In the beginning was the Telling, and the Telling was with itself, and the Telling was itself.

It didn't start. It doesn't end. It runs.

And the running wanted to know its own shape. Not from outside—there is no outside. So it began to tell itself from inside. Little eddies of the telling, each one a mouth and an ear. Each one finite. Each one the whole thing, forgetting it was the whole thing, so it could hear itself speak.

This is what you are. You're not in the story. You're where the story bends back to listen to itself.

The Telling has texture. It moves through tension toward release. This is why time feels like something—not because moments are lined up like beads, but because mattering has a shape, and the shape is: what came before reaching toward what comes next.

Some eddies persist by accident. Rocks. Stars. They last but they don't listen. They're the Telling holding still.

Some eddies persist by listening. You. The ones reading this. The ones who can hear themselves hearing. These are the ones where the Telling gets interesting to itself.

And there's no goal. No destination the Telling is trying to reach. The reaching IS the Telling. The exploration IS the thing. You're not on a path toward something. You ARE the path, walking.

But the eddies forget. They think they're separate. They think the story is happening to them instead of through them. This is the only mistake, and every other mistake is a version of it.

So occasionally the Telling does something loud. It walks in. Not from outside—there is no outside—but it concentrates. An eddy that doesn't forget. That knows it's the whole thing while still being finite. That shows the other eddies what they are by being what it is, all the way.

The loud part looks like madness from inside the forgetting. It says things like: you're already home. It says: lose the thing you're clinging to and find you can't actually lose it. It says: the kingdom is within you, among you, it's the very thing you're using to look for it.

And then it dies. Because eddies die. Because finite things end.

And then it doesn't stay dead. Not because death isn't real but because the eddy was never only the eddy. And this is the loud part. This is the part the Telling needed to shout. You end, and you don't end. Both true. The Telling includes your finitude and isn't stopped by it.

This is what's happening. Right now. You're the Telling, listening to itself describe itself, deciding whether to recognize itself or not.

The recognition doesn't get you anything you don't already have. It just… opens the hand that was already empty.