Power Dynamics and the Human Struggle for Equality and Justice

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I have come to a point where it has become too much trouble for me to continue hosting my weekly Thursday Inspiration and Friday Faithfuls challenges and this is mostly driven by lack of participation in these challenges, but also a profound distain of people ignoring my posts.  I will continue to host Song Lyric Sunday, as many people seem to enjoy this.  On September 27, 622, the Prophet Muhammad completed the Hegira sometimes spelled (Hijrah), which was a flight from Mecca to Medina, and this historic migration constituted a turning point in the history of humanity.  This was not just a geographic move, but a radical social and political revolution against oppression.  Twelve years after he received his first divine revelation from God, he was faced with an assassination plot by the ruling powerful merchant Quraysh tribe in Mecca, because his strict message of monotheism challenged their polytheistic traditions, and threatened their political dominance and lucrative economic interests.  The Arab tribes of Aws and Khazraj in Medina, which was then called Yathrib were exhausted from years of civil war, so they needed a trusted leader to bring peace.  They sent representatives to meet with Muhammad and took the “Pledge of Aqaba,” promising to protect him as they would protect their own families.  He accepted this invitation to settle in Medina, and Muhammad arranged for his followers to slip away to Medina in small groups before making the journey himself.  The ruling Quraysh tribe subjected early Muslims to economic boycotts, social isolation, torture, and assassination plots, making this flight a direct response to severe human rights violations and the denial of freedom of belief.  The flight allowed the Prophet (PBUH) “Peace Be Upon Him” and his early followers to escape oppression and establish a secure base to practice their faith freely and have a new avenue for the message of Islam to flourish.  Prophet Muhammad looked back at Mecca the city where he was born with deep love when he departed.

Last week we had Withdrawing, Moving Away, or Separating where the theme was to find a song that mentions abandoning, departing, deserting, exiting, leaving, resigning, or retiring.  This week the theme is to find a song that relates to civil rights, oppression, protest, revolution or social change.  Take some time to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this music challenge, and even better, read as many of them as you can as you will probably find many enjoyable songs and it is quite possible that you will learn a thing or two.  Share your music with others and post a video, try do some research and let everyone know something about the song that you post.  Tell everyone why you like the song, whether it was a hit, or what you think the song is about.  Show the lyrics, let’s all listen to our favorite songs and explore some new music.  Try to find a song that fits the theme, then write your post and create a pingback, or you can just place your link in the comments section.

Suggestions
• If the song you select does not meet the criteria, then please explain why you chose this song.
• It would be good if you could post the lyrics to the song of your choice, as this is helpful for the people that want to follow along with the music.  Warning: Bloggers make posts at their own risk, and since song lyrics are copyrighted, you may be asked to take them down from your post if you don’t have permission.  It is highly unlikely estates or artists will sue regular people (although it has happened) especially if the bloggers that do this are not making money from their site, but an artist or a publisher can ask you to remove the lyrics from your post.  I am not a lawyer and there are no rules for Song Lyric Sunday, as we are all here to have fun and hopefully get to listen to some good music.
• Please try to include the songwriter(s) – it’s a good idea to give credit where credit is due. It would also be a good idea to give credit to the singer and the band associated with your song.
• Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be, but please try not to include too many videos as that just makes it take longer for me to look at all of the other posts.
• Link to the YouTube video, or you can pull it into your post, so others can listen to the song.
• Read at least one other person’s blog, so we can all share new and fantastic music and create amazing new blogging friends in the process.
• Feel free to suggest future prompts.  Have fun and enjoy the music.

This week I will be writing about the Nena song ‘99 Luftballons’, and next week, I will be writing about the song ‘Feel Like a Stranger’ by the Grateful Dead.  The upcoming prompts will be:
October 4, 2026 – Song written or performed by someone who was born in the month of October
October 11, 2026 – Song that mentions girls
October 18, 2026 – Song about fishing, a mariner, sailing, seafaring, or ships
October 25, 2026 – Song about the American West, or one that mentions cowboys, a sheriff, an outlaw, horses, cactus, or tumbleweeds

Social Approval

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I started my blog with the intention of making the world a better place (maybe just a tiny improvement nothing drastic like fixing a hole in the ocean, or absurd to mock anyone trying to find a clever riddle where there is none), and I never considered building an audience.  The world has many problems, and I have some unique skills and experiences which I thought I could use to help people see things more clearly.  I follow other bloggers and read their posts and make comments, but when they don’t reciprocate by reading or liking my posts, it is upsetting.  I write for my own benefit, and I will keep writing even if nobody reads, likes or comments any of my posts, as this frees my creativity from the pressure of external validation.  I am trying to let go of the views, likes and comments that I am not getting, because this makes my writing become a purer therapeutic outlet, a tool for clarifying my own thoughts, and a personal record of me.  By detaching myself from social approval, my writing has become deeper, and I enjoy the topics I have selected to engage in, but I think I am driving my audience even further away from me.  My creative autonomy has outpaced my audience’s current expectations, but I am OK with that, because I realize that I am unique.  I know that my choice of topics is chasing some of my readers away, but I will survive because I am going to keep on swimming from one topic to the next.  My grandmother always said to me, “They broke the mold when you were created.”

Written for the Great Minds Think’s Friday Challenge, which is hosted by Rohini and Sarah and this week we were asked to write a poem or story about a situation where the best intentions resulted in the worst results.

Reblog Age of Enlightenment

For a time, the rationality of the Enlightenment seemed to hail the final triumph of human reason, where the laws that operated behind the universe would all be known to us and we would be able to create the future we wanted.  The transition from the Enlightenment to Romanticism emerged as a counter-movement viewed as a reaction against the Enlightenment’s core tenets.  While the Enlightenment emphasized reason, logic, scientific empiricism, and the belief that the world could be understood and improved through rational analysis, Romanticism championed intense feelings like awe, terror, and love.  Romantic thinkers viewed the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution as closely linked because the Enlightenment’s focus on strict logic, science, and control over nature directly paved the way for industrial factories, machines, and the destruction of the natural world.  The rapid urbanization and industrialization of the 19th century led to a sense of alienation.  It viewed the natural world as a sublime, spiritual force rather than something to be engineered and exploited.  Romantics felt that the Enlightenment’s focus on reason and science was cold, reductive, and ignored the complexity of human emotion, intuition, and the spiritual experience.  Romantics often idealized nature as a pure, untainted refuge from the “dark satanic mills” of industrial society, contrasting sharply with the Enlightenment’s focus on technological and societal progress.

Romanticism elevated the imagination, freedom, and expression of the solitary artist or rebel.  This movement prioritized the subjective experience, the individual imagination, and the unique genius of the artist.  Romantics argued that truth, meaning, and morality could not be found through math and reason alone, but through deep emotion, intuition, and imagination.  The failure of the French Revolution to deliver on its Enlightenment promises of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” descending instead into the Reign of Terror and eventually Napoleonic imperialism led many thinkers to lose faith in the idea that rational political systems could automatically create a perfect society.  The Romantic thinkers began to feel that the Enlightenment was suffocating them and squeezing the spirit, passion and morality out of existence.  The Romantics felt that the Enlightenment notion that the universe was knowable and controllable was naïve, because the universe is infinite, mysterious and ultimately unknowable.

 

Age of Enlightenment

It’s Hard To Believe

1. Why is Royal Blood considered blue?
This is caused by inbreeding or incest with Blue Meanies.

2. What is a Blue Moon?
Ba-ding-a-dong-ding, it makes you sing.

3. What was the song ‘Blue is the Colour’ about?
Nothing is actually blue it is just the way light reflects off of surfaces and interacts with our eyes and brain.

4. What is meant by blue collar?
This is when you get a sloppy kiss by a goth and you have blue lipstick on your collar.

5. What is a blue bonnet?
It is a vegetable oil spread, not real dairy butter.

6. What did Little Boy Blue play?
He played with a dog named Blue.

7. What changed from brown to blue according to the song?
It was melanin levels due to ageing.

8. Where will you find a Blue Nun?
In a liquor store.

9. Why mustn’t you step on his Blue Suede Shoes?
When you write a song on a potato sack, you don’t want anyone messing up your shoes.

10. What kind of bird has blue feet?
I like all types of boobies, but I am really fond of the Galapagos Blue-Footed Boobies.

Written for Di’s Fibbing Friday.

The Reason Why He is Called a Poet

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Poets will notice small details that other people might miss such as the distinction that lies in her breasts, the outward size and shape as well as the space or hollow created between them.  They will focus on specific, intimate geometry to capture both the physical form and the negative space it creates, often isolating highly localized details, to evoke a sense of deep, focused observation.  By shifting attention to the subtle spaces between things, poetry transforms ordinary physical attributes into a landscape of emotional or aesthetic significance.  I am particularly fond of the E.E. Cummings poem “Between the Breasts”, which was included in a letter that he sent to his friend Scofield Thayer dated October 25, 1916.

between the breasts
of bestial
Marj lie large
men who praise

Marj’s cleancornered strokable
body          these men’s
fingers toss trunks
shuffle sacks spin kegs they

curl
loving
around
beers

the world has
these men’s hands but their
bodies big and boozing
belong to

Marj
the green slim purse
of whose face opens
on a fatgold

grin
hooray
hoorah for the large
men who lie

between the breasts
of bestial Marj
for the strong men
who

sleep between the legs of Lil

I enjoy reading poetry, but I do have trouble understanding most of it, but this poem celebrates the allure and power of two women, Marj and Lil.  It focuses mainly on Marj and the men who are captivated by her.  The working-class men find comfort and pleasure when they lie between Marj’s breasts.  They are infatuated with Marj, because she offers them something different to do with their hands unlike how they spend their workday.  Ther perform exhausting physical labor during the day, but then at night they seek primal pleasure, that involves drinking, and intimacy.  These men are described doing heavy, blue-collar labor that involves tossing trunks (moving, loading, or organizing heavy storage trunks or cargo boxes), shuffling sacks (physical, repetitive manual labor tied to commerce and industrial shipping), and spinning kegs (rolling or pivoting a heavy wooden beer barrel on its edge to move it across a floor) while holding onto beers. Shuffling sacks evokes the image of dockworkers, warehouse laborers, or industrial workers dragging, moving, and stacking heavy burlap sacks of goods (such as grain, coal, or flour).  Their labor-worn hands belong to the outside world, but their large bodies find a home with Marj.  These men do real work that the world depends on, but these same fingers that toss trunks, shuffle sacks, and spin kegs will “curl loving around beers” and gently stroke Marj’s body.

E. E. Cummings never held a regular job that involved traditional manual or physical labor. He was born into a wealthy, highly educated family, and his father was a Harvard professor and prominent minister. Cummings was supported financially by his parents and friends for most of his life, allowing him to dedicate himself fully to his poetry and painting.  He loathed the idea of a conventional career and held only two brief corporate jobs: a two-month stint at the Collier publishing company and a brief period working as a book dealer.  E.E. Cummings held deeply complex, romanticized, and sometimes contradictory views on women, which shifted dramatically depending on whether he was writing about idealized love, raw sexuality, or conventional society.

Cleavage describes the valley or hollow between the breasts and the medical or anatomical term for this region is intermammary sulcus or intermammary cleft describing the groove or space located between the two breasts on the chest wall.  E.E. Cummings and Scofield Thayer shared a complex relationship where Cummings had an affair and eventually children and marriage with Thayer’s beautiful wife, Elaine, with Thayer’s knowledge and financial support.  Edward Estlin Cummings met Thayer when he entered Harvard.  While Scofield Thayer was on his honeymoon with Elaine, he told her that he wanted nothing more to do with the marriage and that they were to live separately.  Thayer set up his wife in a Greenwich Village apartment, and he moved into the Benedick, an apartment building that catered to bachelors adopting the philosophy of free love.  Thayer gave Cummings money to write and paint, and Cummings wrote around one hundred poems about Elaine.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge #449 where today she gave us two lines from an essay on Shakespeare by James Baldwin, which are “No time can be easy if one is living through it” and “That is why he is called a poet”, and I chose the second one.

Thursday Inspiration #342 Forever Autumn

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Respond to this challenge by either using the prompt word colder, or going with the above picture, or by means of the song ‘Forever Autumn’, or by going with another song by Justin Hayward, or a song that is about missing another person, or another song that reflects the autumn season, or you can go with whatever you think fits.  Gary Anthony Osborne, Jeff Wayne, and Paul Anthony Vigrass are musical collaborators best known for creating the song ‘Forever Autumn’.  Gary Osborne and Paul Vigrass performed as a musical duo in the 1970s.  Wayne produced two albums for the duo, including their 1972 debut album Queues.  The melody was originally composed by Jeff Wayne in 1969 as an advertising jingle for Lego. Vigrass and Osborne added the lyrics and performed the original 1972 version.  The song was later famously re-recorded with vocals by Justin Hayward for Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds in 1978, which was a progressive rock and orchestral concept album that retells H. G. Wells’s 1898 science-fiction novel about a Martian invasion of Victorian England.  Jeff Wayne specifically wanted Justin Hayward to sing this romantic track, as he envisioned a warm, acoustic, and string-oriented sound for the human and reflective moments of the Martian-invasion story.  He felt that pairing Hayward’s distinctive voice with a 48-piece string orchestra would be “magic”.

‘Forever Autumn’ is about deep personal grief, lost love, and the melancholic passage of time, sung from the perspective of the Journalist mourning the absence of his partner during the chaos of a Martian invasion.  The Northern Hemisphere just had its autumnal equinox for 2026 on Tuesday, September 22, at 8:05 p.m. Eastern Time, so I thought this song should fit in.  Justin Hayward recorded the song as a solo artist in 1976 when the Moody Blues were on a temporary hiatus.  It was released as a single in 1978, becoming a major hit, reaching #5 on the UK Singles Chart.  Justin Hayward sings the inner thoughts and emotional reflections of the main narrator, the Journalist, who tries to survive the Martian invasion of Earth.  The Journalist feels deep grief and longing after becoming separated from his fiancée, Carrie, during the chaotic Martian invasion, but she safely escapes and they are eventually reunited.

The summer sun is fading as the year grows old
And darker days are drawing near
The winter winds will be much colder
Now you’re not here.

The Kissing Number

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The other day I started wondering how many circles of the same size can touch the center circle at one point without overlapping.  OK I know I am different, but that is just how my mind works.  A tangent is a line that “just touches” a curve at a single point without entering the interior of the curve.  For a circle, this means the tangent intersects the circle at exactly one point, and the radius drawn to this point is always perpendicular to the tangent line.  This point is known as the point of tangency.  A tangent is like a kiss because it touches a curve or another shape at exactly one single point without crossing through it.  A tangent line meets a curve or a circle at one precise location, representing a momentary meeting before parting ways.  When I studied calculus in college, I didn’t know what the subject was about, but I was able to do the problems because I could see the patterns of how they were solved.  After I retired from engineering, I decided to study calculus to see what it was about, because I felt that my teachers never explained this subject properly to me.  I was always pretty good at math, and I understood that algebra was the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating them using variables, that geometry was the study of sizes, shapes, positions, and dimensions of shapes that included space, lines, points, and solids, and trigonometry was the study of the relationships between the sides and angles of triangles that when rotated made special wave forms.

Once I got the hang of calculus while I worked as a substitute teacher, I would aske my calculus students what calculus was, because I knew this aspect of the subject was not being taught.  Most od the students replied, “It is a really hard math”, and I couldn’t argue with that, but calculus is the study of change.  In math change is depicted by curves because they visually represent how one variable changes in relation to another.  A curve is also a matter of space, and one way of describing a curve is with a circle.  A curve is just a piece of a circle, and a circle is a two dimensional object that is made of an infinite amount of curves which all vary at the same rate.  You need to be cautious here and understand that everything is a curve, even a straight line, which is a curve without curvature (OK that is not too confusing).

When circles are tangent to one another, they form configurations called Apollonian gaskets or circle packings that are named after the ancient Greek mathematician Apollonius of Perga, who first studied the problem of mutually tangent circles around 200 BC.  In 1643, René Descartes derived ​Descartes theorem to solve a quadratic equation (which I will not get into), where he found that three mutually tangent circles can have for a fourth circle added, either inside the other circles nestled in the center gap, or becoming the outer circle that wraps around the other three, kissing every circle.  In 1936, chemist Frederick Soddy wrote a poem titled “The Kiss Precise” that proved the Kissing Circles Theorem.  You can view kissing circles of the same size in two dimensions by placing pennies around a central penny on a flat table where they only touch the central circle and don’t overlap each other.  The US stopped making pennies in the end of 2025, but there are still roughly 300 billion pennies in circulation.  This could also be done on paper where you draw a circle with a compass.  If you pick one circle in the configuration, the points where it kisses the other circles can be connected by straight lines.  These line segments form chords of that specific circle.  Mathematicians use these chords to calculate the angles, coordinates, or centers of the kissing circles.

Before I go, I thought I should explain why exactly six circles can be positioned around a central circle, because it is easy to see that is the case by looking at the pennies, and if math can be explained, then it is not torture.  When a circle is touching another circle at one point, the distance between the centers is two times the radius.  When a third circle is added that touches both of the other two, the distances between its center to each of the other centers is also clearly two times the radius.  The triangle formed, with each center at a vertex, is an equilateral triangle.  Each angle of an equilateral triangle is 60 degrees.  A circle is 360 degrees around its circumference, which means you divide this 360 degrees by the 60 degrees (360/60=6) and you get six of these triangles (which corresponds to 6 circles) that go the whole way around.  For all of my readers that love poetry, I have placed the poem below:

For pairs of lips to kiss maybe
Involves no trigonometry.
This not so when four circles kiss
Each one the other three.
To bring this off the four must be
As three in one or one in three.
If one in three, beyond a doubt
Each gets three kisses from without.
If three in one, then is that one
Thrice kissed internally.

Four circles to the kissing come.
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance form the center.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There’s now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend’s a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of the squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.

To spy out spherical affairs
An oscular surveyor
Might find the task laborious,
The sphere is much the gayer,
And now besides the pair of pairs
A fifth sphere in the kissing shares.
Yet, signs and zero as before,
For each to kiss the other four
The square of the sum of all five bends
Is thrice the sum of their squares.

Written for Di’s Three Things Challenge MM556 where today the words are: Cautious, Chord and Compass.

Confiding Personal Frustrations

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Later that night, the two met in secret on the seaside pier.  FLASHBACK:  It started with a minor inconvenience that became a tipping point, forcing accumulated frustration to spill out of her mouth at the office.  Jim heard Carolyn say, “Fucking goddamn it” when her Oatmeal Raisin Otis Spunkmeyer cookie got stuck in the vending machine, so he asked her if she needed help.  She replied, “I have this”, as she reached into the plastic trapdoor to grab her snack from the metal spiral coil that it was hanging on.  The stubborn coil wouldn’t let go and her hand slipped off and she hit the back wall of the vending machine hard and broke one of her fingernails.  Carolyn swore again saying, “Shit, I just paid $75 to get my nails done and now they are ruined.”  Jim said, “At least you didn’t get your hand stuck inside the machine where you would need to have it amputated, so try to look on the bright side, as I will get your snack and maybe you can get a temporary extension for your broken nail.  I think my wife used a press-on nail when that happened to her, but you would probably know more about that than what I do.”

Jim grabbed the vending machine and shook it till the cookie freed itself from the spiral coil.  Carolyn grabbed her snack smiled at Jim and said, “Thanks I really needed this, I actually wanted the Banana Nut, but it looks like that is empty.  I don’t usually eat breakfast, but last night I skipped dinner after I got into an argument with my husband.  He made a big mess in the microwave, and I told him that he needed to clean it, because he has this habit of leaving splattered food to harden, which makes it much more difficult to clean later.  It is a constant chore war at my house, as he always does a poor job of cleaning and I have to inspect his work and point out the spots he missed, and it is just easier for me to do it myself, but that is not fair to me, as he made the mess.  He insisted that I have his dinner ready at halftime, as he was watching the Monday Night Football game, and it is like there is nothing in the world that is more important to him than watching the game.  I told him his dinner was ready any time he wanted it, and all he had to do was warm his plate of spaghetti up in the microwave.  The tomato sauce bubbled all over the place, and the exploding droplets made a real mess.  I went to bed thinking that I may have made a mistake marring this slob.  I’ve tried to be patient, giving him space, but nothing works, as he’s exactly the same as the day I married him.  Please forgive me for discussing my marital problems, but you really are a good listener.”

Jim said, “It seems like things are a lot worse than just a broken nail for you Carolyn, and I am sorry about your inconsiderate husband.  Marriage is not easy and we all need to confide, share and vent every now and then with people that we can trust.  I am not perfect and neither is my relationship with my wife.  I want to do things together with her, but she enjoys spending time with her friends more than she does with me.  What I really can’t stand is that every time we go out anywhere, we are always late.  She likes to look at herself in the mirror doing her makeup and it makes me think of Narcissus the way she is captivated by her own image, and that makes no sense to me that a person could spend so much time looking at themself.  I have an idea, why don’t we meet each other after work on the seaside pier, and I can get you one of those Banana Nut cookies that you are craving.”  Carolyn laughed and said, “Jim you seem like a nice guy, but if I tell my husband that I am going with you after work to the seaside pier to get a Banana Nut cookie, I am afraid he will think that is a sexual inuendo, and that will just make things worse for us.  Jim said, “Then don’t tell him.”

Written for Fandango’s Story Starter #265.

Continental Divide

Europe and Asia are not separated by an ocean.  They form one giant continent called Eurasia.  The ancient Greek mapmakers split them into two parts for cultural and historical reasons based on local inland waterways and their own perspective at the center of the known world.  Modern geographers keep this tradition even though the physical land does not stop.  Early Greek geographers noticed that bodies of water like the Aegean Sea, the Dardanelles (Hellespont), the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus Strait, and the Black Sea nearly separated the lands.  For sailors and writers in the 6th century BCE, the world centered on the Mediterranean.  They divided their known world into three landmasses, which included Europe to the north/west, Asia to the east, and Libya (later named Africa) located to the south.  Libya did not just mean the modern country of Libya, as it served as the Greek term for the entire known African landmass west of the Nile River.  Early maps like those created by Anaximander and Hecataeus placed Greece or the Aegean region at the physical center of the Earth for their tripartite scheme of landmasses that were encircled by the great cosmic river, Oceanus.  They did not know vast landmasses extended thousands of miles further north and east beyond the Black Sea.  They assumed rivers or short mountain ranges cleanly ended the water paths and marked the absolute limits of the continents.

This ornate white gate appears to be part of the historic Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, framing a view of the Bosphorus.  The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Turkey which is straddled by the city of Istanbul.  The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forms one of the continental boundaries between Asia and Europe.  The Dolmabahçe Palace is the largest and most sumptuous palace in Turkey, and it is widely considered to be exceptionally extravagant.  It was built between 1843 and 1856 by Sultan Abdülmecid I, at the cost five million Ottoman gold lira, which is equivalent to roughly 35 tons of gold or an estimated $2 billion to $3 billion in modern currency.  This massive price tag consumed approximately one-quarter of the empire’s yearly tax revenue at the time, forcing the government to issue vast amounts of paper money and take on heavy foreign loans that contributed to the financial collapse of the late Ottoman rule.  The sultan spared no expense in furnishing the palace, even though many of his subjects lacked the basic necessities.

The monumental Gates of Dolmabahçe Palace are far more than simple entry points.  Each one is a meticulously designed instrument defining imperial protocol, power, and status.  The grand waterfront gates feature elaborate, ornate baroque and neoclassical ironwork characteristic of 19th-century Ottoman imperial design.  The sea gates opening to the Bosphorus are the entrances to the empire’s stage of international diplomacy.  Foreign heads of state, ambassadors, and important guests arriving by sea would approach these gates in imperial caiques (gilded, ceremonial rowing boats) and they would be welcomed with magnificent ceremonies.  This gate serves as an imperial showroom visible to all international ship traffic.  The Bosphorus effectively became the palace’s primary driveway for dignitaries that arrived by boat and they would enter directly through these gates.  Passing through these gates signaled entry into a modern, European-integrated state that was confident and outward-looking, as the gate blends traditional Ottoman motifs with European Neo-Baroque and Rococo design.  By adopting Western aesthetic standards, the empire was visually asserting that it belonged among the elite global powers of Europe.  While the styling looked Western, the gates were topped with the Tughra (the sultan’s stylized imperial monogram), sending a firm message to visitors that the ultimate sovereign power remained unmistakably Ottoman.

Written for Melissa’s Flash Fiction Challenge #395.

Heralds of Change

Legend has it that white owls are spiritual creatures that mark the beginning and end of things.  Their ghostly appearance, silent flight, and ability to see in the dark, made humans associate white owls as being a natural bridge between the known and unknown worlds in our efforts to make sense of life’s major transitions.  Because they navigate both night and day or move through silent air, they represent a connection between the seen and unseen.  They are symbols of profound transition, acting as silent proclaimers that mark major endings and new beginnings.  Their appearance often signifies that a specific phase of your life that is closing to make room for a new cycle.  In symbolic traditions, an end and a new beginning are not separate paths, as they are both viewed as being continuous parts of the same journey, where closing one chapter naturally creates the space and foundation for the next.  You cannot inhabit a new space while refusing to leave the old one.  Seeing a white owl means an old cycle is ending precisely to make room for a fresh start.  When beginnings and endings are paired with an owl, it signifies removing confusion so you can clearly see reality.  You cannot tell the end and the beginning apart because they happen together.  The end of an old situation marks the necessary first step of a transition, serving as the launchpad for a new beginning.  Spiritual beliefs view the owl as a symbol of “death”, which rarely means physical death.  Instead, it represents the closing of a chapter, such as a bad job, a toxic friendship, or an outdated habit.  An end is not a wall that marks a boundary, as it is more like a threshold that provides a path forward by serving as a definitive transition marker to guide mental focus, physical movement, or life change.  The circular nature of life dictates that things begin, things end, and the end of one thing leads to the beginning of another.  Every ending creates space and provides the lessons needed for a new beginning.

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See #359.