I have been cast in thrall, tortured, and await my execution. My fall from grace thrust me to the deepest pits of despair and would have left me a hollowed shadow in my last moments, but Wisdom taught me the lessons I had already learned. What was forgotten in my desperation came rushing back with unrelenting force. She taught me to remember my true native land, to tap into reality, polished and actualized. I close my eyes and my mind drowns in that unseen ether. Our world and its beings and species are shadows stenciled into stone walls, and beyond the shadows, I see its real forms and my vision slips and loses itself in that unending celestial sphere, nothing to catch me and stop me from speeding like a bullet among the realm of vastness. True and unchanging, pure and eternal, pristine things, immaculate things! These forms, akin to cold shafts of light, pierce my mind and soul every time I close my eyes. And I remember them and my origins in the universe. I tap into eternity, my home, and rest, my eternal destination beyond the shadows and dust where we are only tourists. It’s a spinning wheel that never stops, made of water and fire, earth and air. There lies predator and prey, friend and foe, being and becoming, together. There lies the Beloved of all. Hylic and blackened minds, shadowed by our world, reduce man to beast. Joy and everything that’s true and good and beautiful cannot exist in the hardware that is the brain, for where does the perfect shape, the perfect fruit, the perfect poem, the perfect song, and the perfect will and intellect exist when I close my eyes? The sword that slays me is sweet. And when I die, my reign begins.