YD6-86(ARMH) Aetheria Nestled in the Branchâs Crotch
Chapter Prologue Tease: Through a doorwayâs crack, a promise escapesâVictoriaâs voice, bright with discovery: a house, a way out, a future for Pipo. But in the shadows, loyalties shift and old threads tighten. From the parkâs green hush to the soot-stained gables, a century stirs beneath our steps. Come inside; the walls remember more than we are ready to see.
BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria, in the zodiacal forestâwhere birds sing and leaves flutter like wings bathing in light. The symphony of the forest comes to mind. This is the cosmosâ whisper through its creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinityâa 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 formâmoving toward the name she will one day claim: Sunshine.
YD6-86(ARMH) Aetheria Nestled in the Branchâs Crotch
Her world echoes as the dark-brown panel door cracked out of shadow. from the hollow of the hallway Jean-Francois Smeets eyes emerged. In the light of the living room, Victoria exults. â[Dutch] TontonâIâll be free from Andreâs menaces, taking Pipo awayâWe found a house!â
His popping eyeballs didn't share her spark. Slipping out from the shadow, he raises his head for a confrontation, the Aries in him bristlingâthen lets it fall to a desolate smile. He had stood by Andre Daniel through Victoria âs illicit affair; the comfort of his existence bled out.Â
I steer the Audi, its emblematic rings spin before me, the glass bubbleâs tires muttering - patter, patter... - over the cobblestones of Rochefort Square. Docked vessels of apartments line the quay, we orbit afar the pivoting parkâs gate by the green river of pooling lawns, its gritty yellow prong pushing through the leafy hedge. Old trees edge the sidewalk to a bus halt, as I turn a blind eye at the systematic rows of garage doors spooling the avenue along the park.
A driver in dark terracotta clothes, slouchy peak beret, suscitating ghostly holographic before me, still trailing the ghost of smoke from the distant brick kilns, walks out the naked valley landscaped - clomp clomp clomp - harness draft horses, his eyesight dwelling on the broad sweep of gravel-graded avenue. Irregular-paced architectural merlon flanks the expanding community. Their slender gable walls towering in the shadows, the irregular crenelation of bare parcels awaiting bushwalker clearing the terrain. As his hush shouts whip his horses, âHeu! Heu...â facing the quiescent, nascent landscaped park across the way.
He pauses, turning toward his horses. Across them, the quiescent red earth excavation, a narrow soil perch like a landing field above the backyard, and rear neighborhood. In his hush, his shouts carryâfigures climb from the excavation to street level in a line formation. Hands gather a paired-bricks - Clack Cleck - from the flatbed stack, twist, lunge, bricks in flight to catching hands - Clack Cleck - along chain links past laid-down shovels, tilted water buckets, slop of lime-mortar mix. The bricks pile into the trenches, along mortal boards, and masonry trowels. In the shade of thick, plummeting walls, the sub-structure rises from the haunches and rises of arched foundations.Â
The elongated V-bed cart, in the hush of ghosting the driver whips the horses on - âHeu! Heu!ââ turn from Brusselsâ crownâthe highest point, once bequeathed by Guillaume Duden to Leopold II, who sold the forest, and straggles down the slope through flowing lawns. The brick caterer turns back to the distant smoking brick kilns, leaving behind the backdrafts pooling in the lawns at the bottom of Queen Marie Henriette Avenue, just before the parkâs gate. Until, Aerts, a teacher, took occupation of the townhouse, a knot in the thread of timeâ1912âDe_Pâpa, Fatherâs birth year.Â
Coasting in toward the hedgerowâs white-stone ashlar facadeâfour heights, red-brick fenestrated to the white corniceâour glass bubbleâs hums. Victoria, hawk-eyed, peers through her side window. . . only now disappointment, the threat of Andre, effaced from her mind. Neneriaâyoung, blond, hair in the wind, but seen through a film of sootâunaged in the Pierre Blanche de France: the sculpted figurehead poised the transom, now black in soot.Â
Her thoughts flip backâher own reflection in stone gone with the wind. Victoriaâs door flings open; she springs to her feet - smack, smack - doors shut. Stepping from around behind the Audi, I join her, pausing. Sheâs fixated on the figurehead over the entranceâs soot stained-glass fan.Â
She scurries forward, reaching for the flimsy, sloppy-glued push-buttons on the inside of the finely hewn ashlar jamb, their casing filmed with soot. I look above: a cast-iron arm pivot, ghost of a pull chain, waiting for - dinge, a ling - to echo inside the townhouse. Beneath it, Victoriaâs myopic gaze cascades over rickety, weathered name tags; she presses one: âVan Goethem-Polfliet.â
I track a pair of glued electric wires, twisted, worming through an ill-drilled jamb, vanishing behind the dark-green sentinels of hefty wood-paired doors. I meander closer, ear pricked for any stir within. Victoria back-steps down from the bluestone, bulb-shaped doorstepâa fierce clang as the half-moon metal plate under her soft step ill-fits the coal-shoot frame. The streetâs dirt-shoe scraper still lingers there. Whoosh, whooshâa trickle of air behind us tires to efface the century beneath the graded asphalt.Â
We wait for our rendezvous. Then, the hush stirâan electric fry: whir, click, thwock - and the door seam crack. Victoria palms the rebated stile; the door hinges right back. The avenueâs waiting glow slips, mischievous, through her hands and feet, outsting Lucifer from his lair.Â
It shakes meâI donât know about Victoria. But once the door closes, the light is barred. A chill wafts, empty. Gradually, seeking a source, overhead: a bulbâs burning filament, its twisted wire paling in the ceilingâs hollowed throat of a spire.Â
The silhouette dangles down through the giant, dreary dark eyeârefined here into a simmering stained-glass bullseyeâand further along the cord, filtering through the mottled fanlight. Together the pools of light only flush the darkness, just outlining the broad walk-up.
At the pace of Victoriaâs heels, across the door apron, besides the semblance of a green flank, bending, overreaching on usâwalls devoid of lightâIâm imagining crystals. Cross-facing mirrors bring the fairy into this desolate vestibule. The sigh of her slippers - skhiff, skhiff, skhiff - paces upward to where Nyx reflects witchy behind the small-pane full bay portal, the horror of a stairwell she hasn't escaped since candlelight walked the shadows along the walls.Â
Unimpressed, Victoria crosses the threshold. We veer beneath a bulbâs electric-burning filament, stepping aside from the newel before taking its evanescent flight of stairs. Already I see the crystal spectrum spilling against the landing walls. Victoria hesitates before an ajar door, craning her neck, from a claustrophobic stairwellâdrawn across the threshold by the linoleumâs gleam within the dereliction.Â
In pace with Victoria, accosted by stale air, I peek over her shoulders into the room: an open-hearth blending in the darkness, still telling tales of burning logs. Victoriaâs sweeping gaze confronts a ramshackleâdull and emptyâthrough the crystal portals of rooms in enfilade.Â
Her gaze snaps left. She pushes herself onward, her conviction lagging, oblivious to the odds of finding a house with a room for Pipo here. In her drive, she reaches the threshold of the interleading Belle Ăpoque open-bay crystal portal, centered by an obese, solitary silhouette in dark attire, spilling over a seat on slender stilts.Â
With irate strides, Victoria advances toward the woman, overbearing a Formica backrest and metal tubes that indent the drooping flab. I couldnât miss itâin my line of sight, the metallic beige casing of a gas heater, couchant before the open-hearth, a loyal pet, reflecting in quiet vigil her hibernation.Â
Victoria bows. The obese woman, frozen in her past youth, rests palms on her thighs. Victoria turns to crouches to face her, meeting her eyes at level, lifting her eyebrows to break the womanâs distant gaze. â[Mevrouw Van Goethem. We zijn hier voor het bezoek.] â Mrs. Van Goethem. Weâre here for the visit.â
Mrs. Van Goethem mumbles. â[U mag naar boven. Ik heb de huurders van uw komst verwittigd.] â You may go upstairs. Iâve notified the tenants of your coming.âÂ
Victoria uncoils, brings life into the darkness with her lively, musical tone: âThanks.â
I remain fixated on the big fat catâs glow, squeezing from beneath the outsideâs lopsided roller blindâslats hooked up by one sideâcreeping up the gap between shutter and glazed door. Head and claws paw out, scraping over the French doorâs kick-panels, then collapse to lie exhausted on the linoleum. Aetheriaâs mirage, failing to reach out.Â
As Victoria steps through the enfilade, her gaze falling from the rococo rambling-rose cornices to the ceiling medallion, where I catch a protruding historic gas-lighting pipe. Her eyes drift forward, brushing past the mysterious nailed hardboard that blocks a portal.Â
Disinterested, by the boarded construction-site appearance. Victoria scurries onwardâyet curiosity draws her back, toward the offside boarded large bay. At its center, she turns the doorknob; her eyes push into the dark. Aetheria-enticed, sheâs tugged inside the gaping doorway, along the dim light, pausing in the shadow. Her eyes fixed, baffled: âA wasted room, windowless?âÂ
She lingers long enough, held back, before stepping heel over toe awayâabandoning the hope of finding archaic relicsâonly to spring back. Behind the door leaf, she reaches toward a glint.
âAinât that cute?â she breaks the hush, footsteps skittering with an ecstatic yelp. âCupid.â Her fingertip strokes the brass doorknob. She drifts away, dithering in her strides, eyes roaming without settling, until she slips through the crystal portalâlast room in the enfilade. A slow swirl: âIâve seen it all?â But she springs back.Â
Roamed aloof, she spins back from butting these grand bay portals, until the rear roller blind, slivers of light prying through its fine slats, with scattered piercing glows. She spins away, eyes unable to imagine herself living beneath a macabre brushwood forest bending over her. Then-an exclamation: âDaddy! [Oh, regarde ça !] â Ho, look at that!â She pauses, eyes lifted to the sky.Â
I was there ahead of my strides, my gaze prowling around, the shielding Masonite boardsâwater-stained, warped, edges curling themselves, loosening their guard, peeling from the ceiling. Then Iâm called back to the peeping lightâs kaleidoscopic shimmer. Closer, our minds meet the cries of a stained-glass mural, snippets of glows fading beneath a film of dust from the skylight overhead.Â
Victoria calms beside the sentinel of a flank wallâs panel door, trimmed with archaic-modern beadings, Curiosity tickled her again, She hesitates, then backspinsâa step forward up to the sentinel of the doorâbefore rolling a few fingers over the brass-jewelled lever to the escutcheon plate with keyhole. She cranks and pulls; the door swings, drawing her around into a nighthall that leads to an offset room.Â
In the distant window light, I doodle in my mindâopening a room to the windowâs glow, letting it luminesce the interiorâwhile she, in the macabre of darkness, relies on her imagination without a clue. Victoria turns from the dead-end room, as I mentally dismantle the frosted panes of the derisory half-glazed wooden partition from the 60s, which shies away a shower room and toilet.Â
It stuns meâa modernization stunt that turned a bedroom into an en-suite, shadowing the old toilet house in the backyard. The plumbing, once outdoors, has been brought along the rear walls of the houses. But my engineering eye passes over Victoriaâs blindness to the renovationâs entrails uncoiling in my mind, while she, baffled, shadows her way out.
Victoriaâs hand runs up the handrailâflex her resilient legsâalong a gleam of light sketches the dark brown drail turning on the intermediate landing - swhiff swhiff - slightly sticky over linoleum bullnoses. She pauses by a row of faux-panel doors and finds a discreet door lever.Â
She creeps inside at the pace of the door swing, square-open into the cut through section of the wall, as a low-gloss ceiling seems to greet us. Her heels - tock tock tock. . . - echo across the floorboards as she progresses deeper across the room,Â
She left me stunned: in the bay of the load-bearing wall, I note the two-and-a-half-brick-thick door jamb. Here, at the rear-end of the stairwell, I discover the core of the houseâto birthing the technical shaft, key to modernizing the whole structure. As victoriaâs silhouettes slips through the distant gapping doorway, my mind nurtures the idea of steel girders to strut and support the weight of vanishing walls.Â
In the hush of Victoria silhouette in the elongated window, I join her above the terrace roof of the offset master bedroom below. Our gazes across the plane field of asphalt roofing, perched high above the deep, retrenched shadows of the basementâs backyard, then leap over the trimmed off brick wall gleaming glazed coping ridged tiles, and onâinto shadows beyond, settled in the midst of sunlight efflorescing through the neighborhood. I keep my shimmering thoughts; yet the mezzanine behind us stirs a semblance of an ideal space for a seven-year-old boy.Â
I size up this vacant little roomâa former water closet, fit only for a stairwellâthen turn away from our stand on the concrete deck above the nighthall below. We track back along the running gleam of the floorboards through the gaping doorway. A faint luminescence sketches the meager staircase, above us dangling a bulbâs dead filament from electric wires. I shut the door behind, and weâre caught in a cosmic blackness. I step ahead of Victoria, a fool fallen to the light timer, the handrail our only guide - swhiff swhiff swhiff - Victoria behind, our eyes groping the invisible flight of stairs.Â
Untilâour sign: a star in the distance. A feathery orangey dot. I reckon by my handâs glide along the U-tuning handrail; my steps hint at the last risers. Assured of the upstairs landing, I rush across to the pilot-lightâfinger jabbing - click - and the wall leaps up before me. I turn to Victoria, besides the stairwell bay of built-in cupboard doors. dizzy and beamed into light beneath the burning filament of a dangling bulb. Her eyes spin back, catch across the landing on a panel door set in the flank wall, and she scurries toward it.
Victoriaâs knocks resonate, escaping through the stairwell behind us, untilâthe seam of the architraveâthe door cracks open to meet the concerned eyes of a bright slender woman. As it swings wider, she backstepsâher hand fixed on the blind lever behind the doorâa reflex grip, not yet ready to release the apartment that has been part of her family for years, and more. She straightens, extending the door leaf in an imminent farewell. Through the gaping invitation, a lounge reveals a figure beyond the upholstered furniture, in the light of a distant rear window.
Victoria asks, â[Pouvon nous. . .]âMay weâŠââtwo bronzed twins of womanhood, mother and daughter, a generation apart.Â
â[Vous pouvez]âYou may,â says the fortyish mother, wavy blue hair, standing with a ruffled, angelic daughter still childishly clutching her skirt. Victoria, peppish, passes by, breaking the eighteenish girlâs naive gaze that titillates the heart. Victoria moves toward a large, thick-framed portraitâone among a historic array of canvases across wallsâits pursuing eyes watching our intrusion. Before me, Victoria swerves toward the source of light, away from the stare of the young athletic man, his presence not of this realm. But, Iâve stepped on a stageâhis presence impregnating the setâre-enacting the scene of a young coupleâs immigration from Spain a generation earlier to this local territory.Â
Victoria breaks through the gaping glow of a double doorway, attenuating their dining roomâheavy drapes theatrically gathered besides angled sashes winging the void landing the avenue. The frame before the void of the bay window reveals a loggia facing a sea of leafy-green canopies across the park. She steers to the side, where the gaping doorway reflects a wall-fixed porcelain basin. As I stand by, I trace its siphon waste pipe as it pierces the floor to the vestibule below.Â
We turn away from the room, butcheredâits cold-water feed skirting beneath a double bed wedged between the narrow wallsâa princess and her princeâs lair. At the headboard the built-in cupboard bayâand call onto street windowsâ light to flood through a translucent portal, to lie in peace and spread like smoke up and down the stairwell.
Backtracking through the enfilade of rooms, past the young man and toward the rear portal, a distant window spills its light on ill adapted living:Â narrow aisles shadowing a squared bedspread before an open hearth, the protruding mantelpiece of a fireplace jutting into every room.Â
Victoria retrieves herself through pepish pirouettes, passing the little family and saying, â[Merci beaucoup pour la visite]âThanks for the visit.â She stops as the woman addresses me: â[Si vous achetez, que va-t-il nous arriver]âIf you buy, what will happen to us?â Then, Victoria leaps across the landing, palms the pilot-light, and the door closes behind us. We head for the flight of stairs, and I think, âThat door has to be blocked up!â
Upstairs, after Victoriaâs knock, a fiftyish moon-faced woman offers a plastic, joyful invitation. She releases her grip on the door, but steps aside with a matronâs wicked smile, excusing the man: â[Il a eu un accident de camion]âHe had a truck accident!ââ
I straight away thought about an insurance payout. Over Victoriaâs shoulder, in the shadow, emerged the beast of a wrestlerâhefty arms elongated from the armrests sunk deep in a leather club chair. His glance at Victoria strikes his wifeâs face; she slaps back at Victoria with a jealous eye stroke, her chaos succinctly witchy in the deep thick drapes stifling light to the rooms. The manâs gaze, resilient and fixed, lines up a crosshairsâone heel on a footstoolâthrough shoe toes of crossed-over ankles, spearheading sight angled across a coffee table, straight into the flickering bright screen of a television in the dark corner across the room. Â
I follow Victoria into heavy classic tapestries and upholstered armchairs veering into the calling light of the street peeking a glow through heavy drapes, beneath a valence, sketching the iron balcony, beyond the French doors. Turning around for the rear bedroom window. Before Victoria egressed, leaving behind the walls stir in chaos, past them, the Flemish blondâs eyes linger: â[Si vous achetez, allez vous rĂ©nover la maison]âIf you buy, are you going to renovate the house?â Turns around and closes the door.
And, if the there is another translucent door â instead of across the landing, the miserable bulbâs short light lifted a two-step gangway. Mrs. Van Goethemâs words echoing. â[La femme de lâappartement mansardĂ©. Elle est partie pour lâoccasion et a laissĂ© la porte ouverte]'âThe woman of the loft apartment. She has moved out for the occasion and left the door unlocked.Â
Victoria pivots, palm on the newel post, and faces a barn flight of stairs, an eager glint cracking toward us. At the top, a mere doormat apron fronts the sentinel niched doors. Skeptical, she cranks the lever and swings the door back. A heavenly light welcomes us; I gaze up at the loft peaked ceiling and promise itâyour roofâs will be graced with large windows, letting light pour down the stairs to reach the cellar.
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 expressionâperhaps 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 youâwho are you, reading these lines, stepping into my genre, my style?
https://sites.google.com/i-write4u2read.com/howtheuniversesculpturedourmin?usp=sharing