#LabyrinthLanding

[kahztiy]

[YD6-72 (MVDH) Chapter Code] New York to Paris: Landing at the Crux of a Labyrinth—Ousted to Slide into Brussels

BOOK SYNOPSIS: Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn. This story is an unfolding suite of chapters clarifying my book: The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring: How The universe Sculpted Our Minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness, aware of her need for a body to reveal herself and exercise her wishes, the narrative leads to her birth and the name she will claim: Sunshine. 

CHAPTER preface: From the steel veins of New York and the mist-veiled corridors of Paris, the flight unravels—a labyrinth in the sky, where landings are mere interludes to exile. Ousted from familiarity, the rails of Wallonia pull like threads through forgotten dialects and brick-tacked chimneys, sliding unbidden into Brussels. In the echoes of terracotta roofs and gabled legends, the city waits—veiled, unyielding, a phantom at the edge of memory.

#NewYorkToParis, #LabyrinthLanding, #SlideIntoBrussels, #LabyrinthineDescent

[YD6-72 (MVDH) Chapter Code] New York to Paris: Landing at the Crux of a Labyrinth—Ousted to Slide into Brussels

“Vue du Vogue—Sight of The Vogue”

The snow drifted down, settling a blanket over the cascading rooftops, packing tracks where the night’s plow left its swath for those drivers heading where duties called. Arms crossed before the kitchen window, elevated over the downstairs lean-to roof, I watched as the Salbert’s piedmont vanished beneath winter’s sigh. 

My gaze drifts from the exurban edge, across the Paris-Switzerland railway seam—a fold in the snow paired with the telephone cable, black and taut, cutting across the windowpane—a flight’s wings against the skies, unfolding over the plains northward. The Vogues mountain range unrolled like the pages of an atlas, and from its heart, the Ballon D'Alsace—the Ball of Alsace—rose like my right eye, through a string curtain.

In an arc to my left, past the ribbon of the frontier, trailed French Sarcasm—“The brain of France”—not without disdain. Mapped at the center, Brussels—shrouded in Aetheria’s cosmic willpower, exhausted from my buzzing flights, waiting—like a mirage at the edge of consciousness.  

I linger in that frame of mind—passing by the employment agency, intuitively, winter is out and in the air. The skies cleared, rumors circulated—minus fifteen in Paris, minus eight in the East, here in Belfort. I grew restless, craving an adventure to wind me up out of idleness. 

I was set to join her, back at four-thirty. “From two to four?” Ingrid sighed. Enough time to wander the open-air mall, downtown.

I chauffeured Ingrid to her place of benevolent work, parking the Fiat Uno, at the town hall. I crossed the main street to walk along “Rue Piétonne—Pedestrian Street.” Inside the agency, the agent quibbled with an Egyptian man, desperate to return home—yesterday! His voice threaded through the agent’s gestures—“Gulf War,” spilling through every crack, reaching for a flight toward the flaring fires—that were not. 

I stepped back out, into the ghost street, sniffing out the city’s temperature—screening employment agency storefronts, lingering in a travel agency, measuring the air for a way out of idleness. only to return.

"The twelfth, does that suit?" the woman asked me. 

"Yes," I reply, engaging my open-date reservation for New York—facing that 72-hour lee-time notice. Feeling sold on taking off for the skies. 

Untethered, I fetched Ingrid at the mission, driving her home. The children filled the rooms with glamor, and Rico arrived for dinner. The evening settled, Rico planted himself before the television screen, unraveling the flicker of combat that hung in the lounge. “Gulf War,” echoed, night after night, “Iraq, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm.” 

On my flight back from New York, the phantom of the fireplace flames lingered—Rico, glued to the screen, flickered through bushes in the desert—an orchard of fires stretched over the sands. I walked out of a cinema theater during my stay in New York; Hollywood had moved on, playing out in real time toward oblivion.

Below, the city patchwork of France unfolded—snows had melted, spring fledged green ambition across the swells of summer. I braced for my return in Paris, already crossroads folded into a labyrinth, as I’m daunted by the future. Hover the easy way out, through the thicket of apprehension, on a train to Belfort, by Ingrid—a creeping tide unfurled in my guts, to an unsettling fever under my skin—possessed. I awake to the seesaw wave--sick feeling—I connect the juggling telepathic signal, ensuring the temperature of the Sagittarius's reception with my presence. I dropped to the thought of heading to Ingrid--soothed by an open-date Sabena ticket, to a flight secured. While too early for my annual New Year visit—and a flight departing from Brussels, Zaventem International Airport, bound for that intuitive cul-de-sac where employment slipped from reach. 

My flight from New York touched down in Paris.

With patient strides, I weave through the streets—from the familiar agencies in well-trodden districts, to the discovery of lesser-known corners, their Kardex job listing cards like a quilt curtain strung with fish line behind the storefront pane. Left with a sensation that the city pulse drains life through its own vibrance. caught in the lull of summer school breaks and builders’ seasonal shutdown. Work evaporates, each day unspooling into the next, and a stretch into the following week, while cash becomes a growing concern.

Then, like every egress before it, I hand in my key at the hotel front desk. Until, the attendant—like a registered letter delivery one can’t ignore—he tells me. "Vous devez libérer la chambre avant le quinze.--You have to vacate the room before the fifteenth.”

I ask, "Pourquoi ?--Why?"

The slender male attendant’s gaze doesn’t flicker, eyes fixed on the ledger. "Les chambres doivent être libres pour les touristes.--the rooms have to be free for the tourists." He dangles an eviction before me: ‘You want me to leave, and the tourists aren’t here yet?’ The stern Algerian diaspora was not one to be trifled with; like pulling a curtain shut, I turned away—not without ranting in silence. 'Paris! Giving preference to ghostly tourists—I'm off.'

Sunday at dawn, I step out of the hotel into the stifled daylight streets, scouting my route. Descend through the wrought iron pigeon perch crowns the “Metropolitan” entrance; down the stairway swallowed by the underground, from a metro map, tiled barrel vaults tunnel to the platform. The train squeezes tire-wheels around the bed, into the station. The doors - clang - open. Snaps shut behind me, pulling away. I ride the can-shaped wagon, riding the tunnel, punctuating announcements, before flaring to the station, until. “Station du Nord—North Station.” I cross the train station hall, where announcements echo, blurring understanding. At the ticket counter, a dreary-faced woman peers, content in her silence behind the glazed window. 

“Un aller simple pour Bruxelles, s'il vous plaît—A single for Brussels, please.” I ask—I turn away, ticket in hand—no turning back, destined to depart. But in the end—nobody. 

Brussels hollowed out, a specter of itself—my sister, Ilse, had moved to a remote road crossing toward the Kruger National Park gate, amidst plantations, in the nascence of Hazyview, edging the Tsonga people’s homeland. That after our sister, Ines, her suicide, taking her three children with--post an ambush that claimed Ronnie, her husband.

De M’ma, back to South Africa, bearing her guilt, vacated “Chateau du Bois—Castle of the Woods,” before me, Brussels had turned to ghost—an echo across marche, a shadow without light.

My courage exhausted, a last chance to find a prop to shoulder what remains. My eyes shift through silhouettes flurrying across the hall, through the interstices—I'm seeking. 

I walk across the hall to a payphone. Compose the number. My sister Ingrid’s voice sliced through, edged with her French accent. 

“Tu ne saurais pas où je pourrais rester à Bruxelles?—You wouldn’t know where I can stay in Brussels?” I ask.

“Pourquoi ne vas-tu pas chez Mariette?—Why don’t you go to Mariette? She’s all alone in that big house,” her Sagittarius draws her bow, arrow finding its mark, blurting, as though she read my mind. "Elle est seule dans une grande maison.--She's alone in a big house." 

I hang up, as if a backpack eviscerated from a rock fill, foreseen with a soft coasting in Brussels. Ingrid's source of reassurance streams through me; the clock ticks, returning to the hotel, drained of my apprehension, my destiny a beacon shimmering on the horizon.

Now, amidst the trickle of people threading through the streets, I descend to the metro platforms—the hotel fading behind, shedding my wrath of uncertainty. I stand poised beside my calf-bloated suitcase, strapped with my sausage-dog overnight bag, tethered to my Toshiba, snug in Rico’s executive case. The trundling carriage blares station names, each platform aglow, punctuating the rhythm of departure. I alight, surface to the hallway, cross to the railway series of platforms, and board the coach—seated before the station master’s whistle pierces the air, pulling us out of the wrought iron shed.

Settled in the carriage and cared for through the trip, the city’s untamed growth unravels—depressive onlooking brick facades where architecture did not need to impress the eyes of travelers. It slips behind, morphing away structures retreating to open arms, the landscape breathing, a slow rotation to peeking distant villages clustered around their church steeples. 

The French architecture spills over the border, a recollection printed in a child's mind—passages through changing seasons. Passengers board and alight, their Parisian French, squelched by the metropolis—phrases' melodic provincial lilt fade.

Crossing the border, memories reach feather-light, swerving through the air—journeys from boarding school in Kain, Wallonia's border hamlet, tethered Tournai, A few steam engines still rumbling into station, as we slipped away on the train’s whisking steel wheels endless electric driven glide. Beyond the window’s streaking blur, the countryside sweeps past a planetary wheel in slow rotation. At the axis, across from me, my brother Igor--both of us staring into the revolving landscape, en route to our foster parents. 

Passengers’ French thickened through Wallonia, edged with the faint spill of a forgotten dialect--whispers of village tongues lingering in the cadence. Outside the slowing train windows, we glide along the viaduct--like village children--by jagged terracotta-tiled saddled roofs to gables and brick-tacked chimney stacks--age-warped and unyielding, remnants of a city’s legend. 

Gazing down--onto the intricate choreography of self driving cars below--instead of Igor, and me whispering, “Vroom, vroom. . .” A hush of evening traffic stream along, headlight flickering white, taillights streaking red across the median-isolated boulevard. Downtown, traffic emerges, crisscrossing in waves of stop-and-go rhythm, vanishing into the underpass only to reappear outbound through the opposing window’s curiosity. 

Perched atop the smoked glass block and spandrel of the aging office building, Tintin--the Belgian reporter--and Milou, his loyal dog, hense revolved--a faint echo repatriated from the Belgian Congo in the summer of 1960, offering a glimpse of our birth country. 

Tintin and Milou turning was our marker midway to our foster parents--the changeover in Brussels, crossing by the French fry stalls for a bite, amidst the legendary Flemish bourgeoisie, who rolled French into their expression with a second skin. We searched out our “Antwerp--hand-to-throw” connection, forwarding our journey deeper into the heart of Flanders, ending with fogged bus windows, peering out as we reached our foster parents--Father’s cousin in Lier, who took us in.

‘In this modern age,’ I reflect, surprised to find Tintin and Milou still perched atop the glass pedestal--its gleam faded, smudged by the city’s pollution. After all those shuttles between boarding school and foster parents, I’m returning against dusk, creeping and unsettling, as the train pulls through wrought-iron frames of open-air shelters. Stepping out onto the platform, I tug the weights of my luggage, my memories shaken loose, for a path, eager to locate a payphone. 

I descend from the platform with the crowd, leaving the evening summer breeze behind. Veering into the ground-floor hallway, I sidestep from the voyagers reaching wide to locate an information desk, in tandem with a needed currency exchange. Through a breath, I ask, “Où puis-je téléphoner ?--Where can I phone?” 

Directed around the corner to a payphone, I set down my luggage. I lift the handset from its wall cradle, flipping open my Seven Star diary to my scribbled notes from speaking with Ingrid. I slot coins, and rotate the dial: 0-2 Brussels 2-6-9-1-5-9-2. Urgent to pursue my course before Nyx cast her clasp and the city fades into darkness, I hold on to the distant ringing tone.

A woman’s fresh warm rolling voice answers. "Mariette."

"Ingrid said I should call you when I'm in Brussels--I'm looking for a place to lodge." I rush out, hold my breath, resisting to impose further, giving her a space to breathe, to weigh me up. 

“And how is ingrid?” she blurts.

“Fine,” I replied, catching the tick of time, but Mariette didn’t respond to my urgent request--my concern suspended with the parasitic void of the payphone line. Oblivious, to those days, when the family was scattered across two continents, and siblings nested in their own lives. That the Somers family were my sister’s foster parents--or even related--’How absurd her enquiring?’ I reflect. She digs for news, about Ilona, and Ilse--details I hadn’t collected, fragments adrift from my grasp. 

“I just arrived at the South Station.” I insist, pressing against her silence to an invitation.

"Come tomorrow," Mariette says, and I sigh--‘why not now?’--but let it be. My chest collapses, heavy at heart with resignation. I Hang up, disappointment clinging with a sweltering heat. 

I feel the full weight, schlepping my calf-bloat suitcase alongside hasty last travelers. I chanced left, the hallway slipping away from the sterile right exit--streets in half-light. ‘What next?’ I wonder, as the next day looms short, but the night stretches long, unyielding.

Under the lit marble hallway, I pass food stalls, their keepers shuttering for the night, punctuated by the sigh of face-to-face escalators’ empty breezes. Nyx in her black veil peers down. ‘We all need a place to rest for the night,’ I sigh. As I tug my calf-bloated suitcases, above, a train thunders to a halt. A schlep at hand, with my Dachshund-saucisse overnight bag, strap slung across my shoulders, along with Rico’s executive leather case with my Toshiba laptop nestled within. 

Around a curio stall, the keepers clear the threaded displays of gifts and flowers in prevision of hinging down the awning. Around the rear, I’ll recover my egress, pressing all together with luggage the resistant doors on flimsy spring hinges, meeting a morphing mist as darkness gains amplitude over light, breathing its apprehension. I cross the wide sidewalk. Pause at the curb; my gaze apprehends the realm of silence hidden behind the fenestrated wall, where shouldering facades—confused by a slotted seventies architecture—brood a misplaced monolith.

Lamppost lanterns’ tired lights repose, lingering an escaping glint of silver threads reserved for trams. I step down the curb, across the abandoned pair of tracks, their cohorting asphalt and deserted lanes evanescing into the enigmatic shadows, waiting until emerging in the light.

Aetheria lost tether to Helios, yet her means of communication persist—a parasitic phone line running to Mariette across the city, to flaring neon against the stifling daylight. I watch the flamingo dancer pirouette—hands swirling, red slippers flashing, her yellow skirt flaring with each face turn away from the main street to the side street. Her flickering neon lights strobe the fenestrated facades across, checkered windows catching her rhythm, casting reflections on the monolith sculpture—a remnant of the golden age of train travel.

Awakening to a brothel, neglected to its demise, the refrain pulses through my head: ‘I have to find a bed for the night’ echoes, drumming through my thoughts. Discreet, beneath a fascia facing the main street, my mind stitches together the remnants of a sign—a glimpse, a rhyme: “Hotel.”

Up the doorsteps, with my family of luggage, I push through a squeaky door, sculptured from my grandfather’s generation. Inside, the tired light mists across a drinking hall. Its woods are heavy with age and split secrets. De M’ma's words filter back, “De Bon’pa Somers, die Kon drinken! Grandpa Somers, he could drink. . . He did all his real estate and construction business in the bars.” 

Behind the closing door, a middle-aged man sits hunched, elbows spread over a glass of beer, his eyes hooked on me. ‘A stranger! What are you coming to do in this place?’ His seat stretches beneath the glazed dark windows, running the length of the wall, bending around the corner to another far-off figure—a lonely brother nursing his beer. 

I step onward, toward a slight young Moroccan attendant behind a central-flank projecting box desk. Passing sparse, scattered younger men—cigarette smoke curling above them, a jinn escaping its lamp, plumes unfurling from their faces, wreathed around a beer, and pooling before a milky glass ashtray. Their backs slump against dark wooden backrests, mere shadows of company, their partners huddling around the small square tables. “Avez-vous une chambre pour la nuit ?--Have you got a room for the night?” My voice stirs the attendant from his fog of indifference, oblivious to the clientele that circulates in his milieu, ghost adrift in half-light and habit.

I stand, blinkers raised, shutting out the encircling eyes that pry and peer. I ease my doubt as the young hotel attendant rattles off a list of prices—his gaze scant and mute, tethered to a keyboard before him. Behind him, a wall panel looms with few freed hooks. ‘Sparsely occupied?’ The thought flits across my mind, extending my curiosity into learning my whereabouts. 

Across the beer hall, in the far corner, a bleak elevator door lingers, half-dissolved in a shadowy niche. I ask myself. ‘Do you wish to spend the night here? — No!’ Yet I’m toiled at arms by luggage, at my leg by a calf-boated suitcase, weighing me down to the point of decision. I pay. 

The Moroccan slings his hand toward the rear panel, twists his body, his fingers pluck a room-tagged key from the dangling lot, then hands it over the counter to me. I slog through scattered figures alone at tables, the press of the elevator button eager to discover. I enter the cabin, ‘It’s working!’—the stairs abandoned. After a brief stand, the doors open, revealing a corridor stretched in silence. The first door, I slot the key, turn; the door swings back. Entering and passing, I kick the door leaf to shut behind me. I drop my luggage and head for the bed. I fold back the covers, sigh. I undress, and in a grip on the crispy bedsheets, I slip in, surrendering to a heavenly sleep, untethering from the weight of the day.

With the first light, I awake—the street’s glow pooling in the distance; I linger, unmoved, waiting as the city’s hum rises. Dozing in that hushed cusp of morning, memory uncoils—I couldn't imagine, yet my curiosity extended into my Grandfather Somers. Neighbors in Goma, through my childhood. Never beyond view into his extended family, not as I? The phantom of my dead brother, conjured in bearing his name. shying in the shadow of my brother Igor—the apple of his eye. 

I didn’t feel entitled to the Somers legacy. Catching up to the traffic pulse, I rise and slip under a steaming shower. Stepping out, vitalized, I dry, dress, and I step out of the room, empty-handed, feeling out the start of the day. The elevator waits. Downstairs, another crowd—a vibrant lure from a distant street market. Drifters occupy the beer hall, hunched over a coffee, whispers curling in the air. I slip into comfortable invisibility.

I step up to the counter, standing before a shift change—but not a shift in the attendant’s attitude, asking. “Can I have a taxi?” He doesn’t respond, just rolls his eyes toward a breach in the adjacent wall. I get the message: ‘Deal with it yourself.’ I step around the counter, into a niche plastered with business cards and pamphlets. I sift through the jumble, uncovering a dissimulated payphone, but flashing bright and outsized advertisements, catching my eye: “Green Taxi.”

I dial the number. A woman answers, “Quelle est votre destination ?--What’s your destination?” The abruptness kindles a flash in my mind: a controller at an impound lot.

I stutter, reading off my notes the street name. “Hof Van Ob-ber-gen-straat, 1-7, Beigem.”

“Nous serons là dans cinq minutes.--We’ll be there in five minutes.”

I sigh relief, turning away and heading upstairs. I gather my family of luggage, and back downstairs, schlep through the squeaking door—Aetheria's uplifting course tracing the arc of my life. Helios stretches its yellow glow over the rooftop, exposing her place where Nyx tends to keep hidden in cracks and niches. 

Facing the bluestone pedestal to the railway, the entrance offside yields, in my view—the superstructure’s yellow-brick efflorescence, Aetheria’s mirage splashed in morning sunlight. Yet further on, a break in the continuation—an arched window looming—the office of a Scorpio executive, sharply dressed, overseeing the railway network stretching through the continent. 

Baffled by the flare of sunlight that clutches my mind, obscuring the destined seed planted, I am distracted by the blemish of a black taxi pulling up at the doorstep. I slog forward with my luggage to the man standing by the lifted lid, lending a hand, to stow my belongings into the trunk.

I part ways with the taxi driver, only to meet again, slipping into the car's seats. To my surprise, his eyes were big and hollow—oblivious of my earlier call—yet bright and eager. “Where to?” He asks, straightening. The hotel doorstep slips behind, after I repeat my destination. We cross braided tram tracks, merge the boulevard’s stop-and-go traffic, ducking into the cast shade of the overhead railway. In a stream of traffic, we drift until the median gives way, the canal joining--residues of a moat to the old city stretching along and crossing a sand-sunk barge slumbering on the water with rusty brims.

Organic workmen’s brick, narrow fenestrated facades under saddled terracotta roofs, swap over the bridge, narrow cobblestone street, the path unspool asphalt straights stretch into the hollow of the day, rising into the communities. He slices by the gates, flanked by tons of clay brick, running courses from the Royal’s crystal nursery peering over the wall, along an opposing swell of woods.

From the flocculent green canopy rises a silver moon—the top corner ball of the Atomium—etched in my childhood mind, the 1958 Universal World Fair—the reality slips by. The driver weasels through an underpass, an overpass, like wild arms over the city ring's highway traffic unraveling to placid green fields fading into the haze of distance. 

Until the asphalt whoosh hit a pattering of the tires—horse and cart farmer concave cobblestone road—floating, bouncing in the rear seat through the polders—curves away, from fragments, outlines a landlord mansion glimpsed through the hedge-grown wild, until the gateway’s evanescent driveway breaches the green veils.

We creep up to a branching road, before the crotch marked by a weathered, raw-hewn white-stone church. The driver, calibrating his map in mind, hesitates—then veers off the straight path, coasting along a wavering stone wall, crippled and deformed. Embracing the hamlet's narrow churchyard—a forest overgrowth tangle with medieval tombstones, half-buried in the shadows. 

The whitewashed wall opens a wide, welcoming paved path—well-trodden by the living—unfolding with a gentle wear of parishioners who still pass beneath the archway, finding sanctuary behind the shining pair of fortress wooden doors.

Aetheria, as if in concubine drift with the taxi driver in deep reflection, guided through the heart of the hamlet, coasting past greenhouses, meeting the road’s junction. Through the windshield, a living fairytale unfolded: a majestic fir, peeking above the thatched-roof house nestled in the woods. 

The patter, patter falls silent on the asphalt, as the driver veers into an exaggerated anticlockwise hairlock-turn, paying reverence to a gateway’s blind descent to a basement garage door. A glimpse of 17—we slip away from the wrought-iron tag, gliding along a bench-height plum brick wall to a manicured green backrest-hedge. He halts besides the gaping mouth of a yellow, gritty driveway, looping around the solitary fir. Its silhouette intones—a cosmic resonance, a welcoming hymn: ‘O Tannenbaum—O Christmas Tree,’ 

“C'est ça ?--Is that it?” I ask, through the Taxi window, my gaze tracing the spectral slit of eyes—upper floor windows peering from beneath thick thatch brows, furrowed expressions hovering over the large fenestrated white facades of the ground floor. I attempted to sneak a glance beyond the brood of drawn curtains, catching a glimpse of a snake’s peering eyes, acknowledging the taxi’s arrival.

The two Somers brothers, specter of middle age, lurk in a misty moonlight—last night’s dream unfurled a living tapestry—Mariette's brother Frans, young architect on a site inspection, holds a blueprint unfolded at hand. He stands bathed in Helios light, amidst heaped earth along shadowed excavated trenches crisscrossing in a multitude across the barren terrain. Grandfather, poised and solemn, hints at a promise—to deliver the bricks for the house’s erection, straight out of its foundations.  

Aetheria’s grand puzzle pieces weave through the tapestry. The brother turns to my grandfather, Louis—the one who estimates the tonnage of bricks, worthy of the house’s rising walls. Drawn from a giant clay pit in Rumst, up north, in Flanders, the clay is kneaded and shaped, packed into kilns, stoked, cooled, then loaded upon a cart. Horse-drawn and dust-swept, the burden lumbers south, stacked around the planted sapling. 

Reluctant, in the face of tackling this new world, I step down from the taxi. By the trunk, the mustached driver left me with my family of luggage. The taxi slips away, disappearing up the deserted street, leaving me nailed to the silence—a hash nestled in a forest of scattered villas, shimmering shiny fragments behind swells of deep greenery. 

Granduncle’s wish lingering—a testament of fidelity—its palmed branches spreading wide, the hymn of covering the island—'Mon beau sapin. . . -- My beautiful tree, King of the forests,

How I love your greenness. 

When winter come, 

Woods and tillages, 

Are stripped, 

Of their attractions. 

My beautiful tree, 

King of the forests, 

How I love your finery.’ 

I step forward, dragging my calf-bloated suitcase up the driveway apron, across the sidewalk onto the gritty driveway. A witchy hush lingers—thick curtains and unyielding. I search for curtain cracks, seeking peering eyes. The seam holds firm against the window reveal; not a waiver betrays the interior. 

Approaching the fir’s shadow, the half-oval gazebo jut from the face of the flank-facade, I jab the call button on the jamb, the tongue and groove redwood door in my face, waiting for an imminent door crack. But the seams hold its seal. I step back, gaze seeking out the windows, seeking for any sign of life—only silence, only stillness.

Resilient, my index finger punctuates the silence - dot. A Morse code: ‘I’m here!’ Whispers imagined through the interior doorways. I step back, waiting out for an apparition. Nothing. I step forward again - dot, dot - on the call button, ears pricked now, leaning into the silence that pools behind the door, inside the gazebo's curved embrace. I step back from the door, sifting my gaze for signs of life—cracks in the heavy drapes, a flicker at the upstairs windows, shadows that might betray. But stillness is profound. Apprehension mounts. ‘I can’t backtrack—where to with my family of luggage?’ The thought circles back, orbiting the gazebo’s small pane to fluted windows, and counting down a person’s response. ‘But I started in the middle of nowhere!’ I reflect.

I step up to the door, starting anew, systematic - dot, dot, and a long dash. The muffled ringings ripple beyond the gazebo hall, threading past a doorway, echoing off a central atrium, dispersing into rooms. At De_M’ma’s age, I imagined the slow rhythm of an old woman bathing at the other extreme of the house, dressing, brushing her hair, descending a flight of stairs. Suffice to walk to the front door. But I stood back, watching the sealed door seam. Shifting glances from the gazebo fluted windows, to the street-front room curtains, to the rear of the house kitchen window. Desperate thoughts flicker—but nailed on the spot. It's not feasible to carry my family of luggage up the street. ‘To where?’ I’m far from a strip mall at a bustling intersection, far from a payphone to call a taxi. And going whereto?’ The question hangs, as silent as the door.

Aetheria’s volition, tethered to Helios’ unyielding ascent, whispers through the cast shades of my mind—nudging thoughts toward the open-date Sabena flight tickets, the 72 hours’ notice, before the wings lift towards Johannesburg. Sunlight splinters around me, Aetheria miraging, accentuating the muffled presence of a spirit lurking inside the house. 

Through the gazebo’s archery slits—yawning open, blinking with flickers of shadow—eyes emerge at the seam of the drapes, slipping by the window’s reveal. Mariette’s gaze goes dark, pupils wide with shock, staring in the eyes of a ghost—my silhouette etched against the glare of noon sunlight.    

Out of choice, I persevere, standing by—like a ghost seeking to slip out its own silhouette. Until, the door seam cracks up the jam, widening, waxing a witchy face, shrouded in a spinster’s dress, emerging from the gloom of the 1930s. An opalescent, flimsy button clasps the white butterfly collar at her throat, strangling the years in its grip. 

“Ho. . . Le fils d'Yvonne—The son of Yvonne,” Mariette exalts. “Comme c’est gentil de passer—How nice to come by.” Her charming voice, untouched by dust or age, catches in the air—I'm emerging from a dream, half-rooted in disbelief. Yet, she dwells wedged in the door’s opening, a silhouette caught between sunlight and its shadow. Her gaze lingers, stretching beyond me, fluttering into the branches of the fir behind—seeking those men who left her behind as a girl, Intuitive, unspoken, she waits for their assurance.

Her small eyes, close together across a shallow nose bridge, blink awake to reality, retreating her crow-like face into the shadow. ‘What are you waiting for?’ she trails off, ruffling, dithering, debut swirls and uncoils—pendulum motion getting herself to turn around, weird, erratic on lotus feet, leaving me with a door ajar—her invitation.

I press my way through, brushing my family of luggage past the frame. My foot nudges the door shut behind me, while Mariette dithers away, the spill of sunlight that had precipitated into the vestibule—no longer. I caught the curtain call--tra, la, la—me and my luggage, audience to the sentinels’ show of flaming red-wood panel doors. The residue of her passing lingers, clearing the hollow of a homely atrium etched by eager light filtering from distant, curtain-drawn windows. Short of entering, I veer off facing a hole beneath a blind stairway, parking my pets of luggage in the closet, ranged with men’s coats and shoes.

My body lifts featherlight, allowing Mariette to take her time—dithering behind the corner wall as I doodle the blind architectural flight of stairs to the basement in my mind. A crack of the door precipitates a wild, happy glow at our encounter, sunlight spilling into the shadow. My eyes adjust, etching the kitchen layout. Mariette dithers around a wooden backrest, settles at the table. An unspoken invitation hangs in the air, I contour the table for the backrest—while strange and intrusive with genuine longing in her voice.“Comment ça va avec Yvonne?—How is Yvonne?” It dawns on me—her brothers, Frans, and August were regular visitors, at the Château de Houtain-le-Val. Oblivious that it was a decade past. In response, I pull the chair, settle, searching for the cradles of my disbursed siblings. “Ingrid, she’s doing fine in France.” Then add, “Ilona and Ilse are in South Africa.” It is only now, I learn—Mariette's parents were foster parents to my sisters.

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?

https://sites.google.com/i-write4u2read.com/howtheuniversesculpturedourmin?usp=sharing

[kahztiy]

[YD6-72 (MVDH) Chapter Code] New York to Paris: Landing at the Crux of a Labyrinth—Ousted to Slide into Brussels

“Vue du Vogue—Sight of The Vogue” The snow drifted down, settling a blanket over the cascading rooftops, packing tracks where the night’s plow left its swath for those drivers heading where duties called. Arms crossed before the kitchen window, elevated over the downstairs lean-to roof, I watched as the Salbert’s piedmont vanished beneath winter’s sigh.  My gaze drifts from the exurban edge,…