In an ancient forest untouched by time, where ancient oaks whispered truths only the wind could carry, a traveller paused by a still, glassy pool. Its surface mirrored the world above—a flawless inversion of sky and canopy—but something peculiar lingered beneath. This was no mere reflection; it seemed another realm entirely, glimmering faintly, as though inviting the traveller to see beyond. Burdened with masks constructed from society’s demands, he gazed into the depths, questioning the image before him. Who was this figure staring back—a being of substance, or merely a shadow cast by illusions too vast and tangled to name?
As he leaned closer, the water quivered, dissolving the boundary between reflection and reality. The traveller was drawn into the depths, where light danced in shifting hues, and voices not his own murmured his thoughts aloud. “Who are you?” the currents asked. But the question was not external—it resounded from within, a challenge to the core of his being. His masks began to crack, the fragments sinking into the void. Stripped bare, he faced the untempered chaos of his true self. For the first time, he saw his life as a labyrinth of borrowed identities, each step leading him further from the untamed wilderness of his own becoming.
When he emerged from the pool, the forest remained the same, yet it felt irrevocably altered. The trees no longer whispered to the wind but to him, their voices urging him to tread paths unmarked, to craft meaning from the ruins of his old identity. The water’s surface stilled, yet the journey within him had only just begun—an eternal dance of creation and destruction, a hymn to life’s infinite contradictions. As he walked on, he whispered to the world, “I am not what I was, nor what I will be. I am becoming.”
Welcome to the universe of Thorpe Brown, philosopher and artist 