neither did we.”
Mozzi let out a quiet, thoughtful chuckle.
“So we’ve been here since the beginning, huh?”
Sam leaned back, folding his arms.
“Yep. And we ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
Silence settled—
not heavy, not empty.
Just full.
Tutu looked at the fire, then at the sky, then at the faces before them.
And in that moment, they felt it.
The fire.
The breath.
The stars.
And themselves—woven into it all.
Release and Trust
Sitting with the Knowing
The fire had burned low, its glow settling into a quiet pulse.
It was no longer something reaching, something consuming.
It had become something else now—something steady.
Something remembered.
The stars stretched above them, light still traveling across time,
still finding its way home.
Tutu sat with it, letting the weight of everything settle—
not heavy, not burdensome.
Just vast.
Mozzi exhaled, a slow breath carrying something softer now.
“So that’s it then.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, amusement dancing in his gaze.
“That’s what, now?”
Mozzi’s fingers traced lazy circles in the dust.
“That’s everything.
We’re made of stardust.
We carry breath from every life before us.
And nothing ever really leaves.”
Sophia smiled, resting her chin in her palm.
“That’s a good start.”
Tutu frowned slightly.
“Start?”
Nancee’s gaze was warm, full of knowing.
“Oh, my love. Did you think the truth would fit inside just one night?”
Silence stretched wide.
Mozzi let out a quiet chuckle, shaking her head.
“Damn.”
Sam nodded, satisfied.
“Mm-hmm.”
Tutu pressed a palm to the warm earth, feeling its presence.
There was nothing left to chase.
Nothing left to prove.
Only this.
Only being.
Mozzi inhaled deeply, as if feeling the air differently now.
“Guess we’ve been looking at it all wrong this whole time.”
Sophia tilted her head.
“Have you?”
Mozzi thought for a long moment.
Then, voice softer, said,
“Maybe not wrong. Just… too small.”
Sam’s grin stretched wide.
“Now you’re seein’ it.”
Tutu’s fingers curled in the dust.
“We’ve always been part of it, haven’t we?
We never had to look for it.”
Nancee nodded, pride shining in her eyes.
“It was never lost.”
Mozzi hugged her knees, chin resting on them, eyes half-closed.
A soft hum slipped out—
not a tune, exactly—
more like the shape of a memory.
Quiet, but steady:
“Before the stars sang…
before the breath moved…
there was only the Silence.”
She didn’t open her eyes, just let out a long breath,
watching it disappear into the dark.
“And we were never separate from it.”
Sophia’s voice was light, but steady.
“Not for a single moment, my loves.”
The fire crackled one last time,
then settled into embers.
The wind shifted—
carrying something quiet,
something full.
Tutu exhaled,
feeling it fully now,
deep in the ribs,
in the skin,
in the breath.
The truth had not been given.
It had only been remembered.
Release and Trust
The Farewell
That Isn’t
The fire had burned low now, nothing left but a bed of glowing embers. It did not need to burn high anymore. It had already given its light.
Tutu sat in the hush of the desert, the knowing fully settled now—not something separate, not something distant. Something felt, something lived.
Mozzi breathed deep beside them, fingers resting against the earth, as if grounding into the warmth left behind.
And then—
A shift.
Not in the fire, not in the wind.
In something deeper.
Tutu glanced up. Sam was sitting just as he had been, pipe resting in his fingers, easy as anything. But—his edges were softer now. Not fading. Not gone. Just… different. Sophia sat poised as ever, her presence still full, still here, but not quite as solid as before. And Nancee—Nancee was smiling.
Tutu’s heart pressed into the ribs, not in grief, not in fear—but in recognition.
“You’re leaving.”
It wasn’t a question.
Nancee’s smile deepened. “Oh, my love. We were never here to leave.”
The words settled like warmth into skin.
Mozzi sat up slightly, looking between them, lips parting, as if searching for something to hold onto. “But… we just got here.”
Sophia tilted her head, her voice soft, knowing. “And yet, we’ve always been here.”
Tutu swallowed, pressing a palm to the dirt. “But now… I can see you.”
Sam gave a slow, pleased nod. “And ain’t that somethin’?”
Mozzi inhaled, shaking her head, voice barely above a whisper. “This… this feels like something ending.”
Nancee’s gaze was steady, full of something deep, something infinite. “Nothing ends, my love.”
The embers pulsed once, then dimmed.
Sophia’s voice carried through the settling hush. “We can never leave you.”
The wind stirred gently, curling soft between them.
Sam exhaled, tipping his hat back. “Never could, even if we wanted to.”
Mozzi let out a breath, shoulders dropping slightly. “You’ll still be here?”
Nancee nodded, her voice warm as the night itself. “We will never leave you.”
A long, deep silence.
Not a silence that needed filling.
Just one that needed to be held.
Then—
The fire crackled one last time.
And they were gone.
Not lost.
Not vanished.
Just moved on.
The embers pulsed. The wind curled through the valley.
Tutu exhaled, slow and steady.
They were still here.
And they always would be.
Homecoming and Remembering
The Fire That Never Goes Out
the embers had settled now, their glow faint but steady, curling into the dust like something sleeping. Tutu sat motionless, fingers curled against the earth, listening. Not for voices. Not for footsteps. For something deeper.
The stars burned overhead, silent witnesses. The fire had dimmed, but its warmth was still there, pressing into the skin, lingering in the air.
Mozzi was still beside them.
Or—
Tutu turned. Mozzi was gone.
The space where they had sat was empty, the warmth of their presence lingering in the dust.
A small crease formed between Tutu’s brows. Not fear. Not loss. Just… noticing.
Then—
A feeling. Soft and steady, against the shoulder. A tiny dragonfly… Where?
Then, something real. Something warm.
A voice, close.
“Wake up, Tony.”
A small shake, gentle.
“I just had the craziest dream.”
The weight of sleep slipped away, the world shifting back into focus. The fire—still there, but only as a bed of soft-glowing embers. The valley—quiet, wrapped in the hush of deep night.
Tony blinked, breath slow, steady. The air tasted like warmth and dust, like something old, something familiar.
Mozzi sat beside him, rubbing sleep from her eyes, hair tousled, voice thick with dreaming. “Damn,” she muttered, stretching. “That was… something else.”
Tony sat up slowly, rolling his shoulders, feeling the warmth of the fire that had burned hours ago still settled in his skin.
Mozzi let out a breath, shaking her head, as if trying to clear something too big to hold. “I swear I just saw your mother.”
Tony’s breath caught for just a moment.
Mozzi ran a hand over her face, blinking hard. “And these two other people…” Her voice trailed off, like trying to catch a thought before it faded. “I don’t know them, but I know them. Like—” she exhaled sharply. “Like I’ve known them forever. Like family.”
Tony’s pulse thudded once, deep and certain.
Mozzi turned to him, eyes searching his. “And we were all—”
Her gaze flickered past him.
She stilled.
Her breath hitched.
Tony followed her eyes.
And there—just beyond the last flickers of firelight—
A pipe.
Resting in the dust, beside an old bush now singed at the edges.
Mozzi’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
She pointed, fingers trembling slightly.
“This pipe.”
Tony didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
The wind stirred, curling soft through the valley.
The embers glowed.
The breath moved on.
Alaha ruha d’qudsha
sacred unity of the one breath.
Hidden Epilogue not in the table of contents, specifically for those who find it
A message from Sam and Sophia:
Embers & Echoes
The fire had gone to whisper.
Just a few glowing coals nestled in the belly of the sand.
Above, the stars held still. Not in silence, but in reverence.
Sam sat by what was left of the warmth, pipe in hand, puffin’ slow like he had nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there.
Sophia walked the shoreline barefoot, her robe brushing against the foam as if the ocean recognized her and bowed at her feet.
“You feel that?” he asked, his voice more gravel than sound.
She didn’t turn. Just let her fingers trace the edge of a tide that didn’t care about time.
“The shift?” she breathed.
“Nah. The hush,” he said. “That big exhale after someone remembers they were never really lost.”
He tapped his pipe against his boot, watching the sparks flicker up like little thoughts escaping the mind.
“We lit a fire, Sophia. Not a bonfire. Just a little spark in a storm. And somehow they found it.”
“Because the storm was inside,” she said. “So was the fire.”
She turned to face him then, not as a guide, not as a teacher. Just as herself.
The breath of all things. The hush between thunder and understanding.
“They remembered how to breathe,” she said. “How to be water when the world demanded stone. How to hold pain without making it a prison.”
She stepped toward the fire.
“They didn’t learn the laws,” she added, kneeling beside the coals.
“They became them.”
Sam scratched his chin, watching the stars try not to blink.
“Still say it’s all about rhythm,” he muttered. “That’s what saved me. Ain’t about knowin’ when to move—it’s about knowin’ when to float.”
“And when to sink,” she said. “And when to rise. And when to wait.”
“You always were better at the waitin’,” Sam grinned. “Me, I get twitchy when things get too quiet.”
“The quiet is where things are born,” she said. “The dark between stars isn’t empty. It’s listening.”
She closed her eyes, letting the ocean touch her toes and retreat like it had heard enough for now.
“They remembered that, too,” she said. “That seeing isn’t about eyes. It’s about choosing to stay. To witness. To open.”
Sam stood, creaking like an old door in a chapel.
“Yeah, but it don’t hurt havin’ a few stars to stare at while you open up.”
He looked up, pipe dangling.
“You think they’ll keep lookin’ up?”
“If they’re quiet enough to hear themselves,” she said, “they will.”
“You think we’ll see them again?”
“I think,” she said, “they’ll see us. In the waves. In the fire. In the stillness.”
Sam brushed the sand from his pants, like he was gettin’ ready for a long walk or a short goodbye.
“Well, I’ll be around,” he said. “I always am. Probably sittin’ on some rock, talkin’ to the moon, soundin’ wiser than I am.”
“I’ll be in the breath between questions,” she said. “The silence before an answer. The echo in a well they forgot they could drink from.”
The fire sighed its last ember.
“So this is goodbye?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “This is just… a pause in the rhythm.”
The tide leaned in to listen.
Then they walked—
Sam up the slope, Sophia along the edge.
Not fading. Just blending.
Into starlight. Into story.
Above them, the stars held their breath.
Not answering.
Just waiting—
Like a mirror turned skyward,
A question that never needed reply.
One set of footprints.
But not the end.
Something stayed.
Not a voice. Not a flame.
Just knowing:
Life moves in spirals, not straight lines.
You don’t vanish.
You return.
You expand.
You become the sky.
The breath. The firelight.
You are the echo of everything you ever loved—
And everything that ever loved you.
So if you ever find yourself by a quiet ember,
Wondering if you still belong—
The answer is yes. Always yes.
Even now. Even here. Even in you.
————————————————
A Whisper About Sam and Sophia
Before the match was ever struck.
Before the fire caught hold.
Before the breath even knew it was breath —
They were already here. Sam and Sophia.
Two names. Two faces.
Two ways the fire talks back when you’re quiet enough to listen.
Now, if you think they were just friendly old wanderers who happened to be good at staring at stars and remembering old songs, well… you’re not wrong.
But you’re not entirely right either.
See, Sam carries a secret tucked deep in his pocket.
Long before he was stomping around the desert with a pipe and a chuckle, his name was already humming through the oldest campfires — Shem — the Name — the sound that pointed to the Unspeakable without trying to catch it in a net.
But his name, Sam, hides something even deeper.
It traces back to “Shem” (שֵׁם) — the Hebrew word for “Name”.
And not just any name — The Name — the whispered word for the Infinite when you didn’t dare say too much out loud.
Go even deeper, and “Shemuel” (שמואל) surfaces — “Heard by God” or “Name of God.”
So every time Sam tells a story or lights a fire, he’s not just passing time —
he’s stirring the embers of who you’ve always been, before you even knew what questions to ask.
And Sophia?
You probably felt her before you even noticed her —
the soft question inside the loud answer,
the pause before you say something you’ll actually mean.
Her name comes from the old Greek word “Σοφία” — meaning Wisdom.
But not the dusty old kind.
This Wisdom danced before the stars knew they were stars.
In other traditions, she was called Chokmah (חָכְמָה) — the second emanation of existence itself — the first breath of conscious thought after the Great Stillness.
Sophia is that quiet remembering you feel when you realize the ocean doesn’t ask where the shore begins.
She’s the Breath under the Fire. The Knowing under the Asking.
The Home under the Journey.
Fire and Breath. – Name and Wisdom. – Sun and Moon. –
Sam and Sophia.
Two notes of the same song you’ve been humming without realizing.
Two sides of the same ember you’ve been carrying inside your chest, even when you thought it had gone cold.
They’re the parts of you that already knew —
The parts that just needed a fire, a wave, a starlit hush to lean into.
So if you find yourself sitting quiet someday,
watching a fire that’s more memory than flame,
and you hear a voice like a chuckle in the embers
or feel a presence like a whisper in the tide —
Don’t be surprised. You didn’t imagine them. You didn’t lose them either.
Sam and Sophia were never really “there” or “gone.”
They were always here — same as you.
Ubuntu
The Fire We Carry
The Grandmothers’ Wisdom — The Weavers Before
As the fire softened and the stars leaned in, the Grandmothers spoke—not loud, not hurried, but like truths the land had always held.
They didn’t have equations, but they had listening. They watched the sky and heard the voice of the stars long before telescopes, and they knew—somehow—they were made of what they could not reach.
They told stories of sky-walkers and fire-bearers, bone spirits glowing in the dark, breath tying tree to star, river to blood.
They stirred dust into water—not just to cleanse the skin, but to remember.
They carried no books, no formulas. They carried memory. And in the silence between heartbeat and breath, they whispered truths science is only now beginning to prove:
What is above is within. What explodes becomes. You are not apart from the fire—you are its memory, walking.
They did not call it chemistry or mentalism. They called it belonging.
Breath was a weaving, never private. When you breathe out, you offer your story to the world.
When you breathe in, you carry songs, grief, and laughter—the hush of ancient oceans, the cries of newborns wet with wonder, the final sighs of storytellers who remembered everything.
So when we say you are stardust, we are echoing them. We are not teaching something new. We are finally catching up.
They sang to seeds, drummed babies to sleep, hummed when words fell short. Their silence had weight.
They knew fire as return, not ruin. Trees drank sunlight and rooted it deep—a dance science calls photosynthesis.
And when a tree burned, it wasn’t an end; it was the sun going home. Crackle was light remembering itself. Smoke, a breath returning to sky.
Science writes:
(C₆H₁₀O₅)n + 6nO₂ → 6nCO₂ + 5nH₂O + energy
But the Grandmothers had already danced that truth in ceremony.
They lived in circles—cradleboards, moon lodges, compost. They stirred stew by the fire. Wove root into sky. Called it prayer, not data.
They knew: as within, so without. What you do to water, you do to yourself. They honored time. Darkness as rest. Each step a prayer echoing seven generations forward and backward.
They held no hard edges. Lived in the sacred middle—vessel and flame, river and stone. Some walked as Two-Spirit. All walked as keepers.
When we say your ribs cradle the fire of a star that never died—we echo them.
You move with the slow tide of the world—woven, never alone.
They sang it into fires. Whispered it into rivers. Braided it into patience: We breathe each other into being.
Their fire was for warmth, never for show. They were the hearth, not the background.
So when the stars tilt, when the earth hums beneath your feet, when your chest rises and falls—remember: you are not breathing alone.
The fire of a star burns behind your ribs. It waits in your stillness. It remembers the way home.
Nothing loved is lost. The fire has not gone out. It has simply changed hands.
LISTENING TO MYSELF – DADIRRI
Listen deeply, sit in stillness, and reconnect with ourselves, others, and the land. The Silence Speaks
HOW TO SIT WITH THESE Fireside CONVERSATIONS
Before You Call This Section a Manual,
Know It’s a Fire.
Imagine old friends around a desert campfire, under a sky full of stars, passing a pipe or a root beer float around, sharing stories that weave truth, humor, and wonder while staring at the stars!
This book isn’t a lesson plan, a debate, or a guidebook in disguise. It’s a warm, inviting hearth—a sacred circle crafted from ash and breath, where your questions are honored and given space to glow. You might wonder: Is this science or spirit? Are these Indigenous teachings shared with respect? Is this poetic mysticism posing as truth? These are good questions, and this fire welcomes them. It’s not here to persuade or preach but to offer clarity, walking gently beside the mystery.
So, take your time. Read slowly, hold it gently, and let it guide your steps without rushing your pace. These aren’t chapters to check off a list—they’re moments to sit with, to feel, to let crack open something waiting inside you. This is a story told the old way, full of laughter, grief, and the kind of wisdom that feels like coming home.
How to Read Them
You may think you’re reading a story. But you’re not.
You’re sitting beside something older than words.
Listening to voices that might be yours. Or your grandmother’s. Or the stars.
The One Who Listens to Stars – The One Remembering Dadirri
The fire was small but held the dark like an old friend. Smoke curled—not rising, just wandering, like it had nowhere else to go.
Tutu sat still, palming a stone he’d picked up at dusk, just below the western ridge of Ryan Mountain. Turning it. Warming it. Listening. The desert was hush. No traffic. No city. Just the open breath of canyon and time. The stars weren’t just above—they were with us. Settled between granite ridgelines, closer than they should be.
Sam tilted his chin toward the overlook near Keys View. “They’re walking again. The Star People. Wičháȟpi Oyáte. They always return this time of year.”
Sophia was already watching. “The sky isn’t still,” she said. “Even when it looks quiet. The Milky Way—in Nuu-chah-nulth, Sxwiméxw—is a river of light, carrying memory in both directions.” The wind rustled the juniper. Firewood and creosote wove through her voice.
I tried to name the stars. Orion. Cassiopeia. Words that sounded like stone tablets—not stories.
Sam shook his head, soft. “Those names are new. Real new. When these stories were first told, English wasn’t even a whisper. People were already sailing by starlight, planting by Venus, singing to Sirius in languages too old to be written down. They were lived. Danced. Breathed.”
Sophia leaned in. Her voice barely above flame. “To understand the stars, you can’t just name them. You have to belong to them. You have to listen in the tongue of your bones—not in English, but in the breath of where you’re from. The old ones didn’t think about the stars. They thought with them. In Hawaiian, in Yuchi, in Diné—words don’t describe the sky. They move with it. You can’t translate the stars. You have to live their language.”
Tutu’s eyes glinted. The stone warmed in his hand. He looked toward the high granite ridgeline silhouetted against silver sky.
“So English cuts things apart,” he said slowly. “Calls a star a thing. Not a being. Not a brother.”
Sophia nodded. “English sees from above. It names to control. But in many old tongues, naming is invitation. A prayer. A way to listen.”
Sam tossed a log on the fire. Sparks rose like tiny ancestors finding their way home. The flames shimmered on the stone face of the mountain—shifting, speaking, like something remembered before birth.
“You want to know how Hawaiians read stars?” Sam asked. “You’d have to stop thinking in English. Let it go. Walk barefoot into their language. Because English wasn’t even born when they were already navigating oceans by starlight and story.”
Tutu rubbed the stone, then placed it by the fire.
“Maybe my words don’t need to be right,” he whispered, “just rooted.”
The fire breathed. The stars listened. Ryan Mountain stood like a sleeping elder. In the hush between juniper shadows, the stories kept moving—in sky, in stone, in silence between languages.
The Stone Listens Back
The next night, the fire was softer still. Coyote called from the ridge. The coals breathed. Juniper hissed. No one spoke for a long time.
Then Tutu said, almost to himself: “Kapemni.”
Sophia lifted her head. Sam leaned in.
Tutu sat cross-legged, stone balanced on his knee.
“I remembered something. Before all this… back when I thought silence meant nothing— I met a Lakota elder. He told me most people think Kapemni means ‘as above, so below.’ And it does. But not the way we think. Not reflection. Not symmetry. He said it means: the center of the One, expressing its living relationship with the indescribably mysterious.”
Sophia’s breath caught. Sam stopped stacking wood. The stars were so bright you could see their colors.
“He said the motion of the stars is the same as water in the womb. That the stars aren’t above—they’re inside. And when we speak in English, we forget. We separate. We label instead of listen. But in his language, every word was a relationship. His word for ‘star’ wasn’t a label. It was a teaching.”
Tutu’s voice dropped into breath.
“He said: Wičháȟpi—it means star—but really: ‘That which sings from the dark, reminding the heart of its place among all things.’”
The wind carried the line up the canyon wall. It didn’t echo. It held it.
“And I realized— I’ve been asking the wrong questions. Not: what does this mean? But: what is this asking of me? If a star isn’t a thing but a being in relation— then I’m not looking at it. I’m in conversation with it.”
Sam looked up, eyes glinting. “That’s the turn, brother. That’s how we begin again.”
Sophia reached toward the stone in Tutu’s lap.
“Kapemni. The center in motion. Not a concept. A way of returning.”
Tutu rubbed the stone, then placed it gently by the fire. His voice was quiet. Certain.
“I don’t worship the stone,” he said. “I thank it. That’s different.”
He paused, eyes reflecting the emberlight.
“And I don’t worship the Sun,” he added. “I listen to the Light. That’s different too.”
No one replied. The silence wasn’t empty—it was listening.
The fire breathed. The stars listened. The monoliths of Keys View stood like sleeping elders.
In the hush between creosote shadows, the stories kept moving—
in sky, in stone, in silence between languages.
The sky didn’t wait for questions.
It spoke like it always had—waiting only for someone to hear.
————————————————
Appendix: Two Ways of Speaking, Two Ways of Seeing
A living contrast between colonial English and Indigenous relational language.
English as Weaponized (Colonial Form)
How it functions:
Language as hierarchy: European over Native, academic over oral, formal over intuitive.
Modern Example:
“Let’s stick to real data, not storytelling—that’s more professional.”
(Assumes science = truth, story = superstition.)
Language divides: self vs. other, human vs. nature, success vs. failure.
Modern Example:
“That’s just your personal view—let’s be objective.”
(Frames feelings or lived experience as lesser than detached analysis.)
Language disconnects: from ancestors, land, community, even the body.
Modern Example:
“You should move away from your hometown if you want to succeed.”
(Implies that place and roots are obstacles, not strengths.)
Language controls: what is named can be owned, regulated, or dismissed.
Modern Example:
“We discovered this land in 1776.”
(Erases those who were already there, making language an act of possession.)
Indigenous / Aboriginal Languages
Language is offering, not ownership. Words carry relationship and responsibility.
Modern Example:
“Before I speak, I want to acknowledge the land we’re on—and thank those who’ve held it long before us.”
(Recognizes place and people as living participants, not background.)
Everything has being; language reflects connection, not category.
Modern Example:
“That river has been singing louder since the rains came.”
(Speaks of the river as kin, not resource.)
Words emerge from place and presence—not from abstraction.
Modern Example:
“This smell reminds me of my grandmother’s firewood—it’s how I know I’m home.”
(Language honors embodied, ancestral memory.)
Truth is carried in voice, memory, rhythm. Meaning is shared, not extracted.
Modern Example:
“Let me tell you what happened—listen closely, it’s not just about the facts.”
(Prioritizes meaning over information. Listens as ceremony.)
⟡ A Note from the Fire
English, in many ways, has been trained to dissect.
But Indigenous languages are not merely spoken.
They are ceremonies of belonging.
So next time you speak, pause and ask:
Not “What’s the point?”
but
“What is this word in relationship with?”
“What is it asking of me?”
Whispers from the Night Sky – When the Dashboard Goes Dark
The fire popped — soft, like the night clearing its throat. The air held a trace of creosote and warm dust. Somewhere beyond the circle of light, a lone cricket kept time with the desert’s slow breathing, beneath the bent-limbed silhouettes of Joshua trees standing like rooted witnesses in the Cahuilla and Chemehuevi homelands.
Sam sat across from me, half-shadowed, pipe ember glowing like a lone star drifting between us. Sophia’s hands cradled a tin mug, eyes already somewhere above, where the Milky Way sprawled without permission, shimmering in the vast clarity of the high desert night.
Tutu leaned in, elbows on knees. “It’s quiet enough to hear myself think,” he said. “And that’s the problem.”
Sam’s chuckle was low, like a spark finding kindling. “Then stop thinking. Twenty seconds. Like killing the lights in a cockpit so you can see the horizon again. Same reason the old navigators shielded their eyes before a star sight — to let the night reveal itself.”
Sophia’s smile curved just enough to catch the firelight. “No dashboard. No GPS. Just a sextant and the sky. Doesn’t matter what you believe — the method works because it’s lived. Moon. Stars. The turn of the earth. It’s the kind of technology that doesn’t belong to any one time.”
Tutu’s gaze stayed on the flames. “Use it how?”
Sophia lifted her mug slightly toward the dark. “Like the moon. The Māori call her māramataka, the Hawaiians Hina. Watch her phases and she’ll tell you when to plant, when to fish, when to rest. Tie her pull to the breathing of the tides.”
Sam pointed north with the stem of his pipe. “Or the Big Dipper — check it after sunset, then before sunrise. You’ll know how much night is left by how far it’s turned. No clock. No batteries. Just the sky doing what it’s always done.”
Sophia’s eyes followed the horizon. “Mark the solstice, the equinox. Watch where the sunrises and sunsets slide along the skyline — you’ll feel the seasons shift before they arrive. You’ll know what to gather, what to mend, what to release.”
Tutu’s voice was almost a whisper. “The Pleiades?”
Sophia nodded, slow as remembering. “Yes. Potato planting. New year. Ceremonies. In the Andes, the Quechua watch them to forecast rains. In Hawai‘i, they’re Makali‘i — their rising begins Makahiki, a season of harvest and peace. To the Māori, Matariki, the new year. In Egypt, Sirius foretold the Nile flood. The Lakota call Orion’s Belt the Buffalo’s Backbone. The Hopi mark winter ceremonies with both Orion and the Pleiades. Different names. Different stories. Same sky. Same work.”
Sam tapped his boot with the pipe. “Our senses are a dashboard too — sight, sound, smell, the hum of balance in your bones. All of it feeding you who you are, where you are. The trick is knowing how to read it without letting noise take over.”
Sophia’s voice softened. “When you read it right, the line between you and what you’re seeing dissolves. The old navigators weren’t separate from their maps — they were inside them. Expansion is when your sensory body swells past your skin, like a childs soap bubble floating in the air, When the air on your cheek, the light in your eyes, the wind in your ears are not outside you anymore. Then you don’t need someone else’s rules. You move like the tide.”
Tutu shook his head. “I’m still here, looking out.”
Sam leaned forward. “Point at the stars.”
Tutu did.
“Now point at yourself.”
His finger hovered before his face.
“What do you see?” Sophia asked.
“Nothing.”
Her gaze held his. “Not empty — open. In that openness, everything fits. You can navigate without separation.”
The fire sank lower, folding its glow into the deep blue above. The air cooled, lifting the hair on my arms. Somewhere in the high desert silence, the Big Dipper kept turning, the moon pulled at the tides, and the Pleiades held their quiet time. The outer sky wheeled overhead. The inner one stayed wide and still.
Maybe that was the point.
Walking Backward Into the Future
Before there was a path, there was a rhythm. Before there was a future, there was memory. You don’t begin here. You arrive.
The rocks weren’t old. They were already here. Even the sky was a memory. Stars don’t shine in real time. They send their light ahead like messengers who already forgot the letter they were carrying. You’re not watching the present. You’re watching arrival from long ago.
I sat with my palms open on the red stone floor beneath me, breathing deep. The trail near Cap Rock, nestled against the sandstone bones of the desert, held warmth even after the sun left. Joshua Tree’s rocks aren’t just red. They’re layered—striped with memory, pressed into shape by oceans and time. I ran my thumb along a shallow groove in the earth. It wasn’t a crack. It was a wrinkle. A sign the land had lived something. That it had held on, just long enough to tell me about it.
Sophia stood a few paces away, starin’ up at one of those high formations—curved like the back of an old elder bowin’ toward the sky. She didn’t speak yet. Didn’t have to. Her presence felt like a long, slow inhale stretched across a thousand years.
Sam, sittin’ behind me, cleared his throat. “You ever think about how weird it is,” he said, “that everything you’re lookin’ at right now came before you?” He tapped his pipe against his boot. “I mean hell, even this fire—wood came from a tree, tree came from a seed, seed came from another tree. You’re just showin’ up in the middle of a conversation that started way before you knew how to listen.” I nodded. Quiet. It’s true. Even my breath didn’t start with me.
Sophia spoke, finally. Her voice didn’t break the silence. It completed it. “In te ao Māori,” she said, “time is not a road you walk forward.” She touched the rock wall beside her. “You walk backward—into the future—with your eyes on the past. Kei mua te wā.” I looked up at her. “Mua means in front?” She nodded. “The past stands before you. Because it’s visible. Because it brought you here.”
Sam laughed, puffin’ smoke like a lazy comet. “That’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it? Everybody out here squintin’ ahead like the future’s a billboard—and all the while the truth’s sittin’ behind their own ribs.” He leaned forward. “Your mama carried you. You’re her future. She came before you. So your first breath was already breathin’ in her time.” I felt that. Deep. Not just as an idea. But like it unlocked somethin’ soft in my chest.
That night, the stars were clear. No moon. Just sky—full of light that left its source long ago.
Mintaka was there too. Orion’s belt. Shows up right on time, like always. Not new—just returning, steady as memory. Waiting like an elder who’s been here the whole time.
I lay back against the stone, chest rising slow. “The stars weren’t lookin’ at me,” I said. “They were waitin’ for me to look at them.”
Sophia nodded. “Elders don’t force stories,” she said. “They offer. You just gotta be still enough to listen.”
Sam pointed upward with his pipe. “You ever notice how we call the stars ‘the future’—when all we’re really seein’ is the past?”
Sophia’s voice was like a hush inside the hush. “We do not see them as they are. We see them as they were.”
Each night, one star dips out, and another steps in. Like a quiet handoff. A slow dance in the dark sky—ancient light trading places. What was true for a rising star ain’t true for a leaving star. Same light, different lesson.
“They flipped it,” Sam muttered.
“Who did?” I asked.
“We did. Or maybe it got done to us. Either way, we started livin’ like the future was something we had to chase—and the past was just dead weight behind us.”
Sophia added, “The elders call it the reverse society. A world that forgot how to walk with the land, so it started walkin’ against it.”
But those same elders—they’ve seen what we ain’t even dreamed up yet. The future already stretches behind them like a shadow we haven’t earned. Not ‘cause they’re chasin’ it—but ‘cause they remember forward.
“In the old ways, you walked backward into the future. You faced the past—your ancestors, your teachings, your earth. But now we walk blind.”
I blinked, and the stars faded from my eyes—replaced by footsteps in sand. The sky became the trail. The past was movin’. And we were tryin’ to keep up.
Sam and I wandered off without a trail. Just starlight—still arrivin’.
“You know what the old ones knew?” Sam said.
“They knew not to move faster than the slowest animal.”
“Why?”
“’Cause the slow one’s carryin’ somethin’ important. You run ahead without ’em, you lose the medicine.”
Sophia’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “You must walk at the pace of all your selves,” she said. “Or you will arrive alone.”
What was true in the morning of life don’t always hold in the afternoon. The 12th grader ain’t tryin’ to be in 1st again. But they remember. And they see the path the little one’s still walkin’.
The 1st grader in you? Just sees stars. But the 12th grader? Sees what they mean. A rising star to one… might be a leaving star to the other.
I saw it then. A caravan. Elders at the front. Children playin’. Mothers singin’. And at the back—the parts of us still catchin’ up. No one rushed. No one left behind. Just the rhythm of rememberin’.
Back at the fire, Sam and Sophia’s voices drifted in again—low and warm, like embers talkin’ in their sleep.
“You ever notice,” Sam said, “how some folks live like their real life’s always… somewhere else?”
Sophia was drawin’ circles in the sand. “When your place is always… some other place,” she said, “then you’ve got no sense of place to call home.”
“So what do you do when you don’t feel at home anywhere?” Sam asked.
“You remember,” she said. “Something older than geography.” She pointed to the sky.
We’re the ones spinnin’, not the stars. But we forget that. We call it motion, but it’s really perspective. Even the same stars—summer, winter—they don’t speak the same. Not ‘cause they changed. But ‘cause the one watchin’ did.
“That the stars… are always overhead. Deserts. Cities. Mountains. Oceans. They don’t change. You do.”
“The sky,” Sophia said, “is your pattern. And you move through it. Whether you mean to or not.”
Sam tipped his hat toward her, then placed his hand over his chest.
“Maybe home ain’t a spot on the map.”
“No,” she said, “it’s the pattern that recognizes you. The rhythm that lets you belong, even when you’re far.”
He tapped his temple. Then his chest. “And that rhythm’s in here… …and here.”
And together, they whispered: “You’ll be in place. Everywhere.”
I didn’t need a map anymore. Just rhythm. Just remembering. Just the courage to stop moving long enough to arrive.
Sophia’s Whisper: The Pattern We Can’t See
The Mayans say the patterns in the sky are illusions. Not lies—just truths seen from only one place. No one can see the full design. Not you. Not me. Just the piece above our heads, shaped by where we’re standing. You can’t see through my eyes. And I can’t see through yours. But we can stand beside each other—not to agree, not to argue, but to see more than we could alone. That’s not confusion. That’s cooperation. That’s not illusion. That’s the dance. Because in the end, truth isn’t what you win. It’s what you learn to sit beside. It’s what you witness when you stop needing to be right.
Grandmother Spider: The Weaver Between
As the fire softened and the stars leaned in, Sophia’s voice came again—not loud, not expected, but like something the night had been waiting for. She spoke gently, not to anyone in particular, yet somehow to Tutu.
“Grandmother Spider came out of nowhere,” Sophia began, her voice a thread in the stillness. “She emerged from a hole in the sky. No name. No warning. Just silence—and the shimmer of something older than sound.”
Tutu shifted, their shadow flickering against the firelight. “From nowhere? How does something come from nothing?”
Sophia smiled, her gaze lifting to the stars. “Nowhere isn’t nothing. It’s the black between. She crossed it, arms wide, fingers soft as wind. And with her, she brought two things.”
Tutu leaned closer. “What things?”
“Thought,” Sophia said, pointing to the stars. “Each one a flicker. A spark. A question. Scattered across the sky like seeds tossed from a storyteller’s hand.” She paused, her hand drifting to the space between the stars. “And Silence—not emptiness. Not void. The holding. The womb. The everything that lets anything be.”
Tutu’s brow furrowed. “Thought and silence? They feel so different. One’s loud, restless. The other’s… still. How do they fit together?”
Sophia’s eyes caught the starlight. “Stars like thought can be anywhere, she said—bright and leaping, forever chasing shape. But silence? Silence, the darkness between the stars is everywhere. It’s what the shape rests in. It’s the web.”
Tutu nodded slowly, as if feeling the weight of the words. “So she wove them together? Made a web of both?”
“Yes,” Sophia said. “She came from nowhere to somewhere—which is, in truth, still nowhere. Because in this vast dance, even somewhere is just one bright knot on an endless thread.”
The fire popped, sending a spark skyward.
Tutu’s voice grew quieter, more searching. “And us? Where are we in this web?”
Sophia turned to Tutu, her voice steady but warm. “Here we are. You and I. I speak. You listen. But even as you listen, you’re speaking—to yourself. A second voice. An echo that doesn’t wait. A running commentary beneath the calm.”
Tutu laughed softly, recognizing the truth. “It’s true. I’m thinking about this conversation right now. And thinking about thinking about it. It’s like… a spiral.”
“Exactly,” Sophia said, her voice like a breeze. “A conversation about the conversation inside the conversation. Like a painter painting a picture of a painter painting a painting of a painter painting a picture.”
Tutu grinned, then grew thoughtful. “It’s endless, isn’t it? Thought thinking about thought. Spiraling and spiraling—until you forget who first picked up the brush.”
Sophia nodded, her eyes resting on Tutu. “And here’s what Grandmother Spider came to remind you: You are not the painting. You are not even the thought. You are the one who notices. You are the space behind it. You are the weaver, not the web.”
Tutu fell silent, staring into the fire. After a moment, they spoke, their voice steady but alive with discovery. “That reminds me of something—a practice called Dadirri, from the Aboriginal Australians. It’s about deep inner listening. A quiet, still awareness. It connects you to yourself, to others, to the world. It’s like… no longer talking to yourself. When thoughts come, you don’t chase them. You let them pass. You’re just there. Listening.” Tutu paused, then added softly, “It’s a way of being with the land, taught by those who’ve listened to it for countless generations.”
Sophia’s face softened, a spark of recognition in her eyes. “Dadirri,” she repeated, tasting the word. “Yes. That’s the silence Grandmother Spider speaks of. Not absence—but presence. Like one who moves with the rhythm of the moment, unburdened by chatter. Like the weaver at the loom. They don’t fight the thoughts. They don’t chase them.” She glanced toward the sky, the crooked ‘W’ hanging steady.
“To weave, you pause, as in Dadirri. You notice the thought—like a star in Cassiopeia’s web—but you don’t become it.”
Tutu’s gaze flickered toward the constellation, tracing the shape. “So that’s her web? Cassiopeia?”
Sophia’s voice softened further. “Some say so. The crooked ‘W’ is a memory in the sky. A reminder. Not just of Grandmother Spider’s web—but of the silence that holds it. The web is not just stars. The web is the space between.”
Tutu pressed a hand to the earth. “So we’re not just caught in the web. We’re weaving it.”
Sophia nodded. “Every thought you’ve ever had, ever repeated, ever feared, ever sung—came from you, Tutu. From your silence. From your spark. From your being. Thoughts can be anywhere. But silence is everywhere. Always has been. Always will be.” She paused, letting the fire breathe. “To weave, you pause. You listen deeply. You notice the thought, like a star in Cassiopeia’s web—but you don’t become it. You breathe. And you choose the thread of presence.”
Tutu’s eyes widened. “So I’m the weaver, too? Not just caught in the web?”
“You are the one who came before the thought,” Sophia whispered. “You are the awareness that breathes it into being. Just like Grandmother Spider, who came from nowhere, wove the first web of fire and stillness, and whispered across the dark: ‘You are not your thinking. You are the one who watches. And weaves.’”
The fire didn’t crack. The wind didn’t shift. But the silence grew deeper—not in absence, but in presence. Like a thread had just found its knot.
Tutu’s gaze lingered on the flames, then lifted again to the crooked ‘W’ in the sky. “And the stars?”
Sophia smiled. “The stars are just thought, set loose. The silence? That’s what holds them. Cassiopeia is not the web itself—it’s the glimmer. The web is the space that lets it shine.”
Tutu’s hand pressed into the earth. “Then we were never really outside the web. We’ve always been part of it.”
Sophia’s voice was soft now, but certain. “Not watching it. Not trapped in it. Weaving it. With every breath. Every noticing. Every silence we let stay.”
The fire breathed low. The night leaned in. The web shimmered. And the breath moved on.
Wisdom Sits in Places: Becoming A Firekeeper
We don’t need to learn more. We need to remember what we already know.
But how?
The Apache say, “Wisdom sits in places.”
So what if we carved that wisdom into the places of our bodies—
as if our skin were ancient stone, our muscles the memory, and our bones the stories?
A simple ritual.
Three places.
Three stars.
Three stories.
The Ancient Memory Game
Let’s play.
One. Two. Three.
Feet. Knees. Tuckus (your butt).
Say it again:
Feet. Knees. Tuckus.
Now, let’s name them:
One is Grandmother Spider.
Two is Medusa.
Three is the Big Dipper.
Say it again:
Grandmother Spider.
Medusa.
Big Dipper.
We’re carving the cosmos onto ourselves.
Let’s make it stick—with a little help from imagination:
Grandmother Spider on Your Feet
Now picture this:
Spiders. Everywhere.
Skittering across your toes,
crawling up the feet of the person in front of you,
weaving webs between your ankles and theirs,
until the whole room is a shimmering spiral of thread and presence.
You laugh. You squirm. But you remember.
Because Grandmother Spider isn’t just in the sky.
She’s in your soles.
And her story, as told in Talking to Myself,
reminds us:
“You are not the thought.
You are the one who notices.”
She weaves between silence and awareness.
Between stars and the spaces that hold them.
With her on your feet,
every step becomes a thread.
Every movement is a chance to listen.
To pause.
To notice.
To remember that presence is a kind of creation.
Medusa on Your Knees
Now picture this:
Your knees wrapped in Medusa’s Snakes.
Not in fear—but in myth.
In memory.
They hiss and blink and whisper:
“Let me be new.”
Because that’s what Medusa,
the blinking star Algol,
teaches us in Talking to Myself.
Her star blinks like a warning:
“If you treat someone only as who they were,
you become Medusa.
You freeze them in place.”
So your knees?
They are where transformation lives.
They bend with grace.
They rise with strength.
Medusa on your knees means:
See others clearly.
Let them change, be something other than you think they are.
Let yourself change too.
The Big Dipper on Your Tuckus
Now… imagine this:
A constellation glowing right on your behind.
Yes. The Big Dipper.
Beaming from your seat like a sacred tattoo.
Every time you sit down, it’s pointing north.
Pointing home.
In Talking to Myself,
we hear of the Hawaiian Bowl of Light.
Each of us is born with one—
pure, radiant.
But over time, we fill it with stones:
fear, shame, anger.
Until we forget the light is even there.
And what’s the cure?
Letting go.
Releasing the stones.
Empty the bowl.
Letting go of everything you are not.
The Big Dipper, the Bowl of Light is your cosmic compass,
guiding you back to where you have never left.
To forgiveness.
To sitting in the truth of who you are and others who they are
and who you are constantly in a state of becoming.
Sit.
Shine.
Empty the bowl.
Let your light rise.
Let’s Play Again
Say it:
One!
You say: Grandmother Spider.
Two!
You say: Medusa.
Three!
You say: Big Dipper.
And now—
Tell me the story of Grandmother Spider.
Tell me the story of Medusa.
Tell me the story of the Big Dipper.
Oh my.
What’s happening?
The stories…
they’re sticking.
They’ve found their place.
Because wisdom sits in places.
Walking Through the World Differently
Now imagine walking into your office.
Or the store.
Or a family dinner.
Someone enters.
You look down at their feet.
What thread are they weaving today?
Are they rushing through the web?
Are they pausing to notice?
You look at their knees.
What story are they carrying?
Do they stand the same as before?
Or have they grown, shifted, healed?
You glance at their seat.
Where is their light pointing?
What burden are they ready to set down?
You don’t have to know.
You just act on the wisdom that sits inside you:
“Nothing changes out there only inside and yet everything out there changes.”
And they?
They are not strangers.
They are stories.
They are breath.
They are starlight unfolding.
You Are the Star That Remembers
You carry the web.
You carry the serpent.
You carry the bowl of light.
And when you forget,
just come back to this:
Feet.
Knees.
Tuckus.
Grandmother Spider.
Medusa.
Big Dipper.
Because the stories aren’t out there anymore.
They’re walking with you.
They’re carved in you.
And the stars?
They aren’t above you.
They are within you.
A Rock-
The Way You Hold It
The fire was embers now, a soft orange hum. Tutu sat cross-legged, turning a small rock in his palm—rough in spots, smooth in others, like it had been handled for centuries.
“Sam,” he said, thumb pressing into the stone, “what’s this really? Beyond what I see.”
Sam puffed his pipe, eyes steady. “Still diggin’, huh? Good. That’s how you find you’re already there.”
Sophia’s voice slipped in, soft as worn cotton. “Careful, love. Pull that thread too long, you might unravel the whole sweater.”
Tutu’s lips twitched, but his gaze stayed on the rock. “I want to see what’s underneath.”
Sam tapped his boot, grinning. “Start simple. That’s a rock. Maybe it chipped off a wall, maybe it rolled from the road. Every scratch tells a story—rain, wind, shoes, time.”
Sophia’s words drifted like steam off morning tea. “It’s not one thing. It’s pieces pressed together. Pebbles. Dust. Cracks.”
Tutu traced a rough edge. “But what’s inside those pieces?”
“Go smaller,” Sam said. “Grains. Chips. Like sugar under a microscope—sharp edges, soft curves.”
“And under that?” Tutu leaned closer.
“Molecules,” Sophia said, voice warm as kitchen light. “Like Lego blocks, snapping tight.”
Tutu squinted. “And under the Lego?”
“Atoms,” Sam said. “Tiny spinning pinballs.”
“Smaller?”
“Particles,” Sophia whispered, “like dust motes dancing in sunlight.”
Tutu’s breath hitched. “And under those?”
Sophia tilted her head, eyes catching firelight. “The smallest specks, buzzing, alive with motion. Not just sitting—they’re always moving, in patterns too tiny to see.”
Sam chuckled low. “Some say it’s just vibrations. Tiny hums, like a plucked guitar string. That’s what feels solid—just hums pressed close.”
Tutu’s thumb circled a dent. “So this rock… it’s a song?”
Sophia’s smile warmed the air. “Yeah. A quiet one, too slow to hear.”
Tutu turned the rock, feeling its weight shift. “I can see it this way, or that. A chip, a smooth spot, a crack, a glint. I can hold it to the fire, squint, turn it a thousand ways.”
Sam puffed his pipe, grin tucked in the corner. “Yeah, but there’s more. It’s not just what you see—it’s how you choose to see it.”
Tutu looked up, curious. “What do you mean?”
Sam tapped his boot. “Depends which way you hold it. Right side, left side. Front, back. Top, bottom. Up close, from far away. Where it came from, where it’s sitting now. What you know, what you don’t.”
Sophia’s voice slipped in, soft as moonlight. “Sometimes you see the shine. Sometimes the shadow. Sometimes the story that’s told. Sometimes the story that’s missing.”
Sam puffed again. “Every time you look, you’re picking a lens. Every angle shows a new story. Quintillions of them.”
Tutu’s eyes flicked up. “But I’ll never see it all at once.”
“Nope,” Sam said, grin softening. “That’s the beauty. It’s the chip and the glint. The scratch you see and the ones you don’t.”
Tutu’s voice lowered. “So when I think I know something—or someone—I’m just seeing one side.”
“Exactly,” Sophia said, her words like a folded blanket. “You see their crack, their shine. But there’s always more.”
Tutu’s shoulders eased. “I used to think I had to know everything to get it right.”
Sam puffed slow. “Nah. You don’t need the whole story to love the rock in your hand.”
Tutu turned the rock one last time, thumb tracing its edge.
“One rock,” he said.
“Quintillion sides,” Sam replied.
“And every way you see it is true,” Sophia added, “but no way is all of it.”
Tutu set the rock in the center of his dirt spiral.
“And that’s not just rocks, is it.”
Sam’s grin flashed, sharp as a wink. “It’s people too.”
Sophia’s voice wrapped around him, warm and true. “You see their mood, their pace, the story they tell today. But there are sides you’ll never know—fights they’ve fought, dreams they’ve let go, kindness they gave someone else.”
Tutu’s breath steadied. “So I don’t have to understand it all. Just remember I’m not seeing everything.”
“Exactly,” Sam said. “That makes room—for them, for you.”
Tutu looked up. Polaris burned steady. The moon hung low. The rock sat in the dirt, ordinary and infinite. He turned it once more, feeling its weight, its quiet hum.
His eyes drifted back to Polaris—just a glimmer, just one side of something vast.
But still, it was enough to guide him home.
You Are the Sky
Oneness isn’t sameness
The campfire crackled, its flames dancing wild under a sky thick with stars. Tutu sat close, his eyes tracing the sparks as they leapt and vanished into the dark.
“Hey, Sam?” His voice cut through the quiet, small but steady. “They say we’re all one. But… how? If we’re all the same light, am I still me? Or do I just… fade away?”
Sam puffed his pipe, the smoke curling like a thought into the night. “Big question, kid. Gets folks twisted up. They hear ‘oneness’ and think it means vanishin’—like you’re just a spark snuffed out in the big fire.” He tapped his pipe against his boot. “But that ain’t it.”
Sophia’s voice slipped in, soft as moonlight. “Oneness isn’t sameness, love. Sameness is a machine. Oneness is a sky.”
Tutu’s brow furrowed, his fingers brushing the dirt. “But isn’t it the same thing?”
Sam shook his head, grinning. “Sameness is every flame burnin’ identical. Oneness is every star shinin’ its own way, but all lit by the same light.”
Sophia leaned closer, her eyes catching the fire’s glow. “Look up. No two stars twinkle the same. Polaris holds steady while the rest wheel around it. The moon’s got its own rhythm. Each flame in this fire dances its own dance. But it’s all light. All born from the same sky.”
Tutu hugged his knees, the campfire’s warmth brushing his skin. “But if I’m part of that light, where’s my place? How do I know I’m still… me?”
Sam’s pipe swung loose as he leaned forward. “You ain’t just the spark, kid. You’re the fire that makes it.”
Sophia’s voice was a gentle hum. “You’re not the star. You’re the sky that holds it.”
Tutu’s breath hitched, his eyes flicking to the stars. “So I’m not just… my shape?”
“Nope,” Sam said, his grin wide. “Your shape’s yours—your laugh, your doubts, your story. But the light? That’s shared.”
Sophia’s words flowed like a breeze. “The flame flickers. The star shifts. The moon wanes. But the light stays. You don’t vanish into the oneness—you shine because of it.”
Tutu dropped his gaze to his hands, calloused from the day. “But I’ve always thought my story’s what makes me… me. My edges, my fights, my mess. If I let that go, don’t I lose myself?”
Sam puffed his pipe, slow and sure. “That’s the trap, kid. You’re holdin’ onto your story like it’s the only thing keepin’ you real. But that story? It’s just a spark poppin’ off the fire. It’s not the fire itself.”
Sophia’s tone softened, steady as the stars. “Your story’s beautiful, Tutu. It’s the way the light’s movin’ through you right now. But it’s not yours alone. It’s the sky’s light, wearin’ your face for a while.”
Tutu’s fingers traced a spiral in the dirt. “So I don’t have to outshine anybody? I don’t have to prove I’m… brighter?”
Sam laughed, deep and warm. “Hell no. There’s plenty’a sky for every star to burn, every flame to dance.”
Sophia’s voice wrapped around him like the night air. “You’ve been taught to defend your glow, to compare it, to fear it’ll dim. But the light doesn’t need defendin’. It’s what you are. And it’s what they are too.”
Tutu’s eyes flicked to the fire, watching a flame twist and fade. “But I keep comparin’. I see someone’s shine—on the street, on my phone—and I feel… small. Like my light’s not enough.”
Sam nodded, his pipe sparking. “That’s the ego talkin’. It’s the spark thinkin’ it’s gotta be the brightest. It’s judgin’ other sparks, fightin’ to stand out. But the fire don’t care about that. It just burns.”
Sophia’s smile was soft, like moonlight on water. “You think your thoughts, your feelings, are yours alone. But they’re just weather—clouds movin’ through the same sky. No one owns the light. It just shines through different shapes.”
Tutu’s shoulders eased, his breath slowing. “So when I argue with someone… or judge them… I’m just seein’ their shape?”
“Exactly,” Sam said, tapping his pipe. “You’re lookin’ at their flicker, not their fire. But when you see the fire—the light in them, same as you—somethin’ shifts. You don’t need to fix ’em or fight ’em.”
Sophia’s voice glowed. “You start hearin’ them without a story. You feel their anger and don’t take it personal. Not because you’re tryin’ to be good, but because you see it’s just light movin’ through a different flame.”
Tutu looked up, the stars sharp against the vast dark. “And when my flame goes out? When my story ends?”
Sam’s voice dropped low, like the fire’s last crackle. “No big show. No trumpets. Just the quiet end of pretendin’ you’re only the spark.”
Sophia’s words were a whisper, like the moon’s glow. “The flame fades back to the fire. The star returns to the sky. The story falls away. And what’s left?”
Tutu’s fingers stilled in the dirt, his spiral complete. “What was always there.”
Sam grinned, his pipe glinting. “The light. The silence. The sky.”
Sophia’s voice was warm, final. “You don’t need to become the sky, love. You already are.”
Tutu’s smile came slow, like dawn breaking over the ridge. “Even now.”
“Even here,” Sophia whispered.
“Even in you,” Sam said, the firelight catching his eyes.
The campfire crackled low.
The stars burned steady.
Polaris stayed, a soft anchor in the turning sky.
The moon held its quiet glow.
And the sky held it all, as Tutu’s spiral shimmered in the dirt—a quiet reminder of the dance, the difference, the light.
“You Are the Sky and the root beer float.”
Joshua Tree National Park — Beneath the Core of the Milky Way
The fire cracked softly, flames licking the wood with quiet hunger. Sparks floated up like tiny spirits before dissolving into the ink above.
Tutu sat cross-legged, a warm enamel mug cradled in his hands—root beer and melting vanilla swirling like a galaxy in a cup.
Above them, the Milky Way spilled across the desert sky, massive and raw, its core bright as bone-white fire. The stars didn’t twinkle here. They stared back, steady. Ancient.
Mozzi leaned against Tutu’s shoulder, familiar as breath. Sam sat hunched near the fire, pipe in hand. Sophia stood a little apart, eyes lifted toward the stars.
No one spoke for a while.
Only the night breathed. The hush between flames. The sound of the sky.
Then Sam murmured, “You ever watch a float melt?”
Tutu blinked. “A float?”
Sam nodded at his mug. “Root beer, ice cream. Sweetest damn thing. But it don’t last.”
Tutu looked down. The bubbles had gone still. The swirl of soda and cream now looked like an oil painting, halfway smudged.
“I used to think it was just dessert,” Sam continued. “Now I see it’s a sermon. You’re born. You bubble. You melt. But the sweet’s still in the mix.”
Sophia’s voice followed, soft and clear. “You’re not the star, Tutu. You’re the sky that holds it.”
Mozzi leaned closer. “You’re not the float. You’re the fizz. The breath between the bubbles.”
Tutu chuckled—shaky, unsure. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“That’s the start of knowing,” said Sophia.
Then she pointed to the sky.
“You see that band?” she asked. “The bright curve right above us?”
Tutu followed her finger. The Milky Way’s core blazed, brighter than he’d ever seen it, streaking across the sky like spilled ash and stars.
“Desert people have always known it,” she whispered. “The Chemehuevi called it the river of souls. The Diné saw it as the trail of the Holy People. Māori say it’s the canoe of the ancestors.”
Sam grunted. “They didn’t need science to know they came from it.”
Mozzi added, “Or that they’d return to it.”
Sophia turned back to Tutu. “That’s not just a galaxy. That’s a mirror.”
The fire cracked again. Tutu stared upward, his throat tight.
“You feel so different,” she said. “From the man who shoved you on the street. From the friend who betrayed you. From the child screaming on the subway. But it’s only the pattern that’s different. Not the source.”
Sam leaned in. “Every snowflake’s different, Tutu. But it’s all just water.”
Tutu whispered, “So what am I?”
“The space,” said Mozzi. “You’re not the thing that melts. You’re what holds the melting.”
Sophia’s voice was almost a hush. “You’re the sky, not the story.”
A wind stirred the desert shrubs. The scent of creosote and scorched earth mixed with cedar smoke and melting ice cream.
Tutu closed his eyes. Inside, something loosened.
Not a bang. Not a revelation.
Just… the end of holding so tightly.
His shoulders dropped. His breath came easier. And when he opened his eyes, the Milky Way seemed closer—not above, but within.
“The mask doesn’t fall off,” Sophia said, watching him. “It just stops being glued to your face.”
He looked at his friends, then at his own hands.
Still his story. Still his laugh. Still his scars.
But also—
The stars. The fizz. The space. The water.
And it was enough.
You don’t need to become the sky. You’ve always been the sky. The stars were just waiting for you to notice.
THE PEBBLE & THE WAVE
“Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause.”
We’d made our way back toward the fire now. Just embers again, like they were waitin’ to be remembered.
We were camped at the edge of the Salton Sea, the water barely breathing under a blanket of stars.
I crouched beside it, ran my hand just above the coals. Still warm. Still there. Just quiet now. Like it had said what it came to say.
Sam sat across from me, refillin’ his pipe like we hadn’t just danced with the moon. Like this was all normal.
Sophia knelt on the far side, eyes closed, her breath slow—like she was prayin’ without words.
Mozzi sat beside me—quiet, but awake. Her eyes on the embers, then the stars.
And me? I was thinkin’ about all the little things. The missed calls I never returned. The times I said nothin’ when someone needed to hear I loved them. The way one moment could ripple forward for years—sometimes without me even knowin’ it.
Sam broke the silence.
“You ever throw a rock in a pond?”
“Sure,” I said.
“You ever see the ripples?”
“Course.”
He pointed at the ocean.
“Same thing. Only bigger. Slower. Quieter. But still happenin’.”
He reached down, picked up a smooth black pebble, turned it over in his hand like it held a secret, then tossed it into the water. Plunk.
We watched. Tiny ripples. Wide circles. Gone before they reached the stars. But I knew they didn’t really disappear.
Sophia opened her eyes, soft as always.
“Everything you do,” she said, “has motion. Has meaning. Has memory.”
She looked toward the stars.
“Even those,” she said, “are effects of a cause. Born of fire. Born of choice. Born of time.”
Mozzi hadn’t spoken in a while. She was just sittin’ there, eyes lifted. But there was somethin’ deeper in her stillness this time.
Then, soft—like a thought she didn’t mean to say out loud:
“Isn’t it always both?” She paused. “Cause… and effect. At the same time.”
The fire didn’t move. But somethin’ shifted.
Sam nodded once. “That’s the trick.”
Sophia turned, her voice like wind through still trees.
“You cause what you don’t even know you’re causin’. And you’re already the effect of things you never saw comin’.”
Mozzi looked down at her hands in her lap, then back to the water.
“So maybe it ain’t just cause and effect.”
She blinked slow.
“Maybe it’s… cause and choice.”
She looked toward me—not for an answer, but to include me in it. Like whatever this realization was, it belonged to all of us now.
Nobody rushed to fill the silence.
Then Sam leaned forward, watchin’ the fire like it was answerin’ too.
“Somethin’ happens.” He shrugged. “Then a hundred more things happen.”
Sophia spoke next.
“And then comes you.”
Mozzi smiled—not big. Just enough.
“So now what are you gonna do about it?”
That landed. Not just as an idea—but as a call.
“So we’re seein’ the effect long after the cause is gone,” I said out loud.
Sam let out a low whistle.
“Look at you, gettin’ cosmic.”
But it wasn’t cosmic. It was personal.
I started thinkin’ about my mom. How some of her words still shaped how I moved through the world—even now.
How one kind thing a stranger said five years ago could still bring me peace on hard days.
How one harsh word I’d let slip might’ve stayed with someone I loved—quiet, but sharp.
Ripples.
Sophia stood and walked toward the shoreline, where the last tide had just left a shine across the sand.
She knelt, placed both palms gently on the wet earth.
“What you send into the world always comes back,” she said. “Sometimes in a form you don’t recognize. But it returns.”
She lifted one hand, traced a slow circle in the air.
“The wave you create may become someone else’s tide.”
That one sat deep.
Because I’d always thought of life like it happened to me.
But what if I was a maker too?
What if my thoughts, my actions, my little moments—
all of ‘em—were castin’ stones into the fabric of reality?
Not just my life. But other people’s, too.
Mozzi inhaled slow beside me, like she was breathin’ that truth in—not just thinkin’ it, but lettin’ it live in her.
She whispered,
“Even silence ripples, doesn’t it?”
Sam tapped his pipe on a rock, knocked the ash loose.
“Folks always wanna blame the ocean,” he said, “but they forget they’re the ones throwin’ pebbles all day long.”
He pointed at the stars again.
“You know how them got made?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Hydrogen. Fusion. Time.”
He nodded, grinnin’.
“But you remember what came before that?”
I thought. Then smiled.
“We did. In Wonder Valley. Around the fire.”
“Damn right,” he said. “Everything starts with someone doin’ somethin’.”
The fire popped softly, like it was clappin’ along.
And I felt it again.
That small thing inside me.
That soft understanding.
That I mattered.
Not in the loud, ego kind of way.
But in the quiet way that says: Even your breath is a vote for what tomorrow becomes.
Mozzi looked toward the ocean one last time and said, just above a whisper:
“Then I guess we better breathe like it matters.”
A wind picked up—just enough to stir the coals and make the fire blink.
Sophia stood. Not fast. Like the night was lifting her.
She faced the east, where Orion now stood full in the sky.
Then she raised her right hand—palm open to the stars.
No words at first. Just breath. Just stillness.
Then softly:
“To the rising side of the sky—
the beginning in all things.”
She turned her body—slow, like a tide shifting—and faced the west.
Her hand lowered, fingers gently splayed toward the horizon.
“To the leaving side—
where what has been…
becomes what we carry.”
She knelt, pressed both hands to the sand near the fire.
With one finger, she drew Orion’s shape in the earth—three dots for the belt, a curve for the bow.
Then she whispered:
“To what returns.
Not to repeat—
but to remember.”
Mozzi stepped beside her, mirroring her kneel.
Together, they traced the line of the stars—not with precision, but with presence.
Sam didn’t move much—just tipped his hat toward the pattern, his pipe resting on his knee.
Then, after a pause, he murmured:
“Ain’t no shame in risin’ crooked… long as you still rise.”
I followed them—not out of knowing, but because something in me remembered.
I placed my hand in the sand beside Orion’s belt.
Felt the cool of the earth.
Felt the fire’s warmth at my back.
And I breathed.
One slow inhale.
One slow exhale.
I thought of her again—my mother. Of the words I’d left unsaid.
Of how even silence, once remembered, can return like a star.
Then quietly, all of us—without planning, without cue—spoke as one:
“Not the same.
And yet not another.”
The fire didn’t crackle. The stars didn’t blink.
But something turned inside us—
a circle,
a memory,
a breath.
And we knew:
We would rise again.
TALKING TO MYSELF AGAIN – WALA’LATa
It is waving: Everything, everyone and every situation is on its way to becoming something else. Can you allow it to be something other than you think it is?
18 Quintillion Ways to See a Star
“It’s not just what you’re looking at. It’s how you’re standing.”
I used to think math and mystery were opposites. But that night, under stars and root beer fizz, I realized something sweet… they were speaking the same language.
Let’s slow down for a second.
Back when I said there were “18 quintillion different ways to see that star,” I wasn’t just spinning cosmic poetry. The math is real:
16^16 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616.
That’s over 18 quintillion combinations.
Here’s how we get there:
Start with 8 ways of perceiving anything:
Each of these offers 2 options—so that’s 16 possible “lenses.”
Now, imagine: you can look through one, or all 16, in any order or combination. That’s where the math stacks up:
16 choices, across 16 layers = 16^16 = over 18 quintillion ways of seeing.
But here’s the part that matters:
This ain’t about algebra.
It’s about awareness.
THE ROOM: Sam once told me about a room and called it a thought experiment
Picture a single object—say, a smooth black stone—resting in the center of a room.
In each of the four corners, stands a person: North, South, East, and West. They’re all looking at the same object.
But they don’t see the same thing.
One sees the shadow.
One sees the reflection.
One sees the weight of it.
One sees what it reminds them of.
Now add four more people, each standing upside down on the ceiling—gravity reversed.
Their perspective? Different again. They’re from another world. Maybe the Southern Hemisphere. Maybe the dreamtime.
Now add four more, standing sideways on the walls like they’re from Singapore or the space between thoughts.
Still the same object.
That’s 12 observers.
Now imagine each of them could toggle through the 16 lenses above. Not just one at a time, but layered.
Like a kaleidoscope of interpretation, emotion, memory, myth.
That’s how you get to 18 quintillion.
Then as if out of nowhere this image came to mind – The Moon, the World, and the Way We See
Picture the moon—full, bright, ancient—hanging in the night sky.
Now picture twelve people around the world, all looking at it at the same time:
Same moon. Same moment.
But each person sees it a little differently.
To some, it looks like a smile.
To others, a cradle.
To others still, it’s tilted, rising, falling, glowing sideways.
One sees it as a mirror.
One as a memory.
One as a mystery.
And the difference isn’t just where they’re standing on Earth.
It’s who they are.
What they’re carrying.
What questions they’re asking.
What part of them is doing the seeing.
The moon didn’t change.
We did.
So maybe the real point isn’t just that truth depends on perspective.
It’s that truth is perspective—and the sky is always offering more than one.
BUT HERE’S THE REAL QUESTION
What if those aren’t just ways of seeing?
What if they’re ways of being?
Because when you look at a star through grief, you see a wound.
Through hope, you see a path.
Through science, a plasma engine.
Through silence? A mirror.
You’re not just seeing the star.
You’re seeing your father.
The version of you that never came home.
The one who still believes.
The one who gave up.
And the kicker?
They’re all real.
All valid.
All part of the mystery.
So no—this ain’t a science lesson.
It’s an invitation.
To see more.
To be more.
To remember that truth isn’t flat. It spirals.
And every version of you—
Every angle, every ache, every lens—
deserves a seat by the fire.
Maybe how you see… is who you are in that moment.
“Empty the Bowl
of Light”
The fire had burned down low.
Not tired. Just content.
Like it had heard what it came to hear.
None of us moved much.
We were listening.
Not to each other exactly—just to what came after.
The air at the edge of the Salton Sea was still. The kind of still that carries the memory of water farther than sound.
Tutu shifted beside me.
He didn’t speak for a long time.
Then:
“How do you know when the story’s over?”
Sam smiled—not with his mouth. Just something in the corners of his eyes.
“It ain’t,” he said. “It just gets quieter.”
The waves were sleepin’ by then.
No wind. No need for it.
Mozzi leaned forward and placed a small stone in the sand between us.
Didn’t explain. Just did it.
Sophia’s voice came from behind us, soft as a tide.
“They say we’re born with a bowl of light.
Not a thing we carry.
A thing we are.”
Tutu looked at her, then at the stone.
“What happens to it?”
“We fill it,” she said. “With stories. With hurt. With things that don’t belong.”
Sam picked up a pebble. Turned it over in his hand like it had memory.
“Every stone,” he said, “is a thought we held too long.”
Mozzi whispered,
“But even with the stones, the light stays.”
Sophia stepped closer to the fire.
Not to feed it. Just to witness.
“An ancient Hawaiian way,” she said.
“Old way of making things right again.
Not by force.
By forgiveness.”
Tutu’s voice was gentler now.
“And how do you forgive what’s still inside you?”
Sam didn’t rush.
“You don’t push it out.
You set it down.
Stone by stone.
Until the light gets room to breathe again.”
No one said anything for a while.
The fire gave a breath. Blue at the edges.
Like it was remembering too.
Sophia lowered herself to sit beside Mozzi.
“Hydrogen’s the first thing,” she said.
“Oldest light in the universe.
You can’t see it—but everything you are begins in it.”
Mozzi added, voice even:
“And Argon’s in every breath.
Been here since the start.
Doesn’t bind. Doesn’t hold.
It just… shows up.
And stays.”
Tutu watched the fire.
“So maybe we’re not the bowl. Maybe we’re the light that stayed.”
Sam nodded.
“You’re both.
The shape and the shimmer.
The holder and the held.”
We all looked up then.
The Big Dipper was rising.
Mozzi pointed softly. “The bowl’s emptying.”
Sam nodded slow.
“In the sky and in us.
Turns every night. Around Polaris—the star that don’t move.”
Sophia smiled.
“They call it the hummingbird. Stillness at the center. Wings around it in motion.”
Tutu looked up at the bowl in the stars.
Then down at the stone between us.
He picked it up. Held it for a long second.
Then reached back and placed it gently in the dark behind him.
Said nothing.
The fire stayed.
Not burning high. Not calling attention.
Just being.
Like something that had nothing left to prove.
The stars turned.
And the story… let go.
The Star That
Blinks- Medusa
The fire had quieted to a breath. Not reaching. Not flickering. Just being. Tutu sat cross-legged in the dust, a slow line drawn between two fingertips. They weren’t speaking—not yet. But the silence around them felt full.
Mozzi stirred first. “You ever think about going back?”
Tutu didn’t look up. “I think about it all the time.”
Mozzi nodded, eyes distant. “And?”
Tutu let the word linger before answering. “I don’t know who I’d be. I don’t know if they’d even see me.”
From the edge of the circle, Sophia’s voice drifted in. Low. Measured. “The question is… would you see them?”
Mozzi turned. Tutu looked up. Sophia wasn’t sitting near the fire this time. She stood a little apart, facing the stars. “You see that one?” she asked, lifting a hand toward the dark sky. “A little to the left of Perseus. The one that blinks.” They followed her gaze. A faint flicker. Almost rhythmic. “That,” she said, “is Algol. Some call it the Demon Star. But in the old stories—the ones that remember—she was known as Medusa’s Head.”
She stepped closer, firelight soft against her robes. “Let me tell you something about leaving—and returning. You go. Maybe for truth. Maybe to run. Maybe just to feel the wind on your back. You say goodbye. You cross the threshold. And out there… you change. You gather moments like seeds in your pocket. Some bloom. Some scar. But either way, the one who left is not the one who returns.” She crouched beside the fire, her eyes reflecting its glow. “And here’s the part most folks miss: The ones you left behind? They changed too.”
Mozzi sat forward. Tutu’s brow furrowed.
Sophia’s voice dropped, steady as the tide. “There’s a saying from the Pāli tongue: nacha so nacha añño. Not the same. Not another. You are no longer who you were. But you are not someone else, either. And neither are they.”
A long pause. No one moved.
“And if you go back,” she continued, “and speak to them like they stayed still while you wandered—if you treat them only as who they were—you become Algol. You become Medusa.”
Tutu blinked. “Medusa… turned people to stone.”
Sophia nodded. “Not out of cruelty. Just out of seeing with old eyes. Eyes that refused to change.”
Mozzi whispered, “So we freeze each other in memory.”
“Yes,” Sophia said. “We trap each other in yesterday. And that’s how we lose each other—not through distance, but through refusal.”
The fire cracked gently.
Sam’s voice rolled in like slow thunder. “World’s full of statues wearin’ familiar faces. Takes real courage to let someone change in front of you.”
Sophia smiled. “Compassion is letting someone be new. Wisdom is knowing you are, too.”
Tutu exhaled, long and slow. “What if I forget?”
Mozzi leaned closer, voice soft. “Then look again. And again. Until you see who’s really there.”
Sophia stood. Her gaze returned to the sky. “Algol still blinks,” she said. “But we don’t have to.”
The fire pulsed once—a breath held, then released.
Not an ending. Just the space before something begins again.
“The Conversation Continues – Down the Wormhole”
The fire had crumbled to ash, its whispers tucked into the tide’s slow hush. Tutu sat alone—knees drawn up, arms looped around them—while the stars stretched overhead like a story still being written. Mozzi was asleep inside the beach cabin. Her root beer float sat half-melted on the porch rail. She’d fallen asleep mid-sentence, murmuring something about Saturn’s rings and sea otters.
Tutu stared at the sky. The Mi’kmaq teach Etuaptmumk—Two-Eyed Seeing. One eye open to the old stories, the other tuned to science’s quiet pulse. Tutu tried to keep both open. He let the night air brush over his face. The Japanese call it Hoshi Yoku—starlight bathing. No soap. No towel. Just presence. Just letting the stars rinse off whatever didn’t belong.
And the stars? They weren’t just far. They felt… alert. Like they were waiting for him to ask again. Like they remembered the spiral he once drew in the dirt. Like they never forgot.
They say there are 16 ways to see a star. Left. Right. Top. Bottom. Front. Back. Inside. Outside. Where it is. Where it is not. When it is. When it is not. What you know. What you don’t. What you can see. What you can’t. But Tutu thought about Mozzi’s laugh—the kind that starts in her chest and leaps out her mouth. You don’t just hear that from one direction. You feel it all around. Maybe stars are like that. Maybe those aren’t directions. Maybe they’re invitations. Maybe they’re ways to belong.
Tutu blinked. The stars pulsed. And the sky… opened.
A ripple shimmered through the air—like heat off a summer road. Then came the voice, rough and warm as gravel in a jacket pocket. “Back again, kid?” Sam was perched sideways on a chunk of sky—or a rock, or a memory—swinging his legs like a boy on a porch rail. His pipe puffed slow, each breath curling like morning mist off a mug.
“Course you came,” Sophia said, stepping through a breeze made of galaxies. She moved like the hush between a lullaby and a dream. “You ask the stars a real question, they’ll answer in their own time.”
Tutu tried to speak, but only a breath came out.
“This is Hoshi Yoku too,” Sophia whispered, “but the kind you don’t do with skin. It’s the kind you do with your story.”
“Where am I?” Tutu managed.
“Not a where,” Sam said, grinning. “A how.” He pointed with his pipe. “You stepped through a moment. Fell into it. Happens.”
“Like slipping into a song,” Sophia added. “Only this one’s been humming since before you were born.”
Tutu looked around. Everything shimmered—not shiny, but alive, like a sidewalk after rain, catching hints of light from every angle.
“Is this real?” he asked.
Sam laughed. “That’s like asking if wind is real while it’s brushing your face.”
Sophia crouched beside him, voice softer now. “Some things are realer than facts. Like wonder. Like memory.”
Tutu nodded, quiet. He felt like he was standing inside a heartbeat.
“What is all this?” he asked.
Sam leaned forward, elbows on knees. “This? This is the universe replying. Not with words. With mirrors. You showed up curious. It showed up… as itself.”
Sophia nodded. “It meets you in the way you ask.”
“So… the stars need me to look at them?”
“They shine no matter what,” Sam said, grinning. “But how you see them—whether they’re a flashlight or a doorway—that’s on you.”
Sophia tilted her head. “To observe something… is to bless it with attention. And to bless something… is to remember it belongs.”
The stars rippled.
“And the parts I can’t see?” Tutu asked.
Sam’s pipe flared. “That’s most of it, kid. Dark matter, dark energy. Invisible, sure. But holding it all together.”
“Like gravity you don’t notice until you trip,” Sophia added.
Tutu frowned. “So I’m supposed to believe in stuff I can’t see?”
Sophia’s eyes softened. “What you can’t see still holds you. You don’t see love until it leaves. You don’t see wind until it moves the leaves.”
Sam blew a ring of smoke. “You ever see a song?”
“No,” Tutu said.
“But you’ve heard one?”
Tutu nodded.
“Then maybe believing isn’t always seeing. Maybe it’s hearing something you didn’t know you already knew.”
Tutu felt his shoulders loosen. Like something he’d been gripping had quietly set itself down.
“If the universe is asking a question,” he whispered, “what’s the answer?”
Sam grinned. “Maybe it’s you.”
Tutu blinked. “Me?”
“You, becoming,” Sophia said, her hand on his heart. “Not because you’re the center. But because you’re a thread in the weaving.”
The stars pulsed—soft as a breath held between friends. Sophia pressed her forehead to his. Their breath synced. In. Out. Like the tide. Like a lullaby.
“The fire never went out,” she whispered. “It just learned how to float.” And like that—they were gone.
Tutu opened his eyes. The fire was out. The sky still hummed. Mozzi snored inside. And beside him? Just a smooth rock, half-buried in sand. He picked it up, turned it in his hand. It wasn’t glowing. It didn’t whisper. It was just a rock. But… every part of it was made of smaller parts. And those? Even smaller. Atoms. Quarks. Strings. Little notes in a song that never ends. None of them the rock. But all of them… part of it. Like he was part of something too. Not all of it. Not none of it. Just a shimmer in the middle of the music.
“Hey Mozzi,” he called gently. “You up?”
She stepped out in that giant flannel, rubbing her eyes. “What now, starman?”
“Tour,” he said. “Star-style. You in?”
She flopped beside him, shoulder against his. “You gonna talk about your wormhole dreams again?”
“Maybe,” he said, smirking. “But this time… you’re coming too.”
They lay back. The sky above. Polaris steady. The moon cradling its glow. And Tutu whispered, not to Mozzi, not even to the stars—but to the spiral still turning quietly inside him: “I see you now. Not as fire. Not as stone. But as song.”
The Sidewalk Where Wonder Sparks
The city churned around Tutu—engines rumbling, people brushing past like waves. Horns snapped. A voice barked into a phone. Everyone, it seemed, had somewhere else to be. Tutu walked slower than the current, hands deep in his pockets, letting the crowd move around him.
The memory flickered. The fire. The spiral in the dirt. Sam’s grin, sharp as flint. Sophia’s voice, soft as moonlight.
“You’re not the star. You’re the sky that holds it.”
A man shoved past, knocking Tutu’s shoulder.
“Watch it,” the man snapped, already gone.
The heat rose in Tutu’s chest—tight, reflexive. The old habit whispered: Push back. Say something. Take up space. But this time, something shifted. The man’s face, his sharp words, his rush—they were just his shape. His weather. The light underneath? Same as Tutu’s.
“You’re lookin’ at their flicker, not their fire.”
Tutu let out a slow breath. The heat loosened.
Across the street, a little girl chased pigeons, her laughter skipping like pebbles on water. An old man hummed as he shuffled by, his cane tapping a steady rhythm. A woman scrolled her phone, her brow creased in some far-off storm. A street vendor flipped hot buns on a grill, steam rising like tiny clouds.
So many flames. So many flickers. Same fire.
“Oneness isn’t sameness. Oneness is a sky.”
Tutu crossed the street, his pace steady, his grip on himself softer now. The weight he’d carried—the need to shine, to fight, to defend his story—felt thinner, like smoke. He didn’t have to outshine anyone. He didn’t have to prove his light. His story was still his—his laugh, his scars, his rhythm. But the light? The light was shared.
“You don’t vanish into the oneness—you shine because of it.”
A soft smile tugged at his lips as he passed a mirror shop window. His reflection stared back—shoulders relaxed, breath easy. He tipped his chin to the sky. Polaris hung steady. The moon still held its quiet glow.
Here. Now. In you.
The city hadn’t changed. But Tutu had.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
Mitakuye Oyasin
Nothing Leaves, Just Changing Clothes
The fire burned low, a steady breath in the belly of the night. Steam curled from the kettle, soft and slow, like it had nowhere else to be. Tutu sat quiet, turning a melting ice cube in his hand, watching the water slip through his fingers, catching the firelight.
Sam leaned back, pipe loose between his teeth. “Somethin’ botherin’ you, kid?”
Tutu shrugged, eyes on the ice from his root beer float. “Just watchin’ this melt. Feels like it’s leavin’. But… I know it’s not.”
Sam chuckled. “Leavin’? Nah. Ice don’t leave. Just changin’ jackets. Ice to water. Water to steam. Steam back to the sky.”
Sophia’s voice rose softly from the firelight’s edge. “Water doesn’t vanish, my love. It shifts. It rises. It remembers itself in new forms.”
Tutu frowned, tracing a line in the dirt. “Like us?”
Sam tapped his knee. “Exactly. We’re stardust wearin’ skin for a spell. The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones? Came from stars, kid. Stars that burned, broke, scattered. That light’s still movin’ in you.”
Nancee nodded, her gaze steady. “And your breath isn’t yours alone. The argon you carry tonight has passed through strangers, storytellers, ancestors you’ll never meet. You’re breathing them now.”
Tutu’s brow creased. “So we’re ice, water, steam.”
Sophia smiled. “We’re starlight, fire, breath.”
Sam puffed his pipe. “Fire’s the same trick. Ain’t destruction—it’s the sun stretchin’ its legs. That tree drank sunlight for years. Fire’s just that light headin’ home.”
Tutu let the last of the ice melt away, the water cool against his palm. “The ice didn’t leave. The sunlight didn’t leave. The breath didn’t leave.”
“Nothin’ leaves,” Sam said. “Just changes clothes.”
“The form shifts,” Sophia whispered, “but the story stays.”
Tutu’s eyes flicked to the fire, its flames curling like tiny suns. “Wait,” he said, voice catching with wonder. “This fire… the wood grew by drinking sunlight, right? Years of it, stored up.”
Sophia nodded. “That’s right.”
“And now…” Tutu leaned closer, feeling the heat on his face. “It’s giving that sunlight back. We’re watching years of starlight break free.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “Well, I’ll be. Fire’s tellin’ the same story.”
“Look at the smoke,” Tutu said, pointing. “Carbon going back to the sky. Water in the wood turning to steam. Ash settling to feed new growth.”
Sophia’s voice softened. “And the warmth on our faces—that’s ancient sunlight, touching us now.”
“Same dance,” Sam murmured. “Different scale.”
Tutu followed the kettle’s steam, watching it rise and vanish into the dark. His gaze lifted higher. “Hey—look.” He pointed, a spark of awe in his voice. “The Teapot. There, in Sagittarius. Like our kettle.”
Sam tipped his hat back, squinting. “Well, damn. Sure does.”
Sophia’s eyes traced the stars. “And see the Milky Way, rising from its spout?”
Tutu’s breath caught. “Like steam.”
“Exactly,” Sophia said. “The galactic core, the heart of our home, rising like memory, like breath, like starlight set free.”
Sam chuckled, pipe smoke curling upward. “Sky’s got a sense of humor. Pourin’ us a cup, even out there.”
Tutu’s fingers brushed the dirt, grounding himself as he stared at the stars. “Our fire’s a little star, then. Burning the same light. Telling the same story.”
Sophia’s smile deepened. “Same fire, different size. Same light, different time.”
“Maybe it’s always been pouring,” Tutu said, his voice low, steady, like he was speaking to the sky itself. “Maybe we just had to notice.”
He exhaled, his breath mingling with the steam, the smoke, the starlight. “Ice to water. Water to steam. Steam to sky. Wood to flame. Flame to light. Light to warmth. Warmth to us.”
“And it’s all still risin’,” Sam said, gesturing to the Milky Way. “Steamin’ outta that ol’ teapot. Dancin’ in our fire.”
“Even now,” Sophia whispered.
“Even here,” Sam added.
Tutu smiled, his hand resting over his heart. “Even in me.”
The fire crackled low. The steam rose. The breath moved on. The starlight danced home.
Scientific Echo: The Teapot and the Galactic Core
(Fire as Sky, Steam as Stars)
High in the summer sky, just above the southern horizon, our ancestors saw a shape long before telescopes or star maps.
They called it The Teapot.
It lies in Sagittarius, drawn from eight bright stars tracing the spout, lid, handle, base.
From its spout, the Milky Way pours—a thick band of light, the heart of our galaxy, the galactic core, swirling around a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A*.
We live on the galaxy’s quiet edge, 27,000 light-years away, yet from our campfires, we see its heart.
Our fires tell the same story. Every flame frees sunlight stored in wood—photons captured through years of photosynthesis. When we burn that wood, carbon rises as smoke, rejoining the sky. Water becomes steam, climbing to the clouds. Minerals settle as ash, feeding new growth.
The galactic core pours starlight across the cosmos.
Our campfire pours starlight across our faces.
The Milky Way rising like steam is our story rising.
The fire that never goes out.
The sky doesn’t waste symbols.
The Teapot pours.
The galaxy rises.
The campfire dances.
The breath moves on.
The story says:
Nothing leaves.
It just changes form.
Ice to water. Water to steam. Steam to sky.
Wood to flame. Flame to light. Light to warmth.
Fire to breath. Breath to memory. Memory to stars.
Even now.
Even here.
Even in you.
The Fire Beneath
the Fire
The fire snarled, flames clawing at the night like they had secrets to burn.
Tutu stared as a log splintered, embers flaring, spiraling into the void above.
“Sam,” he said, voice steady as stone, “I see the fire eating the wood. But what’s really there? What’s under the flame?”
Sam’s pipe glowed, smoke curling like a thought half-formed. “That’s a question that bites, kid. It don’t let go.”
Sophia’s voice slipped in, soft as moonlight on ash. “Careful, love. Chase that too far, and you might unravel.”
Tutu’s lips twitched, but his eyes held the fire. “I want to.”
Sam tapped his pipe on his heel, sparks scattering. “Let’s dive, then.”
He jabbed a finger at the log, its edges smoldering red. “Start here. Wood. Just a dead tree.”
Sophia’s voice wove through the crackle. “Not just wood. Cells—tiny cathedrals where the tree once breathed.”
Tutu’s gaze sharpened. “What’s in the cells?”
“Molecules,” Sam said, “chains of cellulose, like a language written in sugar and strength.”
“And the molecules?” Tutu pressed, leaning closer.
“Atoms,” Sophia murmured, her voice a flicker. “Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen—spinning like worlds in a dance.”
Tutu’s eyes burned brighter than the coals. “And inside them?”
Sam’s voice dropped low. “Nuclei—protons and neutrons, locked tight. Electrons whirling around, fast as thought.”
Tutu didn’t blink. “Deeper.”
“Quarks,” Sam said, “held by gluons—threads of force, stitching the heart of everything.”
Sophia’s whisper was a breeze across embers. “But that’s not the bottom.”
“More,” Tutu said, his voice a spark.
Sam’s grin was sharp as flint. “Elementary particles. Quarks, electrons, photons—ripples in fields that stretch across the universe.”
Tutu’s breath quickened. “But what makes them… heavy?”
“The Higgs field,” Sophia said, her words soft as starlight. “It hums through all things. The Higgs boson? Just a shiver in that endless song.”
Tutu’s fingers dug into the dirt, tracing spirals. “Without it?”
Sam’s eyes glinted. “No mass. No you, no me, no fire. Just energy, slippin’ through the void like ghosts.”
Tutu’s voice was barely there now. “So this fire… it’s the Higgs field dancing?”
Sophia’s smile was a crescent moon. “More than that. It’s not just fire. It’s fields—quantum fields. Particles aren’t beads, kid. They’re ripples. Little waves in the hum of forever.”
Tutu’s breath caught. “Everything’s… music?”
Sam nodded, slow. “Maybe even deeper. Some say those ripples are strings—tiny loops vibrating like the first notes of a song. A quark’s one note. A photon’s another.”
Tutu’s spiral tightened in the dirt. “And under the strings?”
Sam’s voice was ash falling. “The Planck scale—where space and time fray. Beyond? Maybe nothin’. Maybe everythin’. Maybe the universe forgets how to be a place.”
Sophia’s hand rested on Tutu’s shoulder, warm as dawn. “Maybe the smallest spark and the widest sky are the same.”
Tutu looked up. Polaris burned, fixed while the other stars spun slow around it. The moon hung full, its glow a quiet rival to the fire’s pulse.
“So,” Tutu said, voice steady as the earth, “this log, this flame, me—we’re all the same?”
Sam’s pipe flared, a tiny sun. “Same fire, different shadows.”
Sophia’s voice was a vow. “From this ember to the farthest galaxy, it’s one breath, wearing different masks.”
Tutu exhaled, the weight settling like dust. “And when my flame fades?”
Sam’s grin was a spark in the dark. “The shape shifts, but the fire stays. Always has. Always will.”
Sophia’s words were a melody. “The field hums. The stars turn. The song plays on.”
Tutu’s smile broke, bright as the embers soaring toward Polaris, each a fleeting galaxy in the night.
Here.
Now.
In you.
The stars held steady. Polaris watched. The moon cradled its quiet light. And the sky wove it all together. Tutu’s spiral in the dirt shimmered faint under the fire’s glow—unfinished, but forever turning.
Hiwa-i-te-rangi
The Living Songspiral
HoneyBee was parked on a quiet stretch of desert near Cap Rock, facing east, door open to the hush of dusk.
Out there, Joshua Tree leaned into stillness — creosote glowing, boulders holding the sun’s last sigh.
The wind wasn’t in a rush. Neither were they.
HoneyBee was their RV — part vehicle, part sanctuary. Home on wheels.
She’d carried them from red earth to salt air to this high desert altar.
She was a wandering hearth, always pointing toward wonder.
Inside, it smelled like cedar and night air.
Tutu was crouched at the makeshift counter he’d built from old mesquite and a cracked Formica tabletop they’d pulled from a junkyard outside Santa Fe. He was focused—carefully carving pale, feathery curls of ice into a lacquered wooden bowl they’d picked up in Key West. He shaved it slow, in circles, like he was remembering something with
Mozzi next to a cedar chest open like a story.
the journals, one already open, her fingers tracing the handwriting that wasn’t hers.
It was his. But it belonged to them both.
“You kept writing,” she said.
Tutu didn’t look up. “Couldn’t stop. After the canyon, it just… came. Like ash. Like breath I hadn’t released yet.”
The wind outside shifted — soft, low, curling around the boulders like it remembered something too.
Mozzi held the leather-bound journal like it might speak. “This one,” she said, “just before Joshua Tree out by Desert Center. You titled it: Step Four, but Maybe I’m Still on Step One.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. That tracks.”
The desert didn’t answer. It just listened.
There was no plan to read aloud.
But something in the bowl of mango,
something in the light,
something in the stillness between them —
said: now.
Mozzi began.
Not in order.
Not to explain.
But to remember.
She remembered the night Sophia said:
“Darlin’, you’re the breath of galaxies braided into a body.”
She remembered Sam, lighting his pipe, watching the stars like he owed them a debt:
“Stardust in your bones, friend. Ain’t no mistake in your makin’.”
She remembered Tutu, laughing outside that spiral-cut rock wall in Sedona, saying:
“You didn’t just arrive — you descended. With sparkle. With assignment.”
And she remembered not believing them.
Not yet.
But something changed in Joshua Tree.
Something in the shape of the sky here.
In the way stillness becomes invitation.
She looked out across the desert and knew what had been calling her:
Hiwa-i-te-rangi.
Not as a myth.
Not even as a star.
As a frequency. A note so ancient it had no name until someone sang it back.
The wish star.
But not the kind of wishing she’d been raised on.
Western wishing had always felt like competition disguised as prayer.
Let me win. Let me be chosen. Let me rise… while others fall.
But this was different.
Hiwa-i-te-rangi belonged to people who knew:
A true wish never excludes.
A true prayer makes room.
She had started to see it clearly now.
That wishing to win meant wishing someone else would lose.
That every time she thanked the universe for choosing her,
some part of her was quietly celebrating someone else being left behind.
But Hiwa-i-te-rangi didn’t listen to prayers like that.
A true wish included the whole.
A true becoming never came at the cost of another’s light.
Let me rise — and may no one fall for it.
Let me remember — and may all be remembered.
That’s what Hiwa-i-te-rangi carries.
Mozzi leaned her head against the doorframe of HoneyBee.
Tutu stood at the door, silhouetted against the dark.
Voices from the circle looking through the night vision goggles at the stars, echoed across the desert — laughter, wonder, one child shouting, “There it is!”
Same stars. Different names.
But the longing was always the same.
“Coming?” he asked.
“In a minute,” Mozzi said.
She meant: I’m still inside the spiral.
She touched the cedar chest.
The page.
The silence.
Above her, the stars didn’t twinkle.
They listened.
And from the deepest part of her Nephesh,
she thought she heard Sophia whisper:
“Now you know.
You were the fire.
You were the sign.
You were the one who returned.”
Only now she knew
she was talking to herself.
She was always —
Talking to herself.
The center of the one expressing its living relationship
with the indescribably mysterious.
Listening TO THE SKY – HÓZHÓ NAASHÁ
Sunrise and Sunset Mediation and Prayer Locations
Hozho Naasha – I walk in beauty, witnessing the mystery
Sunrise and Sunset Reflections: Finding Your Quiet Hill
An Invitation:
At Ryan Mountain—where fire speaks and silence listens—the first light of dawn and the final glow of dusk call you to witness. These are not merely moments on a clock. They are breath and flame, exhale and ember. Sunrise is not a beginning—it is the ember of the first breath, rising again through you. Sunset is not an ending—it is the soft exhale, emptying the bowl of light as the sky gathers all it has known.
Wherever you stand—beneath city lights, on a windswept plain, or beside a spiral carved into dust—there is a place that knows your name. A “quiet hill” is not a destination; it is where your breath weaves with the world’s. These trails, kissed by the hush of dawn and dusk, do not merely carry footsteps. They carry remembering. Of starlight in your lungs. Of silence beneath your name. Of the rhythm that belongs to you, even when you forget its song.
To Find It:
What does your quiet hill whisper to you? This is your fire, your breath, your sky. Here, now, in you.
Walk these paths slowly. Let the land speak. Let the light name you.
You are not separate. You are not lost. You are only changing clothes.
SUNRISE TRAILS
Waneska (Waniskâ) – (nêhiyawêwin – Cree)
Pronunciation: wah-NEES-kah
“Waneska” (standardized as Waniskâ in Cree) means “Wake up!” This traditional Cree Sunrise Song is a morning invocation, celebrating the rising sun, the singing birds, and the beauty of the land. Sung to greet the dawn, it reflects the Cree worldview of interconnectedness and gratitude for creation. The song’s lyrics call listeners to rise, acknowledge the new day, and honor the harmony of the natural world.
Lyrics and Translation (from Cree Literacy Network and other sources):
These trails weave through the Joshua Trees, where dawn’s light sparks wonder. If the desert is far from you right now, find a quiet hill, park, or open sky in your hometown—or wherever you stand—to greet the sunrise and someone else’s sunset.
Let any place become your altar for remembering: you are the spark that never fades
Paired Chapter: “The First Exhale Before the First Word”
Theme: Beginnings, breath, reverence
Description:
A 1.1 mi (≈1.8 km) paved loop with minimal elevation (~50 ft) around a historic desert water tank. Often quieter at dawn, it offers reflections of rock and sky and native petroglyphs.
Sunrise Appeal:
The dam basin faces east enough to catch early light on still water—desert reflections and rock silhouettes come alive in sacred desert glow.
Trail Details:
Scenic Reflection:
Here, still water gathers the sky’s first breath. Granite and Joshua trees stand like silent witnesses. The world begins softly here—reflected in ripples, not spectacle. You arrive not to capture light, but to be held by it. The desert breathes out, and in that breath, it calls your name. You are not separate from dawn—you are dawn.
Trail + Chapter Combined Meditation:
Walk slowly. Let each step be an exhale. This is not arrival—this is remembering.
Feel the silence before light. The breath before speech.
You are not here to start something. You are here to remember you never left.
Paired Chapter: “The Fire and the First Light”
Theme: Awakening to wonder, fire as memory
Description:
A 1 mi loop weaving among towering boulders —a legendary cattle rustler hideout. Remarkably peaceful before sunrise with filtered light through rock walls.
Sunrise Appeal:
East-facing openings between monoliths allow shafts of rising light to puncture rock silhouettes—a mystical play of fire and shadow.
Trail Details:
Scenic Reflection:
This valley does not awaken—it ignites. Light filters between boulders like ancestral fire, warming the silent stones. You wander not to explore—but to rejoin a memory older than you. The rock encloses you gently, as if you’ve always belonged. Here dawn is not given—it is remembered.
Trail + Chapter Combined Meditation:
The mesa is an altar. The sun is an ancestor.
You are the flame waking again in a new form.
Stand here and remember: you are sunlight, set loose.
You are the match. You are the spark.
Paired Chapter: “The Place That Knows Your Name”
Theme: Belonging, rootedness, rhythm
Description:
A 0.25 mi easy boardwalk trail through dense teddy-bear cholla stand. Framed by rocky hill slopes, it’s accessible and beautifully quiet at dawn.
Sunrise Appeal:
Eastward exposure enables cacti spines to glow gold at first light—each silhouette pulses with quiet presence.
Trail Details:
Scenic Reflection:
Walking among golden spines, you feel light weave through you. Each cactus stands rooted in solitude—yet alive with dawn. This place greets your soles, your breath, your pause. You are not making footprints—you are making return tracks. The cholla do not whisper—but you feel the hush. You belong here. Again.
Trail + Chapter Combined Meditation:
This ledge knows your name. The rock does not ask who you are—it remembers.
Pause. Breathe. Let the canyon speak its rhythm.
The place is not new. You are just hearing it again.
SUNSET TRAILS
Zuni Sunset Song – (A:shiwi – Zuni, Pueblo)
Pronunciation: ZOO-nee SUN-set SONG
This traditional hymn of the Zuni people captures the sacred beauty of sunset, a time of transition when the sky paints the desert in vibrant hues. Performed on Native American flute, the song evokes gratitude for the day’s end and the harmony of the natural world. Its soulful melodies reflect the Zuni’s deep spiritual connection to the land and cosmos, making it a profound expression of reverence and balance.
Source: Shared through Zuni musical traditions, as documented in collections like the Indigenous Collection Beltrami on SoundCloud. Readers are encouraged to seek Zuni elders or cultural knowledge holders for authentic performances and teachings.
These paths cradle Joshua Tree’s dusk, where the land exhales into starlight. If the desert is distant from you now, seek a rooftop, field, or shoreline in your hometown—or wherever you find yourself—to witness the sunset and someone else’s sunrise.
Let every horizon remind you: you are changing clothes, but never lost
Paired Chapter: “The Fire Beneath the Fire”
Theme: Ancestral memory, transformation
Description:
Keys View is a paved overlook (0.25 mi) with optional 0.8 mi moderate spur up to Inspiration Peak for a quieter vantage. Offers sweeping western desert vistas
Sunset Appeal:
Panoramic West-facing slope creates dramatic sunset light across Coachella Valley, Salton Sea, and mountain ranges.
Trail Details:
Scenic Reflection:
This vista does not end—it releases. The sun spills across valleys like ancestral fire dissolving into dusk. You stand on stone that holds horizon. You do not face the sunset—you carry its afterglow. You watch light dress itself differently—and in that difference, you remember you are both flame and ash.
Trail + Chapter Combined Meditation:
The fire has not gone out.
It simply changed hands—and now it’s yours to tend.
As the light retreats, remember:
you are the hearth. You are the breath. You are the return.
Paired Chapter: “The Breath That Never Leaves”
Theme: Shared breath, lineage, interconnection
Description:
A 1.7 mi loop around Jumbo Rocks featuring the iconic Skull Rock boulder. Quiet and accessible at dusk, it offers sweeping views of desert and formations.
Sunset Appeal:
West-facing hillside and rock forms catch golden twilight—shadows lengthen across the wash.
Trail Details:
Scenic Reflection:
This trail breathes past and present. Stones shaped like skulls and limbs hold stories in shadow and light. The wind moves the Joshua tree branches—and you, like all, inhale that same breath. You walk not as someone alone—but as one in lineage with sky, rock, root. Sunset doesn’t close here—it gathers. And in that gathering, you remember that breath never stops—but travels onward.
Trail + Chapter Combined Meditation:
You are not breathing alone.
This breath—passed from ancestor to tree to star—moves through you.
With each exhale, you give it forward.
With each inhale, you carry the world.
Paired Chapter: “Empty the Bowl of Light”
Theme: Letting go, stillness, sacred surrender
Description:
A 1.2 mi round-trip (≈1.9 km) trail East from Twin Tanks parking leading to a beautiful natural granite arch. Quiet and intimate at dusk.
Sunset Appeal:
Westward angle frames arch silhouette with sunset backlight—reflections and boulder pools catch fading glow.
Trail Details:
Scenic Reflection:
Under the arch, light empties into silence. Granite curves hold sky’s farewell—the hollow becomes mirror. You kneel not to reach—but to witness. The desert releases its glow into each cavity, each rock basin. The arch does not hold—it lets go. You are not here to keep the day—you are here to release it. Be still. Be surrendered. Let emptiness hold you.
Trail + Chapter Combined Meditation:
Let the bowl of light empty. Let it reflect you back to yourself.
You are not here to hold the sky.
You are here to offer it back.
Be the bowl. Be the letting go.
Paired Chapter: “Nothing Leaves, Just Changing Clothes”
Theme: Transformation, presence, eternal return
Description:
A 0.4 mi loop with ~20 ft elevation gain featuring iconic boulders and groves of Joshua trees. Quiet during sunset and accessible right off Park Blvd.
Sunset Appeal:
Wide western-open views let low sun trace rock edges and illuminate twists of Joshua trees in golden hues.
Trail Details:
Scenic Reflection:
Here, change is a garment you wear—not a garment you pay for. Light folds across rock and limb; day dissolves into twilight, yet remains in the shimmer. You stand among shapes that outlast light—but shift as it goes. You do not say goodbye—you allow your form to soften and reform. You are still here. In new light. In new clothes.
Trail + Chapter Combined Meditation:
This light is not dying. It is dressing for night.
This ending is not leaving—it is arriving differently.
Stand still. Let yourself dissolve and reform.
You are still here. Just in new clothes.
WHERE THE STARS REMEMBER THE OCEAN IS A MIRROR
I didn’t come looking for answers that night. I came for space. For silence. Maybe both.
The quarter moon hung above Lost Horse Valley’s stone sentinels, the sun slipping away with one last kiss of umber and gold. I sat where sand met granite, back leaning against a boulder still holding the day’s warmth. My boots were off. Dust clung to my toes. Above me, the constellations spun their slow arc—rising, fading, breathing in, breathing out. I tried to match their rhythm. If I could breathe like the stars, maybe my thoughts would quiet.
But thoughts scatter like coyotes—wild, untamed, kicking up dust in the stillness I tried to carve.
Then I saw it—not in the sky, but flickering low from the canyon floor. A small fire. Its light danced on the stone wall beside it. Sam was there, pipe between his teeth, straw hat tilted low, smiling like he’d been carved straight from the desert. He tossed a smooth red pebble into the flames.
“Everything’s either fire or starlight,” he said, eyes still on the blaze. “Which one are you?”
I didn’t answer. Then her voice came, soft as a night breeze between Joshua trees.
“Or maybe,” Sophia said, “you’re the space in between.”
Not yet in full form—but close. Her voice warmed me like heat sinking into stone. Sam chuckled, ember-deep.
“You gonna sit there thinkin’ all night, or you gonna let it teach you?”
Before I could speak, Sophia stepped from the shadow of a rock spire, wrapped in white linen like spun starlight. She looked through me—not unkind, but clear.
“There are things the stars remember,” she said, “and things you’ve forgotten.”
Sam stretched, puffing his pipe. “Come on, kid. We’ve got constellations to follow. Rocks to listen to.”
We walked between sleeping giants of stone. The cliffs rose like old gods, their faces etched against the indigo sky. Sam pointed toward the Pleiades—shimmering like a distant campfire.
“They follow their rhythm,” he said. “Same as breath. Same as grief. Same as you.”
Sophia stood at the edge of a slope, arms lifted like she could feel the pulse of the sky.
“The world’s not made of things,” she said. “It’s made of thought. Dreams that refused to stay small.”
I hesitated, then asked, “What does this one mean? Gender. Sounds like it’s about people, but I got a feelin’ it’s bigger than that.”
She glanced toward the moon. “The moon pulls the ocean… and the ocean surrenders. Not in weakness, but in knowing. They are not opposites. They are partners.”
Sam gave a dry chuckle. “It ain’t got nothin’ to do with who wears what pants. It’s about how the whole damn universe moves.” Then he grinned toward Sophia. “I bring the match. She brings the wind.”
“You bring the fire,” she said, smiling. “I bring the breath.”
I saw it then—Sam’s grit and spark, Sophia’s quiet, tidal pull. Not opposites. Harmony. Balance. Like the stars and the sky. Like the ocean and the moon. Like me.
“I used to think I had to be all one thing,” I said. “All strength, all control… or all surrender.”
“Damn right,” Sam said. “You got a hammer in one hand and a song in the other. The trick is knowin’ when to use which.”
Sophia added, “There is a time to speak, and a time to listen. A time to rise, and a time to rest. The world within you is not at war—it is waiting to remember harmony.”
A pool in a hollow of stone caught the stars. A lizard paused at its edge, caught between moving and staying. I knew that feeling—between who I was and who I hadn’t yet become.
The fire warmed my left side, the breeze cooled my right. One part reaching. One part receiving. One part sky. One part sea.
“The stars…” Sam said, “they got polarity too. Hydrogen and helium dancin’ in every direction. Explosion and gravity. Heat and pressure. Masculine and feminine ain’t about boys and girls. It’s about creation. And all of that up there? That ain’t chaos. That’s a romance.”
Sophia pressed a red stone into my hand. “Drop it.” I let it fall. Dust curled wide.
“Even the smallest shift moves everything,” she said.
Sam’s smile turned sly. “Don’t let one bad chord convince you you ain’t music.”
We sat long enough for the wind to erase our footprints. Stars rose. Stars burned out. None without purpose.
Sophia knelt in the dirt, drawing a spiral with her fingertip. “Your life is a map,” she said. “Of breath. Of wind. Of forgetting and remembering.”
“The moon moves the ocean,” she whispered, “and the ocean shapes the shore. Both forces are needed.”
I breathed—not to control, but to attune.
Sam whistled low. “Some folks try to stand still. The wise ones? They dance.”
Sophia’s eyes caught mine. “Nothing in this desert is still—not the wind, not the stars, not you.”
So I danced—forward, back. Warmth, cool. Breath, stars. Sea, me. It wasn’t silly. It was peace.
Indigenous Words & Worldviews Referenced
A Note of Acknowledgment and Direction for Further Listening
The following terms appear throughout this trilogy as echoes of Indigenous worldviews. Some are shared directly from cultural teachings; others are poetic adaptations. All are included with humility and deep respect. When possible, sources and original voices are cited, and readers are encouraged to seek those voices directly. The phonetic pronunciations provided for these sacred words are approximate, offered as a guide to honor their spirit without disrespect. For the true and proper pronunciation, readers are urged to seek the wisdom of elders and cultural knowledge keepers from the respective traditions, who carry these words in their fullest depth and authenticity.
Aang Waan – (Unangam Tunuu – Unangan/Aleut)
Pronunciation: AHNG WAHN
“Aang Waan” means “Hello, my other self.” It reflects the Unangan understanding that we are all interconnected—that to greet another is to recognize your shared self in them. This expression echoes a worldview rooted in relationality and spiritual unity.
Source: Ilarion (Larry) Merculieff and Libby Roderick, “Tunun Kayutukun: Words Have Power,” Langscape Magazine, Terralingua, 2021
Tanum Aawaa – (Unangam Tunuu – Unangan/Aleut)
Pronunciation: TAH-noom AH-wah
“Tanum Aawaa” means “the work of the land,” yet it is layered with meaning. Traditionally used to begin storytelling, it acknowledges that the words to come are not solely the speaker’s—they come from the people, ancestors, land, and Creator. It honors the deep roots of Unangan oral tradition.
Source: Ilarion (Larry) Merculieff, Unangan Elder and cultural knowledge holder
Mitakuye Oyasin – (Lakota)
Pronunciation: MEE-tah-koo-yeh OH-yah-seen
“Mitakuye Oyasin” translates to “all my relations” or “we are all related.” It signifies the interconnectedness of all beings and acknowledges the fundamental unity of life. This phrase is often spoken in prayer or ceremony to honor the shared spirit that runs through all existence.
Widely shared by: Lakota elders and ceremonial leaders
Etuaptmumk – (Mi’kmaq)
Pronunciation: EH-too-apt-MUMK
“Two-Eyed Seeing” – the practice of seeing with one eye through Indigenous knowledge and the other through Western science, holding both perspectives with respect.
Source: Elder Albert Marshall (Eskasoni First Nation, Nova Scotia)
Ubuntu – (Nguni Bantu – Southern Africa)
Pronunciation: oo-BOON-too
“I am because we are.” A philosophy of interdependence, shared humanity, and collective responsibility.
Taught by: Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and other Southern African leaders
Dadirri – (Ngangikurungkurr – Northern Australia)
Pronunciation: DAH-dee-ree
A spiritual practice of deep inner listening and respectful awareness. “Dadirri, taught by Ngangikurungkurr elders, is a practice of listening to the land’s heartbeat, passed down through generations in Australia’s Northern Territory.”
Taught by: Dr. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr
In te ao Māori – (Māori)
Pronunciation: IN teh AH-oh MOW-ree
“In the Māori world.” Refers to the Māori worldview and relational way of being.
Kei mua te wā – (Māori)
Pronunciation: KAY MOO-ah teh WAH
“The time is in front.” Expresses a view of time where the past is visible ahead, and the future is behind, unseen and unfolding.
Mua / Wā – (Māori)
Pronunciation: MOO-ah / WAH
Mua = ahead/in front, Wā = time. Together used to express the forward-facing nature of memory and ancestry in Māori time philosophy.
Iwígara – (Rarámuri – Northern Mexico)
Pronunciation: ee-WEE-gah-rah
“All things are related and share breath.” A concept of spiritual ecology that reflects kinship between humans and the natural world.
Source: Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People by Enrique Salmón
Nacha so nacha añño – (Pali – Early Buddhist Teachings)
Pronunciation: NAH-chah SOH NAH-chah AHN-yo
“Not the same, and yet not another.” A paradox from the Pali Canon that expresses the non-dual nature of identity over time. This phrase speaks to the Buddhist teaching of anatta (non-self), showing that we are neither fixed nor entirely separate from what we were—always in motion, yet somehow whole.
Source: Paraphrased from texts in the Sutta Pitaka; discussed widely by contemporary interpreters of early Buddhism.
Hozho Naasha – (Navajo – Diné Philosophy)
Pronunciation: HOH-zho NAH-shah
“Walking in beauty, witnessing the mystery.” A phrase rooted in the Navajo (Diné) concept of Hózhǫ́, embodying harmony, balance, and a sacred way of living in alignment with the universe. Naasha suggests walking or moving through life, while Hozho reflects beauty and order that connects all things.
Source: Inspired by Navajo teachings, as shared in works like Diné Bahaneʼ: The Navajo Creation Story (Paul G. Zolbrod) and conversations with Diné elders, with gratitude for their wisdom.
Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen – (Kanien’kéha – Mohawk, Haudenosaunee)
Pronunciation: Oh-HEN-tohn Kah-ree-hwah-TEH-kwen
Translation: “The Words That Come Before All Else.”
This phrase names the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, a ceremonial oration of gratitude spoken to honor all elements of creation—land, water, animals, plants, and ancestors. It reflects a worldview of interconnectedness, grounding every gathering in respect and unity before any other words are shared.
Source: Shared by Haudenosaunee elders and knowledge keepers, as documented in works like The Haudenosaunee Guide for Educators and oral traditions of the Kanien’kéha (Mohawk) people.
Nowen:ton ne onkwa’nikòn:ra – (Kanien’kéha – Mohawk, Haudenosaunee)
Pronunciation: NOH-wen-tohn neh ONG-kwah-nee-KOHN-rah
Translation: “Now our minds are one.”
Spoken at the close of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, this phrase signifies the unity of thought and spirit among all present, affirming a shared commitment to harmony and gratitude. It embodies the Haudenosaunee principle of collective consciousness and interconnectedness.
Source: Shared by Haudenosaunee elders and cultural practitioners, as found in oral traditions and resources like the Kanien’kéha Language Initiative (kanienkeha.net).
Your Sunset is also someone else’s Sunrise – Part 2: The Earth Turns
Let’s return to the rhythm —
this time, more slowly.
This time, with the light inside us.
Marking the Sky — Shadows and Analemmas
The Sun and Moon weave their arcs across the sky —
etching maps for those who pause to read their light.
Find a place: a quiet meadow, a lone tree, a rooftop or stone.
Place a stick, a staff, a marker. Let it catch the glow.
Each day, at the same hour, mark the Sun’s shadow.
Each full Moon, mark its shadow too.
Noon for the Sun. Midnight for the Moon.
Thirteen Moons. One year.
From these marks, a pattern unfolds —
not a line, not a circle, but a dance of shadow.
The Sun, steady as the Earth’s breath,
carves a perfect figure-eight.
Its loops mirror our planet’s tilt and journey around the stars.
An infinity in gold — binding every dawn, every dusk into a blooming cycle.
The Moon, wilder, draws a softer, shifting path —
a warped figure-eight stretched by its restless orbit.
Less perfect, but still sacred.
Its silver loops echo the same eternal rhythm —
tilted by the Moon’s ancient, wandering ways.
These patterns — marked in sand, stone, or memory —
are the language of the sky.
Long ago, navigators read this language.
Polynesian wayfinders stitched sea to sky, island to island,
by the Sun’s arc, the Moon’s rise, the stars’ turn.
The horizon was a compass. The Earth, a canoe.
They found their place by watching the sky.
So wherever you stand —
under southern stars, equatorial moonbows, or northern constellations
that spin like a clock run backward —
the Sun and Moon are writing.
Their light becomes a script.
Their shadow becomes a map.
Their rhythm becomes a shared belonging.
Eating the Sun
Even as we mark shadows, we carry light inside us.
The plants catch it first —
sunlight folded into their green hands through photosynthesis.
Light becomes sugar. Sugar becomes matter.
A leaf. A stalk. A seed.
And everything else — every creature, every breath —
feeds on this quiet alchemy.
We are not just basking in sunlight.
We are eating it.
We are made of it.
The Sun grows our bodies,
feeds our thoughts,
warms the blood that carries our stories.
We are sunlight — slowed down,
turned into skin, song, and memory.
Equinox and the Polar Waltz
Twice a year, during the full Moons closest to the equinoxes, something rare unfolds.
At the poles, the Sun and Moon circle the horizon 360° for nearly 24 hours.
At the equator — on opposite sides of the Earth —
two people may glimpse the Sun and Moon on their horizon at the same time:
sunrise and sunset. Moonset and Moonrise.
Four watchers. Four views. One breath.
At the North Pole: the Sun leads right, the Moon left.
At the South Pole: the Moon leads right, the Sun left.
At the equator: the same Sun rises for one, while it sets for another.
The Moon mirrors it. Like dancers, across the globe.
All watching the same sky.
All in rhythm with the turning Earth.
Seeing the Past in the Present
And one more thing —
The Sun you watch slipping beneath the horizon?
It already set.
It takes light eight minutes to reach the Earth.
So what you’re seeing — that last golden arc, that fiery goodbye —
is not the Sun itself.
It’s the memory of the Sun.
The light it sent you minutes ago.
Even in sunset, we are watching the past unfold.
The present moment is always catching up.
And what we call “now”
is stitched from light that left long ago.
We live in the echo of stars.
Final Reflection
We are not strangers under different skies.
We are fellow travelers on the same spinning Earth —
stitched together by motion,
by shadow and shine,
by the sacred fact of turning.
He Wa‘a, He Honua – The Earth Is Our Canoe.
As Hawaiian elders have long taught, “He waʻa he honua — The Earth is our canoe,” a reminder of our connection to each other, land and sea.
May we remember:
No matter where we stand, in dusk or in dawn, we are always moving
toward one another.
nacha so nacha añño
“Not the same, and yet not another.”
The Fire THAT WALKS WITH ME – Firekeeper
If you’re reading this, you stayed. You followed the trail through fire and sky, through a conversation without a map. Now, here we are, together beneath the stars. As your guide, not just the author, I lit a lantern to walk beside you. These stories aren’t here to teach—they’re here to help you remember. Not just facts, but feelings: the pull in your chest when a fire pops just right, the moment a wave retreats and your breath catches a truth your mind hasn’t grasped, the ancient ache that says you’re part of something bigger.
You might’ve felt echoes of ancient teachings here—truths from Māori, Lakota, Rarámuri, Cree, Mayan, and other Indigenous ways of knowing. While I don’t speak from within those traditions, I carry deep reverence for them. This work sings in harmony with their heartbeat. If you heard your ancestors in these words, I hope it felt like an embrace, a soft voice saying: “You haven’t forgotten. You’ve just been quiet enough to hear again.”
Thank you for walking this far, for sitting with the fire, for breathing with the tide, for staying through the silence. Whether by fate, accident, or stardust algorithm, you’ve proven what I’ve always believed: The ones meant to find the story do. And they always find it beneath the stars.
The Fire That WALKS WITH YOU
Place your book into the fire
(Place your book into the fire—by giving it away)
The wind had gone quiet.
Only the fire moved—
slow and certain, like it had something to reveal.
Tutu stepped toward the circle.
Sam and Sophia sat across from each other, the fire breathing gently between them.
And there, placed with reverence at the center, was a book.
Tutu blinked.
It hadn’t been there a moment ago.
But now—
it glowed with a quiet presence, edges soft, cover weathered
as if it had traveled long.
He knelt beside it, slowly.
At first, the book appeared blank—
pages pale as desert sky before dawn.
But as the firelight danced, letters began to appear—
not printed, but forming like constellations,
etched in motion, as if memory were surfacing.
Tutu reached out, fingers trembling.
But when he touched the cover, he felt not leather—
but stone.
Warm.
Familiar.
The same stone he had once held by another fire.
The one that had pulsed like a living heart.
As if the book and the stone were never separate.
As if the stories had always been held in the earth.
He looked up, eyes wide.
“What is this?”
Sophia smiled softly.
“It’s the book you will write.”
Sam added, “And the book that was always written.
This one— the one they now hold in their hands.”
Above them, the sky opened wide.
A cluster of stars shimmered— the Pleiades.
The Seven Sisters.
Matariki rising. Signals of a new year, a time to remember the dead,
to plant new stories, and to honor the breath between.
Tutu turned to the fire.
Its flames curled higher, but not in hunger.
In blessing.
“But how can it be finished and unwritten?”
Sophia leaned closer.
“Because stories aren’t written with ink.
They’re breathed.
And remembered.
And lived.”
“Tonight is not about writing.
It’s about exhaling. Releasing the breath you’ve carried—
so that someone else may breathe it in.”
“Like a diya lit during Diwali— passed from hand to hand,
flame to flame— what was one spark becomes many.
What was hidden becomes seen.”
“Like Matariki shining in the winter sky— a constellation of memory and guidance.
Each star a doorway.
Each name a calling.”
Sam knelt across from him.
“The Apache say:
Wisdom sits in places.
But now— the place is you.”
“You are the firekeeper.
The stories will stalk you now— not to haunt, but to awaken.
They’ll strike like arrows
when your life bends toward them most.”
Tutu bowed his head.
No words. Just the quiet knowing.
The stories had never belonged to the fire.
Or the book.
Or even the voice.
They belonged to the flame passed on.
To the one who carries it forward.
To the one who walks.
And now we speak to you, the one holding these pages.
This is not a book to keep. It is a book to release.
You have heard its breath.
Now exhale.
Now remember.
Now begin.
Let the fire speak through you.
Let the arrows land when they must.
Let the stars rise in your silence.
Let Matariki guide you—seven lights, seven directions, seven promises to the earth.
Let Diwali remind you— that light multiplies only when shared.
And when the time is right—
give this book away. Not to forget it.
But to set its light free.
Like a lamp placed in a window during Diwali— its glow reaching farther than you’ll ever know.
Like the rising of Matariki— a signal that what ends has only made space
for what can now begin.
Let someone else kindle their fire from yours.
Let the stories leap, ember to ember.
Let the wisdom sit in them now.
The book is already written.
But only you can remember it.
And only you can write it again— by living its truth.
By walking it.
Breath by breath.
Step by step.
Hózhó Naashá.
I walk in beauty.
Appendix: The First Breath — The Math of Cosmic Origins
For those drawn to the science beneath the story, this appendix offers a map of the molecular and mathematical foundations behind the breath. Skip or linger—both are welcome. The numbers are not the fire itself, but the shape the fire leaves behind when it passes through the world.
⸻
The First Breath — The Math of Cosmic Origins
In the first three minutes after the universe began, everything we would later call breath, light, and starlight was shaped by fire, gravity, and the slow cooling of a cosmos learning to sing.
⸻
The Math of Becoming
The balance between neutrons and protons, determined by their mass and the temperature of the universe, dictated how much hydrogen would eventually be formed:
\frac{n}{p} \approx \exp\left(-\frac{\Delta m}{kT}\right)
Where: • n/p is the neutron-to-proton ratio • \Delta m is the mass difference between a neutron and a proton • k is Boltzmann’s constant • T is the temperature of the universe in Kelvin
Most protons remained free, unfused—leaving roughly 75% of baryonic matter as hydrogen. That same hydrogen became the first stars, and now flows in your blood with every breath.
⸻
The Universe’s First Song
The early universe was a hot, dense plasma of protons, electrons, and light. Fluctuations in density created pressure waves—sound, echoing through cosmic fire:
\frac{\partial^2(\delta \rho)}{\partial t^2} = c_s^2 \nabla^2(\delta \rho)
Where: • \delta \rho represents a fluctuation in density • c_s is the speed of sound in the plasma (approximately c / \sqrt{3}) • \nabla^2 is the Laplacian operator describing the spread of the wave • t is time
These sound waves left their fingerprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background—the faint thermal whisper of the first light—proving the universe once rang like a bell. A heartbeat, written in math.
⸻
Thermodynamic Grace
The laws of thermodynamics teach us: heat doesn’t vanish—it transforms. The energy released in those first cosmic fires didn’t disappear. It now lives in matter. In breath. In you.
The hydrogen in your lungs was born from that first song. That first breath.
⸻
Molecular Exchange in Breath
Every breath you take holds a staggering number of molecules: ~10^{22} in a single inhalation.
Earth’s atmosphere holds around 10^{44} molecules. Over a lifetime, a person exhales about 10^{27} molecules.
This means:
N_{\text{shared}} = \left( \frac{N_{\text{exhaled}}}{N_{\text{atmosphere}}} \right) \times N_{\text{breath}} \approx 10^5
So each breath you take includes, on average, 100,000 molecules once exhaled by someone else. Molecules once inside Rumi, Sitting Bull, Laozi, the cedar tree, your grandmother. The breath doesn’t end. Breath is belonging.
A Note on the Bowl of Light
The metaphors carried through Talking to Myself are offered not as ownership, but as a humble remembering.
Among the deepest echoes in these pages is the ancient Hawaiian teaching of the Bowl of Light — a sacred understanding that each of us is born as a vessel of pure light, and that through life’s challenges, stones of fear, anger, and hurt can cloud that light.
Yet through forgiveness, release, and right relationship (pono), we can empty the bowl and restore our inner radiance.
For those who feel called to deepen their understanding of this teaching, I invite you to seek the wisdom at its true source:
This work captures Hale Makua’s profound message of human spiritual potential, the importance of mana (spiritual energy), and living in pono (balance and right relationship).
These works explore ancestral Hawaiian views of healing, spirit, and the sacredness of remembering who we truly are.
This book is a firekeeper’s offering, not the fire itself. It seeks only to honor the ancestral fires that have burned long before us, and which still burn brightly today.
Finally and most importantly THANK YOU to all Indigenous Cultures for the knowledge you have passed down and shared if only we had been smart enough to listen. Maybe now….
Thank you to the International Dark Sky Association for all the work you do in helping us realize the sky is not lost forever. Light pollution is the one pollution we can have an instant and visible effect on. Turn off the lights and look up in Wonder. Maybe someday we’ll see what has been there for us all along. Maybe Now…
And Thank You, to you, our tour guests who felt the guidance from within and followed the light of their own star to the middle of nowhere out in the desert to remember. The journeys look different these days not a caravan but a car, not harsh wilderness to navigate just L.A. traffic, but it still takes bravery and a leap of faith and you did it.
Continue to follow that inner guidance it has done you well and it will continue. May your journey forward be guided by the light that has never been lost — only waiting to be remembered.
As for me I will continue Talking to Myself.
We are all waves in the same ocean.
nacha so nacha añño
Not the same yet not another.
With reverence,
— Tony Rathstone
Acknowledgement of Country
Addicted2Wonder honours the traditional custodians of country/place throughout Planet Earth and recognizes the continuing connection of First Peoples to lands, waters, cultures and communities. We pay deep respect to ALL PEOPLES that came before us which includes their knowledge systems, histories and cultures, and to Elders past and present.