#brusselsstreets

BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria, in the zodiacal forest—where birds sing and leaves flutter like wings bathing in light. The symphony of the forest comes to mind. This is the cosmos’ whisper through our creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness who begins to reveal herself, her presence lives in the rhythm. She seeks form—moving toward the name she will one day claim: Sunshine.

Chapter Preface: In the hush between office rituals and mirrored façades, a dream stirs: the gaze of a hidden watcher, the collapse of an aging man, and Victoria’s ascent—one step ahead, always disappearing. Through Brussels’ corridors and skywalks, a oneiric pulse awakens in the zodiacal jungle. This is not just a chapter—it’s a crossing. Enter, if you’ve ever followed a shadow you couldn’t name.

#OneiricGaze, #BrusselsStreets, #AetheriaAwake, #ZodiacalJungle, #NyxAndLight, #FlemishTwilight, #UrbanMythos, 

YD6-77(MVDH) Girls at the Office: The Oneiric Gaze Awake in The Zodiacal Jungle

In the wake of Victoria’s words—still echoing since I left the office, as a low sun stirred a glow over the South Station—I’m oblivious to the mirage’s waking call to the Scorpio, Andre Daniel. He had boarded the Wagon-Lit train for duty, rolling through the countryside, inspecting restaurant wagons and berths before vanishing across borders on a sleepless network of rail tracks. 

Recollecting last Friday’s date, I’m riding the asphalt wave—emerging from the trough in the shadow of the city moat, cresting with a swell of traffic. I slip from the Little Beltway, scissor lanes, zip with cars onto the boulevard. Lent glances at figures in their long escaping strides from their office work, skirting the hedgerow bluestone classic mansions, their upstairs floors abandoned to the past, behind while human-size cinema posters hang silent—closed, too early for the nightlife to summon its queues at the ticketing wickets.

“Namur Gate” echoes from last Friday, but instead of cutting across the traffic—its lenses pulsing with the tide and ebb of the intersection—I steer into the sidestreet, leaving behind on the corner the bold blue “M” suspended in the translucent white bubble above the hatchway descent to the Metro. A few young legs rush to catch their bus—halted in the leading artery along the hedgerows of brick-fenestrated facades. 

I steer into the interstice—gaping between fenestrated facades, past road signs, into a narrow one-way back alley. Curbs lined with bollard guardians keep creeping wheels from curling onto the sidewalks. Whitewashed warehouse masonry has swallowed the ghostly 1900s heritage—hedgerows of townhouse gables and roofs—leaving only a sliver of sky.

Punctuated by “No Stopping” signs in the stifled daylight, I pass what appears to be a derelict foursome—four back wooden doors with double leaves—my mind orbiting the interior architecture once justified the sacrifice of townhouse heritage for cultural development. In my youth—after cinema shows, we’d spill out with the crowds, eyes shot in bewilderment or doomed, storming into alleyways that dissolve into the city’s shadow. 

Further across the alleyway, a curiosity stirs: an outsized plate-glass window—alone, an absurd display seated on the sidewalk’s edge—casts a blatant pool of light into a gallery crossing beneath the roadway. Signs of a modern city looming beneath the brick walls.

I'm at a loss, unable to find the spot of my rendezvous—until the fault line unfolds. Victoria's designated skywalk shines from the dull, somber terracotta-bricked alleyway, and with it, a tone returns—rhyming where her French words, “passerelle aérienne,” had long faded. But the murmur of her voice—a half-remembered tune—falls into place. 

But out the back alleyway, my anxiety locks onto a wedge of light cladding the corner of a skywalk—its purple glazing above the spandrel, together blending into the curtain wall pattern of an office block. 

I’m stunned by the glazed contrast—accentuated by the sight of a skywalk encroaching across the alleyway, hooked to a bulwark brick wall. In the absurdity, I spin the wheel, pull onto an access curb—half-across the apron—halting before a rolled-down industrial workshop door. “No Parking” signs, which have been punctuating the hush with silent authority, now glare.

My grip tightens atop the steering wheel. The engine idles. A thought like a drop of sweat, for Team Construct’s fleet car in my care—a traffic fine could reach my employer’s desk, imagining explaining myself to Guy Duchatel. The thought flips in:’I can't flee and miss my date. Even for a turn around the block.’ 

I reason, lingering. Dwelling. The deserted alleyway winks with nervous static. I keep the rearview mirrors on high alert, strategizing—afraid of a knock at my window, or a police car easing up behind to bulldoze me into motion. To press me to clear the street. To make me lose her amongst office leavers. 

The efflorescent cladding didn’t appear abnormal—nor to fuel the Hydra-head of my mind—just slipped through the light, through the glazed facade, unobstructed. Scouting the office interior, it settles camouflaged into the fluorescence of the white ceiling—a watchful eye charting the wake. Drawn down the broad office passageway, toward a soft shaft of daylight spilling from a crack in the wall—exhausting itself across the gleaming floor, fraying pale, reaching the foot of a sentinel of a door.

In stealth, my Hydra’s eye curiously hones in on the crack—where a gaping double-leaf door opens onto the streetfront’s blinding glow. Shimmering in light plasma behind the sentinel door a handsome elderly man, dressed in a light beige business suit. He steps away from the swivel of a high-backed executive chair—its silhouette framed in a rear fullscape-window to a stifling glow. 

He shuffles past the swing of the door, closing behind him—locking up. He trails away down the wing, vanishing with the evanescing corridor walls. His mind’s farewell whispered: 'I’m off for the weekend.' A desperation behind his gait.

Reading in the elderly man’s fading message, my Hydra’s eye turns around—peering through the gaping twin-doorway into a chilling streetfront glow. The light begins to tame, a sash-grid etching itself across, awakening the skirting edges of the office ceiling-to-floor window—morphing as the interior starts to unveil.  

My ghost crosses the office, lingering by the window. Over the sill, the old man reappears below—jaywalking. In a glitch, he flips. I catch up in a brighter, wider street—upped in another class—walking on the opposite sidewalk. He slips around a distant corner. My Hydra-eye catches up, droning overhead, stalking his figure as he recedes along the sidewalk beside hedgerows of classic townhouses. 

Midway down the block, he turns—toward a stone facade—and mounts the grand stoop, rising beside the tucked-away basement fenestration. He ascends, to my surprise. ‘This isn’t a civil servant’s classic house?’ He shoulders up to the Belle Epoche’s wrought-iron railings, faux-balconies fronting the tall French doors. He pauses. The door eases open—with the ease of a well-worn homecoming. He slips past the dormant leaf, through the swing of the heavy wooden door. Disappearing inside. 

Outside, my ghost—a breath behind—faces the gleaming wood grains. But behind closed doors, intuition stirs—unsettled. As I’m thinking, ‘How can I get inside?’ searching to reach for the latch, the bell, or the knockers. . . but instead, I find myself tugged forward, beginning to traverse the door, and find myself in the hallway.

In a flip—a glitch—my Hyra-eye nestles in the glow, unfolding the misty-light, before self-etching, revealing a wooden desk along the flank wall. Behind it sits an elegant young woman—no name, Marie-France Blumenbaum—bobbed ash-blond hair framing a serious, duty-bound face, her gaze fixed across her desktop monitor. Bureaucratic calm radiates from her.

Off-angle, along the rear wall, Victoria van der Ackeren appears in latency—pepish-eyed among the chatty women. Light bleeds across the front apron of their desk, etching the grid into the linoleum—vinyl floor tiles surrendering to an illusory reality.  

Victoria entices her workmate to cut the day short—dares to stand, gathers her handbag, and sidles out from behind her desk, defiant. She slips past the corridor screen of the square-jutting door leaf and poses before the wide gaping corridor. Her eyes incite Marie-France. 'I’m waiting for you!'

The ash-blond woman—still carrying an out-of-college innocence in the workplace—is enticed to steal a few minutes. In slow, hesitant motion, her hand reaches into her desk drawer and her purse to light. She rises—calm, reluctant—then lingers behind her desk, standing idle by her chair, her handbag waiting on the corner. Her eyes drift across the floor etched apron, toward Victoria. 

She paces around her desk, past Victoria’s deserted one—the two women meeting in a glance. Victoria swivels: they step off abreast, veering toward an exit that contradicts the path taken earlier by the elderly man. As they turn right—beneath my Hydra’s sight—the corridor wraps the blind office they’ve just left. The eye of my Hydra flickers—a leap, then gone—evinced in a glitch. 

My gaze fixed in the mirage flanking the walkbridge, I awake—gripping the steering wheel. The windshield frames the glass skywalk, flaring the sun’s reflection. Shadows catch and lose their path across it, toward the warehouse brick wall. I’m still in my mind, elicited in hypnosis—catching the women's shadow in the elevator lobby, waiting for the cabin to fetch tem. 

After a glitch, their sentient ghost slips from the elevator’s ground-floor door—into a banal backstreet lobby. The duo’s unison snaps apart: one waits, the other veering around the blind elevator shaft. A ghostly figure’s hand reaches for the card rack, selects a card, and—offside—slots it atop the clock’s casing. The rhythm leaves the hush of a clack—a mechanic time-stamp. Retrieval. A swirl away. To stand by. One waits upon the other clocking out.

I spring up in my seat as the dead-still alleyway ruptures: a doorway crack opens in the whitewashed brick wall—spilling into motion. A vivid creature leaps, reflected across the glass curtain wall opposite. In a flash, the figure turns—unraveling, in the swirl, a sidewalk farewell embrace. The blond part drifts, vanishes into the blur of the alleyway, just behind Victoria’s oncoming approach . 

To my relief, Victoria’s few simple words for a rendezvous materialize—easing my heart’s throb, which had been startled by the fear of encountering a traffic officer. I watch her approach along the catwalk—an eccentric dual style: a crinkle-fold headband, bright-colored and knotted: a light, flimsy printed autumn blouse paired with a plain white denim mini-skirt.

Her tired gait grows in the windshield, then edges off without a side glance. Her waistband flashes past the passenger window, her skirt rolling in rhythm with the swing of the door. She slips into the seat, rolls on her hip, lean over the central console—stockings flexing as her slippers swing to the footwell. She pecks me on the cheek, saying, “Merci d'être venu me chercher—Thanks for fetching me.” 

She rolls back - Smack - the door closes. She ruffles herself in the seat, darts a gaze through the alleyway, under the skywalk, frowns—”Vas-y—Go.”

I've been immune to the shadows of silence. In the zodiacal forest—the hush that flutters through canopies, mirrored to Earth drifting along undergrowth unseen walks—no place is forgotten. What is spoken already is. What is seen has already appeared. 

Back home, shadows linger in his absence. Victoria’s six-year-old boy—Alexander—a whisper, left in the care of the elderly man, Jean-Francois Smeets—“Tonton,” in their household tongue—etched now as a relic from before we ever met. Between these men and the boy, Victoria's heart frays. And the week slips. 

That Monday returned, fresh as yesterday—carried in Victoria’s voice, still lamenting. In a quiet tone, she says, “Il était jeune… pour son âge—He was young… for his age.”

Her words drift off as she gazes into the distance. The heel of my hand spins the steering wheel, pulling into the lane—ducking the skywalk, gliding beneath its mottled shade. Victoria adds, “Il a passé des années à faire son travail. . .—He spent years doing his job. . .” A sigh of a thought trails behind her words: 'Managing our department.’ 

Her tone reawakens the Hydra-eye of my mind—nesting stealthily in the ceiling. Hovering again for the sentinel, its jamb traced by light shifting shadows—the embossed seams of an office door, a hidden threshold embedded in the plain white wall.

No sooner, the elderly man—well into his sixties, bent with the hunch of a lifetime behind a desk—approaches the office door, after a weekend—thin briefcase at hand. He slows, pausing at the seam, and unlocks. His hand cranks the lever. A crack of light splits the white wall, the door hinging ajar—where Nyx herself had lingered the night cloaking his domain. The sight startles him: the seat he expected empty now holds a man’s silhouette, embraced by his executive chair, framed in the glow of the fullscape window. 

A gleam spills off the wooden desk, in its retreat into shade—revealing a younger man, mid-forties, sharp and executive in a sports jacket, open collar. A smirk hovers on his lips, basking in silent pleasantry, eyes fixed on the door, waiting for his prank to play out.

The older man freezes—his glare stoned. That look alone ousts the younger from his chair. Yet the reply lands, razor-sharp: “You’re bound to die soon. . . Have a seat.”

Behind the screen of consciousness, my ghost plays a déjà vu role—seated in the executive chair. My upper-floor office in Kelvin returns: peripheral window light filtering in. The planning wall—my Lego chart—beside me, each brick a pulse of construction underway. I bark at the tradesman—his work deficiencies laid bare. There ought to be a glint of myself—a shade of my presence. But the Hydra of my mind stirs beyond memory, its eye nestled, focused on the old man.

Stunned, the older man thaws beneath the younger executive’s commanding gaze—eyes unflinching as he gestures coolly toward the visitor’s chairs across the desk’s edge. The older man lifts his gaze, his mind tracing the beaten path of his own steps—etched over years beside that desk—retrieving what dignity he can from the farce. He weighs the futility of forcing the boy from his seat. A breath short of the desk, he halts. Tortured, he sidles abreast—and lowers himself stiffly into the visitor’s chair.

The young executive smirks. I lip-read his cold decree: “You’re fired. I’m taking over this office now. The door’s right behind you.”

The svelte, groomed older man carries the extinguished flame of former charisma—his ego shuddering beneath the folds of his beige suit, the shoulder pads hanging hollow, as if draped on a rack. With each step, he sags deeper—sinking into the quicksand of his own decline. At the doorway, he pauses in the light. Glances back. ‘That’s my desk.' But instead, he meets the younger man’s mocking gaze. His eyes recoil, drop to his feet—then follows them out. He vanishes in the haze of the fluorescent light.

“Qu’est-ce que tu fais là-dedans—What are you doing in there?” I ask Victoria, as the cladding mirage—wedged in the fold—reflects from the skywalk’s corner the office block’s curtain wall. I drive the glass bubble—beneath the mottled undercarriage of the skybridge. Ahead, a monster of sunlight squeezed up into the alleyway, fetching us. Billowing into our path, Victoria no longer feels the need to point her finger, disengaging at the blind corner. Entering the western summer’s evening golden blanket trails and fold over the specter of old townhouses. A meshed security fence frames a razed city block—cellars exposed, earth racked level, untouched by light in centuries—the architecture shimmers—cubing out my inquisitive mind in the corners. 'What’s coming here?' 

Coasting down the street, the rumble of heavy earth-moving equipment has fallen silent for the weekend—earth-moving equipment parked on red soil, amid scattered brick rubble and paint-flashed facets. Victoria reflects out loud: “Il a une petite fille. . . sa jeune femme est rentrée à la maison—He has a baby girl. . . his young wife came home, to find he hung himself.” 

Victoria needn’t say more. Fresh in memory, the grand staircase. 'Where the eyes of my Hydra spared the scene—slipped from under the man’s shoes, hung above the hallway floor.  

Victoria shifts—away from thoughts of the man and the shattered little family—back to my reply: “On traduit les normes européennes pour les composants électriques—We translated the European norms for electrical components.”

My mind rides a river of traffic in the shadows of the medieval city moat—etched with the afternoon’s morphing footfall, boulevards and sidewalks. My gaze across into the scars of the old city—its pool of terracotta roofs and gables—in their midst, a sore: the purple-glassed tower, sky-scraping the upper hotel floors emblazoned: “Hilton.”

I turn away from a shy-like gaze of a quiet little girl, as the glass tower glints—a mirage, Aetheria’s content volition—before dissolving into the skirts of Nyx. I catch Victoria’s profile framed in the passenger window. Absent-minded, her thoughts drift—her gaze brushing the closed display window where mannequins pose in coquette skirts and blouses, trailing into the storefront turning a blind corner.

In our glass bubble—hush—I steered into the one-way traffic. Along the boulevard’s broad sidewalk, the mannequins pose again for Victoria—while a woman drifts past without a glint, cloaked in home-going strides, her gaze fixed ahead, indifferent to the splashed brand names. 

Traffic skimming the crest of the Little Beltway, we pass the zip and unzip of cars scissoring lanes. We catch up to a few more homeward-bound women—none sparing a glance at the jeweler's glittering display wrapping the Gallery entrance. Victoria shift—thinking—along the bare wickets rest beneath a fascia of posted feature films. She picks on the brasserie we pass, peaceful in the hollow of the evening, before the nightlife goers begin to shoulder their way into the adjacent restaurant. 

In an ebb and flow of cars—stroboscopic under the evening sun, filtered through color-toggling lenses—figures descend at the street corner, alongside the translucent bubble catching the underground metro. I steer away from the cluster flocking the bank agency’s blind corner, chasing minutes to catch a bus. “Namur Gate,” looms in the shadows of a drawbridge tower—while in the hush of our glass bubble, we drift over the entrenched Little Beltway. Crawling free of traffic, we skirt the interstice—where a large brick house corners off against a glazed arcade facade. Both storefronts display yet another fashion of mannequins—but Victoria flinches. People and cars trickle along the hedgerows of fenestrated brick, small commerce winds downward, fading, into administrative blocks—the descent into the old city.

In a tight street lined with curb-parked cars, I pull into a spare bay. Together, we rise from the crotch of our seats, emerging over the Peugeot's roof—leaving the car before a looming church and its parvis, nestled among administrative blocks facing the boulevard behind us. In the stifled daylight, I catch up to Victoria's pepish gait, as she threads downslope along the elusive street. The ground floor reanimates with small retailers. The townhouses’ fenestrated brick facades cling to the leafy square, embraced by restaurants and passersby walking with a bite in hand. Victoria sidesteps across, turning away from the Royal Gallery’s entrance—slipping into a flurry of tourists and curio shops, drawn toward the light breaking at the street’s end.  

Clearing the Grand Place, where figures seem to lose themselves—silhouettes drifting across a universe of bald gleaming cobblestones—they turn their backs on each other, searching afield, exchanging glances in the Renaissance's slivers of golden-etched, fenestrated bluestone facades. Among peaked gables, a looming roof simply saddles its slate pitch cap balconied frontage. 

But Victoria’s eyes sweeps, unstirred, drawn instead to the kaleidoscopic shirts in bright colors buzzing across paddock terraces—corralled by its own facade. Without a flicker of hesitation, she heads for an orange-striped awning, by terrace umbrellas. She swings through the splash-lit windows “Chaloupe d’or.” In her hand brush, I catch the swing-back—squeaking a saloon door—as she emerges across the airlock. 

Victoria flutters behind—her presence catching up with the hush. Ahead, the wall opens where old frames slip and extend along the wall behind seated loners—nations in town—hunched over a drink perpetuating in the gloom. Their small round tables latch in stillness, onto the bar counter, a gleam treads—past the barman’s poised stillness—wedging into the corner, beside a dark stairwell sculpted in the gaping shadows.

Her pepish gait catches the rhythm of her lift—half wing, half breeze. Her fingers paint the round tables in her upcoming passage. Brushing past figures sunk into brown upholstered crescent benches within dark wooden booths—from another age, great-grandfathers’.

Afar, a penguin-dressed waiter in a white shirt stirs from the tavern’s far diagonal corner. He emerges ghostly from the shadows, trailing along the parallel aisle—plateau at hand—having just attended a couple seated just before booths groups of drinkers at leisure, near a log fire. Gas flames perpetually lick at faux logs, burning low in a cast iron fireplace. 

Victoria crosses paths with the waiter—young in his tuxedo. The penguin waltzes a small beer bottle upright beside an empty glass, deposits the empties on the counter, and lets his gaze orbit the hall. He glides the plateau along the bar’s length with casino-discipline, penguin-waddling to queue the next order—bringing the barman to attention—then stations himself at the end. In the space before me, Victoria vanishes, and I’m passing by the barman, poised in ritual to serve.

As I search for Victoria, a glimpse behind reveals the penguin figure stirring—rising from where he’d rested an elbow on the bar counter. His gaze holds, frowning, speaking to himself: ‘Where does she think she's going?’ 

I find her framed through the gaping opening—flickering shy of the balustrade’s heavy spindles—Victoria’s matching stocking, slippers in a pepish pace, capering upward. Then, her fingers rest on the thick redwood handrail. In her maroon blouse, mini-skirt, she turns, plants her other palm, and pauses—eyes calling back to me.

'Are you coming?'

As I place a hand atop the newel post, I gaze up the wide, two-way flight of stairs. Frisky, Victoria sprints upward—winding the last steps before the upper floor’s gaping landing, her fingertip trailing the handrail as she glances back over the void. . . at her hesitant follower—a shadow in the hush trailing.

Then, Victoria disappears. I zoom upward—the opening upholding the ceiling, unfolding downward with opening wings. Until, again, Victoria—slow in her strides—looping through the return aisle, mirroring the layout below. She heads toward the windows’ glow, listening to the redwood floorboards, the whispers of her footsteps in the hush of the wooden hall without a soul. 

At the corner booth, caught in the window’s glow, her silhouette lingers in thought as I step toward her. She pivots, lowers, clipping her knees, settle the bench’s edge—holding her pose, half-in, half-out. One arm arcs across, her hand perturbing the table’s gleaming wash—poised, teasing my approach—just before the gap’s crescendo of the twin benches. 

Before I can think of sitting across from her, Victoria retrieves her hand, plants the heel onto the brown leather at her far side—then scoots aside, her gaze tapping the sliver-width band of upholstered padding where no hip would sit. 'Come and sit next to me.' 

I hesitate to step forward. She scoots, punctuating a broadening space—then hops, an exaggerated opening into an unmistakable invitation for me to join. Just then, to my surprise, the witty waiter’s gaze lands over my shoulder. His playful eyes beg for my order—circling my silence. 

Victoria says, “Porto. S’il vous plaît-Please.” 

“De meme—Same here.” I say. 

The waiter leaves—our glasses behind—clearing a discreet couple between the two wing window glows, their bottles and accompanying glass. We sip, Victoria’s eyes to sparkle. With an excited voice, she says, “N’est-ce pas une vue magnifique. . .—Isn’t this a magnificent view. . .” In the same breath repeats. “Isn’t this a magnificent view?” 

We linger, chatting into the night—framed before us, the looming spire of City Hall perched with its golden angel. Beside the tall window sashes, the couple once seated in romantic closeness has dissolved. A few others arrived, scattering briefly around us, then vanished too. 

We follow quite a while later—down the stairs, across the hall, out onto the cobblestone square, among a few distant figures. Victoria points out the baroque guildhall—too much details for the mind to absorb in passing sweeps. We slip into the medieval alley, a short stretch across, emerging onto a villagey square, where a thin flurry of people still lingers from its earlier terraces spilling with life. Tracking back along our earlier steps, we cross a liminal threshold—closing in on a younger era, deserted—to fetch the Peugeot. 

Slipping into the seats, pulling away, Victoria raises a finger—tracing our path out of pedestrian streets. The lanes broaden, the architecture morphs into the early 1900s facades beyond the Little Beltway’s overpass, then sharpens into the juvenescent geometry of the 1970s across the Grand Boulevard. We drift into soft-lit community streets, lanterns aglow, until we near an arched brick viaduct—its upper-floor windows grouped in a distinct threesome, set apart from the hedgerows lining the street—oneiric, like a train overpass embedded in the fabric of the facade. 

At a stop, Victoria’s profile lingers in the passenger window—outlined against the hazy backdrop of adjacent townhouses, their foolscap ground-floor windows drawn with blinds. The car door swings open, reluctant. She leans in, kisses my cheek, then swings back and steps out. 

Victoria crosses the sidewalk. Pauses—before waking small translucent panes, stirring them with the door’s swing-back. Victoria slips in the gaping doorway, vanishes behind the closing door. The glass panes fall into obscurity—behind them, shadows. 

“Tonton” resonates like a household butler, in Victoria’s shadow—he stays in the loft, tending to Alexandre in her abscence. He’s been threading Andre’s name across his lip at every visit, gossiping with Mariette—as I once glimpsed through the Hydra’s eye, its stealth gaze nested in the ceiling—when the girls were gone from their office desk. The corridor echoes faintly. Their laughter, a ripple in the vinyl tiles’ hush. The old man’s chair remains turned, just enough to catch the corner light. Stirs me. Unsettled. In the kaleidoscopic zodiacal canopy, a branch leans into its twin—until one bends away. Somewhere, a child still waits for the wrong man to come home.

But these distant people—like the soft pouch of flocculent canopies swelling a street screen—don’t sit with me. They belong to a road that blindly runs beyond. I pull away, turning around in the lane—seeking my way past the Atomium’s silver moon, and the trauma left by a Flemish bus driver who, when I spoke French, sent me on a wild goose chase—made it clear I had entered Flanders. Tracking back—on my first day in the country, through the night to find back Mariette’s thatched-roof house.

You are welcome to read all the chapters and explore more at my website: How the Universe Sculptured Our Mind. I spend an absurd amount of time chasing expression—perhaps to shame. But the challenge is mine, updates may occur without notice, shaping the timeline, perceptions. The gift is yours: thoughts, echoes, reflections. I take them with gratitude. And you—who are you, reading these lines, stepping into my genre, my style, the quiet current of my subject?

BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria, in the zodiacal forest—where birds sing and leaves flutter like wings bathing in light. The symphony of the forest comes to mind. This is the cosmos’ whisper through our creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted…