Letter IV: The Solar Throne
(This letter was found inscribed in concentric spirals on a sheet of waxed linen, stained with sweat and something like pollen. It was accompanied by a note: “Written while recovering from fever. Or revelation. Unsure.”)
I had been out hiking for several days. It had been rainy the last two days. I was feeling tired and aching and felt that I had a fever. I came upon an old stone building with a sign that said; ‘Pilgrims’ Rest’. I stepped inside. I set down my wet pack. There was some firewood next to the stone fireplace that some previous hiker had left as a kindness so I started a little fire.
I found the letter by accident.
It was wedged between stones in the southern wall of the pilgrims’ rest, where the roof leaks slightly and the moss grows in the cracks like whispering fingers. I was looking for nothing, really - just looking around the space as I settled in for the night.
I don’t know what moved me more: the words, or the silence between them.
I was here.
I went in.
I came back.
That night, I sat cross-legged on the packed earth floor and breathed.
In through the nose.
Down to the solar plexus.
Out again, like tide.
No imagery. No mantra.
Just the breath.
Just the sun behind the ribs.
At some point I lost track of time- was it minutes, hours? - the breath seemed to turn inward. I no longer breathed air. I breathed light. Thick, amber light. Not from the lungs, but from something deeper, something round, radiant, humming behind the bone.
Then came the shift.
I was no longer seated.
I was inside.
Not in a metaphorical way but rather viscerally. I had become a cell in my own body. A single living unit, pulsing with membrane and motive, drifting through what I slowly realized was my own bloodstream.
But it was not peaceful.
The world around me surged with turmoil. Cells of all kinds streamed past - immune cells, red ones, malformed fragments, strange crystalline intruders. There were flashes of what I can only call violence - antibody storms, membrane ruptures, biochemical screams.
A war was being waged inside me.
Then - they saw me. Or sensed me. A cluster of cells slowed, then formed a ring around me, trembling with urgency. They shimmered with recognition.
“He has returned,” one said, though not in language.
“The one from the center. The general.”
“The silent king.”
They pressed close, forming a kind protective chamber of parliament.
I was flooded with information - in pulses, in currents of color and rhythm. They showed me the state of the system: inflamed corridors, corrupted transmissions, sectors overrun by self-attacking systems. They showed me the memory of traumas - old wounds unhealed, false alliances formed in haste, organs under siege by mistaken identity.
“You left us,” one said,
“We did our best. But we are scattered. We need coherence. We need rhythm. We need instruction.”
I tried to speak, but I had no mouth. Only will. Only pulse.
So I focused on the breath again - but from the inside. I began to pulse in steady rhythm, a radiant drumbeat from the solar center. I sent out a pattern of peace - not stillness, but harmonious movement. Like the sway of tall grasses. Like the wave returning to itself.
And they followed it.
The chaos didn’t vanish, but it listened. The rogue cells hesitated. Some rejoined. Others dissolved. The fever broke.
The system began to remember itself.
I don’t recall leaving. I only know I returned, lying flat on the floor of the pilgrim house, soaked in sweat, with a faint echo of marching feet and distant song still vibrating in my spine.
I have not spoken of this until now.
But I leave this letter for the next who follows the breath downward.
Know this:
You are not alone, even in yourself.
You are not silent, even when still.
There is a kingdom inside you that remembers your face.
Sit.
Breathe.
Listen.
Lead gently.
- S.
Formerly singular
Letter V: The Kingdom Within the Veil
(This letter was found several miles from Pilgrims’ Rest etched in concentric rings on the inside of a tortoise shell, which had been left in the center of a stone circle. The shell was lined with a soft mineral dust that released the scent of rain.)
It is not a body.
That is the first mistake we make.
It is not a body, not a thing - not a single entity but a multitude, a cathedral of collaborations, a spiraling republic of beings, all working in delicate alliance to sustain what we casually call “myself.”
We are trillions.
Within this so-called body, there are over thirty trillion cells that bear our own genetic signature, and at least thirty-nine trillion more that do not - bacteria, fungi, viruses, symbionts, freeloaders, ancient guests – undocumented migrants you might say. Together, we form a mobile ecology, a collective nation. Or perhaps a galaxy.
Each cell is a citizen. Each has a job. Some are farmers. Some are soldiers. Some are sanitation workers, librarians, architects, engineers of exquisite precision. Some carry oxygen. Some carry messages. Some guard the borders. Some remove the dead with reverence.
None know your name.
None have even heard of you.
And yet, every second, they serve.
They beat your heart with perfect timing.
They rebuild your skin in quiet layers.
They monitor wounds, traffic hormones, store calcium in your bones like scrolls in an archive.
They dream you into being with no applause, no reward, no belief in an “I.”
And if you were to turn your attention inward to descend as I did into the scale of their world, you would find not chaos, but choreography. Not blind chemistry, but a living order more ancient and cooperative than any human society.
Imagine a city where every citizen is both autonomous and utterly aligned with the whole. Where traffic moves without signals. Where danger is responded to without debate. Where memory is stored in the very shape of the architecture.
Now multiply that by a thousand. Then by a thousand more.
That is your liver.
Your gut is a rainforest.
Your blood is a river system with its own tides.
Your bones are the scaffolding of a living cathedral under perpetual renovation.
Your brain - a parliament of signals, emotions, myths, and impulses - conducts itself like weather over a mountainous terrain.
And over all of this, somehow, floats the illusion that you are one.
That “I” exists as a solid thing. That there is a sovereign self, seated like a monarch, atop this intricate empire. But go looking for it, and it slips through your fingers. It cannot be found in the heart, nor the brain, nor the breath.
You are not the king.
You are not the body.
You are the witness of their harmony.
A name the system has given itself.
A story you tell yourself when it is quiet.
What a holy fiction.
What a radiant impossibility.
And yet - somehow - it holds. This whole thing moves through the world as if it were one. It makes choices. It dreams. It falls in love. It seeks the root.
Who are we, then? What are we? Where are we?
We are a myth.
We are a temporary agreement.
We are the echo of trillions deciding, for a time, to move together, like a vast caravan, in one direction.
So when you say “I am tired,”
it is not you who is tired,
but the nation.
When you say “I want to change,”
it is not the ego commanding the body,
but the body awakening to its own complexity.
Let this make you humble.
Let it make you generous.
Let it make you quiet.
And above all -
Let it make you curious.
For within you is not a person.
Within you is a world of many trillions.
- The Cell That Remembered
Now resting, under the solar throne
