Whispers Of Aetheria

My Dear Aetherians,

You've probably heard the noise about Nolan's *Odyssey* movie. What pulled me in was the poem underneath it which I read a long time ago: Homer's *Odyssey*, three thousand years old, and somehow still the story everyone's retelling this week.

Odysseus was gone twenty years, ten fighting at Troy, ten more just trying to get back to Ithaca. His wife, Penelope waited the whole time, weaving by day and quietly undoing it by night, holding off suitors on nothing but delay and nerve. Honestly I think she's the harder hero of the two.

There's also Argos, his old hunting dog. Odysseus raised him as a pup and never got to hunt with him before leaving for Troy. Twenty years later, Argos is old and flea-bitten, lying in a pile of manure, too weak to even get up. But he hears Odysseus's voice, drops his ears, wags his tail, recognizes him instantly, disguise and all, when no human in the palace does. Odysseus can't even stop to pet him without blowing his cover. Argos dies right there, having finally seen his master again. Twenty years of waiting for one moment.

And then the Sirens. Homer never tells us what they looked like. He leaves them as pure voice. It was later Greeks who gave them bodies: birds with women's faces, talons instead of feet, nothing like the mermaids we picture now. Myth has it they once challenged the Muses to a singing contest and lost, and the Muses tore off their feathers to make crowns. Wingless, the Sirens are said to have thrown themselves into the sea.

So much to unpack with this epic. But I gave Homer a voice and tonight's video grew out of all of this 🌊
~ The Quiet Scribe 🌹

7 minutes ago | [YT] | 3

Whispers Of Aetheria

My Dear Aetherians,

Tonight's journey is a little different.

Last week, I attended a concert dedicated to the music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Listening to those Renaissance motets beneath the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral was one of the most peaceful and moving musical experiences I have ever had. The music felt timeless, as though it had been patiently waiting for centuries just to remind us that beauty still exists.. It moved me so deeply that I wished all of you were there with me to hear those beautiful pieces as well.

So I came home wanting to write one of my own for you. I wanted to create an original Renaissance-inspired motet for Aetheria, a prayer of protection and guidance for all of you. Something easy to listen to, a soft break in-between all the intense stories and videos.

You often ask me where I find my inspiration. This is one example of where. This experience became Vespera Peregrinorum, the evening prayer of Fiorette, the Keeper of the Moonlit Chapel.

Long before history forgot her, she was simply known as "the little flower," a gentle young woman who spent her life tending forgotten graves with fresh blossoms and singing for every traveler who passed through the chapel.

This prayer is dedicated to every one of you Wanderers who have ever searched for peace, hope, friendship, or simply a place where they feel they belong.

I hope that tonight, for just a few minutes, Fiorette's voice gives you that feeling, and that this little journey inspires you to attend these kinds of concerts yourselves and to explore musical worlds beyond the mainstream. There is music out there that is full of so much transcendental beauty that when you listen with your heart, you can feel your entire soul dance with pure enchantment and feel broken and missing pieces of your soul restored. But it is hidden, and it's a secret, kind of like this channel.

I also want to show you how inspiration can come from anywhere and everywhere. And if you ever hear the word "motet" again, you'll know exactly what it means, what it sounds like, and that one was written just for you.. 🌙🤍

~ The Quiet Scribe 🌹

2 days ago | [YT] | 268

Whispers Of Aetheria

My Dear Aetherians,

💌 A letter from the vault and a question at the end.

Kingdom greetings, my friends. It has been a while since I last sat down to properly write to you, so let me tell you where I have been.

With your support and understanding, I took a step back this past week and I let myself catch up on sleep instead of pushing through the way I always have. In the middle of that rest, I managed to slip into a couple of classical concerts, which I loved more than I expected to. And my soul settled enough that I have started waking naturally in the deep hours of the night again, going out to sit in the garden among the flowers. I have said this before to some of you, but the peace the night gives me is unlike anything else. My clearest thinking, my best ideas, almost always come to me while sitting in or pacing that garden in the dark.

I want to thank you so much my friends. The fact that so many of you have stayed, commented, sent me your ideas, still write to me and share your time with me… That is the biggest gift anyone can give and I am deeply grateful.

I want, as much as I am able, to bring soul back into what I make and into this world in general. Making a quick buck, or following a fixed formula, has never been what drives me. What draws me in is beauty, language, symbol, trying to tell something true in the way that feels most honest to me. I have always let my passions and my ideals, and how much value I wanted to create for you, be my north star. I try to pursue integrity and beauty first, and let everything else take care of itself.

I try to bring that same attitude to everything on this channel, which means doing more or less the opposite of what every YouTube guru teaches, which is: “Borrow a viral idea, repackage it, call it yours.” That is how we end up with the same video over and over, different face, same script, information regurgitated into infinity. It has personally caused me fatigue and it’s the reason I consume little to no content anymore. I have no issue with being inspired by someone's art. That is beautiful and natural. But I do have an issue with that endless copying... Have you noticed it on your YouTube page, or is it just me and my algorithm?

What I am trying to say, I suppose, is that I am glad there are those of you who resonate with this, who are aligned enough with my values to choose to be part of this channel's journey.

That is what matters to me. What I want, more than anything, is to give you characters in whom you recognize something of yourselves, without repeating what has already been said a thousand times. This is not an educational channel, but if a song here and there nudges you toward reading more, attending a classical concert even though it's a world slightly foreign to you, or expressing yourself a little more truthfully and uniquely, I will consider it a job well done. We are here to expand, to try new things and to be ourselves, not to be copies of each other and pursue what this world tells us is of actual value (Money, hedonism and more ego…)

If you have noticed me tagging a few of you in videos when a topic touches something close to what you have shared with me before, that is why. It is my way of noticing who keeps showing up, who keeps giving a little of themselves, and saying thank you. A small gesture, in a channel that has no face, to say I see you. Those of you who do, you’ll all get your turn.

There is a line of mythical beings preparing to make their debut here soon, and I am genuinely eager for you to meet them. But before they arrive, this is my question:

💫Beyond the character driven songs and romances, what is it you find yourselves wanting more of on this channel? Is there something you have not found anywhere else that you would like to see told here? 💫

Until next time..

~The Quiet Scribe 🌹

P.S. I have always loved Swans. Their faithfulness, the grace of their movements, and their absolute beauty. This memory of an actual Swan Lake and the thoughts I was having that day while I watched them are what made me add Swans to Lirael’s story. Pretty, no? 🍃

4 days ago | [YT] | 119

Whispers Of Aetheria

My dear Aetherians,

Tonight, we return to a slower, more romantic kind of music.

Some time ago, the *very* lovely and supportive @SummerAlPiNe shared an idea with me about an artificial guardian slowly discovering emotions he was never designed to feel. I decided to bring her vision to life through song and video.

The result is *Too Close (Infinite Code)*, the story of Orin and Anya, two halves of the same soul whom life brought back together in an unusual way. It is a story about loneliness, memory, proximity, and the strange places where humanity and technology begin to blur together.

One artistic decision I made quite early was that I did not want Orin to look like a traditional movie robot covered in exposed wires, metal panels, cables, and heavy machinery. I wanted him to feel almost human from the beginning, because the story is not about a machine suddenly becoming a person. It is about someone who slowly discovers that perhaps there was always something profoundly human waiting beneath the code.

You will notice that throughout the video Orin sometimes appears in his android form and sometimes in his human form. These are not different characters. The android reflects what he physically is, while the human version represents what he is gradually becoming inside as his feelings for Anya awaken.

Thank you, @SummerAlPiNe, for your beautiful imagination and for supporting me and this channel from the very beginning. Your kindness has meant far more to me than you probably realize, and I will always remember it.

I hope you all enjoy the song tonight. ✨
~ The Quiet Scribe 🌹

P.S. I miss you, ladies and gents 🤍

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6 days ago | [YT] | 286

Whispers Of Aetheria

My dear Aetherians and Wanderers,

I wished to greet you this way one final time, in honor of all of you who chose different titles for very good reasons. But the poll has spoken, and by a rather overwhelming margin at that. From this day forward, you, my friends, shall be Aetherians, while I shall remain your humble and not-so-quiet Scribe (and an Aetherian/Wanderer like you).

Now...I know you have been waiting a long time for this.

But tonight, we return to Morothaan with none other than the Count himself.

The first time we met Count Valmont, he stood beneath the crimson moons of his kingdom and sang into eternity, convinced that somewhere in all of existence there must exist a soul capable of hearing him.

Tonight, something answers.

Not a face. Not a name. Not even a voice.
But...
A signal.

An emotional resonance carried across worlds.

It arrives not as words, but as feelings, memories, and fragments of another person's life. Grief. Loneliness. Weariness... The quiet heaviness of burdens carried for far too long. For a few brief moments, it is almost as though Valmont is seeing through someone else's eyes and feeling through someone else's heart.

And within that resonance, he recognizes something impossible:

Not merely someone like himself, but someone yearning and searching for him.

The same longing.

The same unanswered questions.

The same certainty that somewhere, somehow, there must exist one soul capable of understanding everything the world could never quite reach.

Snow falls in Morothaan.

Rain falls somewhere else, at the same moment, beneath another sky and in another reality. Same time, different place...

Somewhere between them, carried upon and through those emotions, the distance between worlds grows just a little smaller.

🌹 ~ The Quiet Scribe

P.S. Thank you for all the incredible support and wonderful comments on my last post, and for sharing so vulnerably of yourselves. If this channel were to burn to the ground tomorrow, the only thing I would miss is you.

I swear.

1 week ago | [YT] | 543

Whispers Of Aetheria

My Dear Friends,

Today, I wanted to tell you the story of how I named my channel, and ask you a little question at the end of it.

Five years ago, my mother was hospitalized for what was supposed to be a simple surgery. But during her surgery, something went wrong, and no one told us the truth. She spent three months in critical condition, three months where I truly believed I might lose her… three months where I genuinely didn't know if I'd still have a mother at the end of it.

I'm the eldest. Everyone looked to me for answers, for strength, to hold it together, as usual. Then Corona arrived while she was still in that hospital bed, and the hospital's rules turned stricter and crueler by the week. At first, my siblings and I took turns sleeping on a couch at night and sitting by her bedside during the day, most of it while she was barely conscious enough to know we were there. But then because of the virus, it was just me. It was among the loneliest and most frightening periods of my life.

At my lowest, disconnected from everyone and everything, I turned online. And the one thing that kept me sane, that made the misery survivable, was a recently released beautiful game called Genshin Impact. It had been decades since I'd played any games and I completely wandered into it. I chose the traveler named Aether as my main character.

For three months, this world, its light and its darkness, its aching and funny stories, its captivating emotional music that moved something in me I didn't have words for, and the strangers who would cross my path just to help a lost newbie find her footing, all of it kept me from disappearing into darkness entirely. It gave me somewhere to be a person again, when I couldn't be one anywhere else. A world to escape into for a little while, because the one I was in was unbearably painful.
I know what fantasy, storytelling, and music can do for a person who is drowning. And so, when I built this channel, I built it from that place. I wanted it to be a little oasis. Somewhere safe and warm and intelligent, where you can come to feel loved and recharge before you go back out into a world that is often painful, lonely, and full of the kind of horrors the human soul was not designed to witness.

And I named it after him.
Aether became Aetheria, and then Aetheryn, and who knows what else still...
So now, instead of deciding for you, I want to ask.

🌹✨ What would you like to be called, you who have wandered into this small kingdom we are building together? ✨🌹

Aetherians?
Or
Wanderers…?
Because most of you wandered in here just as I once wandered into that game, years ago?

Vote below and tell me your thoughts.

I hope that you, and everyone and everything you love, are healthy and happy. I wrap you all in tenderness and thank you for being my friends.
And before I go, I leave you with my favorite OST from Genshin Impact, the game that got me through those three months. This music still makes me emotional. I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAHW2...

~ The Quiet Scribe 🌹

1 week ago | [YT] | 54

Whispers Of Aetheria

Dear Friends,

Tonight's song will be a change in both mood and music...
What happens when a soul born in darkness begins to hear the music of another world? A brighter, more loving world...?

Miran is a Centaur from the lower kingdom of Morothaan, a place where ancient souls survive beneath endless twilight, surrounded by violence, grief, silence, and shadow. But on certain nights, he hears the sound of a flute drifting down from the higher realms... a music so gentle and beautiful that it begins changing him from within... and from without.

Tonight, you'll hear his story

~The Quiet Scribe 🌹

1 week ago | [YT] | 236

Whispers Of Aetheria

Dear Friends,

Tonight's Video + A Quiet Word

The Crown does not send armies when diplomacy fails. It sends René.. 🐺

Across the kingdoms of Aetheria, nobles whisper about a figure who arrives before dawn beside black hounds, and leaves behind empty thrones, destruction, and locked doors no one ever opens again. Some call him The Winter Fang while others call him The Quiet Death. But beneath the legend is someone shaped from childhood into a weapon long before he was ever allowed to become a man.

You've already met his twin brother, Hugo...

Tonight you'll meet René: The King's Hound 🖤❄️

— — —

I also want to say something, and I hope it lands gently...

From the beginning of this channel, I've tried to be present with you the way I am with people I actually care about in my life. Reading what you write, sitting with it, and writing back. Not quickly or generically, but genuinely and with my full intellect and emotion. Because I know that when you leave a comment or send a message, you don't want to feel like you are writing into the void. You want to talk to *me*. And I want to talk to *you*.

Many channels at this size, and even smaller, hire someone to manage their community for them, to respond on their behalf, to keep the warmth going without the person behind it actually being there. I couldn't do that. It felt dishonest to me, in the same way that handing someone else my pen and calling it my writing would feel dishonest.

But.. I've been carrying three roles at once: the one who creates and edits the videos, the one who writes the music and builds the worlds, and the one who shows up in the comments as a person, and a life outside these walls that asks for its share too. Somewhere along the way, the third one of these roles started borrowing time that belonged to the other two.

So I've decided. I'm returning to the shadows. That's where the work is. That's where René and Valmont and Lirael and all the others are waiting to be written into existence. I'll still read everything you leave here.. Every word! But I'll write back when my words are genuinely ready, only when I can and to comments that require the kind of attention and presence you're used to from me.

What I won't do is vanish entirely.. From time to time, I'll share something about the characters, a glimpse into Aetheria, a detail about the world taking shape behind the music. And once in a while, a letter! But my presence here will be quieter than it has been. Much quieter. I think you deserve to know that honestly. And just like you helped me name Ryu, our little dragon, I'd like your contribution in how this channel is shaped moving forward.

Please keep writing. Please keep telling me what the music does to you, what you think of the characters, what you feel when you listen at two in the morning. I read all of it. That hasn't changed and it never will.

The music was always the truest way I knew how to reach you.. Let it keep doing that, in the silence between us.. That way, all of you can be the heroes, and I'll continue to be The Quiet Scribe.

Thank you for being the kind of souls who made this so hard to step back from!

Now.. René will be waiting for you soon 🖤🌹

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 369

Whispers Of Aetheria

My dear friends and wanderers of Aetheria,

This past week has been a very busy one for me, and I only now had some time to sit down and write you at length and continue where we left off last...

But first, I wanted to thank you for your votes. Our little kitty now has a name thanks to all of you. He is now called Ryu —and I append "The Dragon" at the end of that name each time I call him. He likes it very much, and he sends you endless purrs of gratitude.

I also wanted to thank you for being so intelligent, funny, aware, imaginative, kind, and interesting. When I read how you think and what you have to say, I feel that there is in fact still hope for this planet.

As promised: the second part of my letter. More questions answered, and a little more of my world opened to you.

---

🌙 On night, flowers, and the garden

I have always loved the light just after dawn and the long shadows that stretch before dusk, but my true love is the deepest hours of darkness.

So — day or night?
Night, always.

At night, everything seems more real to me. On nights when my soul is too loud and insomnia hits, I slip into the garden and sit on the bench between the trees in the pitch-black — no lights, no noise, nothing to overstimulate the senses. Just silence, my breath, the trees, and sometimes a few critters scuttling in the dark and the moonlight.

Those who know me well have often expressed concern about me slipping out during the night to sit outside alone. "Aren't you scared?" they ask. "Of what?" is my usual answer. I live in a very safe city, and I suspect if anyone saw me sitting so comfortably between the trees, they'd be the ones to feel fear. I've had a long affinity with the dark since childhood, when I at first deeply feared it. Now, night is the time I can most often experience calm and peace.

As for seasons, autumn is my heaven. I always imagined that God laid those amber and crimson leaves especially for me. When I was younger, I loved kicking the dry leaves — but as I got older, that too felt like a kind of cruelty. The reflective melancholy of autumn suits my soul exactly. It makes me think of Keats, Lermontov, and Verlaine. Of all the times I tried to love and be loved and failed miserably. In my soul, there are only two seasons: a long sweeping autumn, and a beautiful but brief spring.

I don't use a professional camera. I simply have a good eye and an instinct for finding beauty, and even on a mobile phone I can somehow manage a few clicks worth keeping. I don't like heavily edited photographs. I like remembering things exactly as they were — even though I know that's not how the mind works.

I don't think I could live without a garden. Even the smallest balcony, overflowing with flowers, tomatoes, and strawberries, feels to me like a little sanctuary — a sacred place where my soul can breathe. My two favourite flowers are the rose and the tulip. They each hold a different place in my heart, and I could never choose between them.

---

🐾 On the animals

I work alone. I am not part of any sanctuary. My house, and the large garden and fruit orchard I have in the heart of the city, are the sanctuary: an oasis in a desert of concrete and noise. I live in one of those old, sturdy, large houses with a lot of character, and I feel a quiet grief watching the beautiful original houses around me disappear, bought and demolished and replaced with things that offend the eyes. In my wilder fantasies, I buy them all back and plant trees on the rubble.

But I digress...

High walls or not, injured animals somehow find me and my oasis. Abused and stray cats and dogs, orphaned little creatures struck by cars or carrying viral diseases, poisoned foxes, hungry hedgehogs. They find their way into my garden either to die in peace or, if I find them in time, to have another chance at life.

I trap, neuter, and release. When appropriate, I find homes — especially for dogs, because I know I cannot provide what they need most. The cats are happiest in the garden. Some are missing limbs, eyes, or tails. Two have lived there for sixteen years. The cats are as independent as I am; as beings, we understand each other. A few are permanent residents. Most come for their meals and then leave. Others linger as long as there's any hope I'll step outside and they'll see me. When people speak of the ingratitude of cats, I think of these, and how they will often choose my caresses over the food I lay in front of them.

I've cared for hens too. And a sheep. I am one of those people who, upon seeing a hurt animal in the street, will pick them up, carry them home, or run with them to the veterinarian. I have some very touching and unusual stories about my animal friends and how we found our way to each other. Perhaps I'll share some with you one day.

I love insects very much too. And snails. There is a strange softness in me for small creatures. As for a favourite animal, I love them all far too much to rank them. I admire whales and elephants: strong, dignified, deeply loving, capable of carrying love across vast distances. And donkeys, because they are so unjustly treated and so rarely thanked.

---

✨ On inspiration

My inspiration comes from everywhere I have ever been and everything I have ever loved: from hundreds of books, obscure and literary and written in several languages; from paintings I return to again and again; from music experienced across many countries and cultures; from cities walked through alone; from loss and from beauty; and from the persistent, irrational hope I carry in spite of everything.

I've actually read very little fantasy. Most of my reading has been literary, historical, philosophical, and occasionally rather strange. Perhaps that is why Aetheria has taken shape in its own peculiar way.

As for Aetheria itself — it arrives both as vision and as something slowly built. A character comes to me first as an image: I see them. Then I sit quietly with them and allow them to tell me their story as they wish it to be told. I don't impose myself upon them or decide their destinies in advance. I find this truer to the soul of any character — fictional or otherwise — than any outline I could write beforehand. It is less "this is what will happen to you" and more "let's uncover who you are together, and see where you go from here."

Even these small songs are not so different from writing a novel.

As for the process of creating with AI — that question deserves its own letter, so I can answer it properly and with the depth it merits. I hope it will encourage you too, to create, to experiment, to expand in some way...

It is coming.

As for today's image: it's from a concert I attended some time ago. Can you guess the country I was in? The big hint is in the image itself, the composer, if you recognize him.

And now, my friends: your turn. Tell me something about you. Your favourite season. A book that changed you. A small moment of beauty you noticed today. Anything small or big you feel like sharing with a friend who genuinely cares about you and is listening. I know how strange that sounds considering the world we live in and that this is "just the internet". But... I do, in fact, care.

Thank you for reading and listening...
With warmth and gratitude, until next time,


~ The Quiet Scribe 🌹

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 89

Whispers Of Aetheria

My dear friends and wanderers of Aetheria,

I have finally managed to sit down and quietly craft you a letter. I've read all your questions, and rather than answer them as bullet points, I've woven my responses into the body of this letter. I will answer the rest of your questions in a second letter, coming very soon.

🌹 On appearance

I know it hasn't always been clear, but I am, in fact, a woman. I chose not to disclose this at first because I didn't want to invite romantic projection — and yet, it seems that happened regardless, with many assuming I was a man. It didn't bother me then, and it doesn't bother me now.

I am quite androgynous, both in appearance and in energy. I have never experienced affection, admiration, or attraction as things that fit neatly into categories. Throughout my life, meaningful connections have arrived from both men and women alike. But my romantic and sexual orientation is exclusively toward one gender.

External things have never held much weight for me. I care far more about the inner landscape of a person: the dreams they carry, the passions they keep quietly alive, and the mysterious essence that seems to look back at you from behind their eyes. But I understand the curiosity, and so I'll oblige.

I have big, soulful brown eyes and a full head of short, dark, wavy hair. I am of average height, somewhere between slender and fit, and I have always looked younger than my years. People occasionally underestimate me because of it, though with me they eventually learn not to mind such things very much. I dress formally, always. Elegantly. Think of someone who escaped the set of the original Interview with a Vampire — not gothic in the way of platform shoes and pale powder, but in the way of aristocratic fabrics, rich textures, and garments that feel like a second skin. It is partly self-expression and partly armour.

Black is my favourite colour, and I am quiet and rather broody-looking. When I want variety, I wear formal black and white — anything that lets me blend seamlessly into the art galleries and concert halls where I feel happiest and most like myself. Of all my characters, I probably resemble the Maestra the most: the strong gaze, the serious introspective expression, the androgynous angular features, the prominent straight nose, and the dark formal clothing. She is prettier, though, and rather more feline-looking.

In the garden, however, I dress like a whiskey grandpa.
:-)

My voice is calm, serious, and composed; intensely passionate when I speak about the people and topics I love; warm and soft when you've earned my trust and joined my very small inner circle; and steel-cold when confronted with destructive and unloving people. And as for singing: I cannot, and I should not be allowed to.

🌙 On the strange and the unseen

I was always a peculiar child. Psychic phenomena entered my life early, and in those years it arrived in a dark and frightening way — the kind that leaves marks. I remember lying awake as a child, not quite understanding what was pressing against the edges of my awareness, and having no one to ask and no language to name it with. I had to find my way through it largely alone.

That search led me through comparative religion, science, philosophy, and even a long and rather earnest period of militant atheism. I was compelled, almost against my will, toward the question of what is real and what may lie beneath what we call reality. Eventually, I found my way into mystical traditions that offered not belief, but experience — initiatory paths that asked you to know rather than simply to accept.

I tried always to follow both heart and reason. I have never believed them to be enemies. I think they are meant to work together, each knowing when to lead and when to yield.

Psychic phenomena remain a regular part of my life. They no longer frighten me. I've made a kind of peace with the fact that the world is far stranger, and far more layered, than most people are comfortable admitting.

🏛️ On the inside and outside

I feel most at home among antique shops, old libraries, concert halls, opera-houses and art-house cinemas — and in cities that seem to possess ancient souls and grandeur. I am permanently love-struck, by music, by beauty in its many forms and am deeply moved by courage in the face of suffering. I am drawn to resilience, to depth, and to that quiet intensity one sometimes finds in people who have endured much and remained gentle.

My personal life is peaceful, grounded in reality in a rather old-fashioned way. I have lived an intense and difficult life — the sort that eventually teaches you that stillness is not emptiness, but a precious and hard-won gift. My nervous system needs solitude. My soul does too. The only things that reliably lure me away from the peacefulness of home are a classical concert, an opera, or a truly extraordinary exhibition. Because I live in a rather small city, when I leave for pleasure, it is often directly to the airport — to another country, another concert hall, another city to explore alone, with good food and no obligations waiting at the table beside me.

I am a student of philosophy, languages, and the arts and, above all else, a seeker — endlessly curious about the world and the hidden life that seems to exist beneath its surface. I try to cultivate mind, soul, and body with equal care and find myself compelled by truth in all its forms. This means I value truth above all else, even if it hurts. There is in me a persistent inward pull: to wander, to contemplate, and to translate strange and otherworldly imaginings into something tangible and shareable, much like what I do for you here on this channel. I enjoy slowly drawing people into my world, gently pulling them towards my depth and strangeness. I am very intense, and this is the only loving way to do it.

I am drawn to joy, to beauty, and to intimacy, both sensual and spiritual. Unamuno's *sentimiento trágico de la vida* is a book carried in my soul, and for the longest time I have lived with that bittersweet understanding that beauty and suffering in this world are often inseparable companions. I return again and again to Pessoa's *Book of Disquiet*, to Gibran Khalil, Pushkin and to Nietzsche, as one returns to old friends. These writers, in their very different ways, have always felt like kindred spirits speaking to me across time.

I recoil from dogma, religious intolerance, superstition, material obsession, performative humility, despair that becomes an identity, and cruelty in all its forms.

I wish I could handwrite this letter to you, seal it with wax, and leave it quietly on your doorsteps or windowsills. But I understand you'd likely call the authorities and obtain a restraining order against me. I am romantic in the old-fashioned way, and it can't be helped. I still understand very little about the etiquette of the internet, and I find the way people perform their lives on virtual platforms genuinely strange and fascinating. I don't expect I'll ever grow entirely accustomed to it, and I don't particularly want to.


-------


If you've read this far — whew, thank you. Means a lot. And since you've come all this way, I have one small request before I retreat into the shadows again..

You may remember, friends, that we found a kitten together, in a manner of speaking. He is small, black, and entirely convinced of his own importance. I would very much like your help naming him. Both names I've chosen are Japanese because it is a language I am learning and loving right now.

Cast your vote below. He is waiting with great impatience, as he is becoming rather tired of me calling him a different name every ten minutes.

With warmth and gratitude, until next time,

~ The Quiet Scribe 🌹

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 88