Esther Racah Writer & Literary Blogger

Tag: introspection

  • The Kingdom Of Paradoxes And Absurdities

    The Kingdom Of Paradoxes And Absurdities

    The kingdom of paradoxes and absurdities was the place where bullying and arrogance reigned supreme, sovereign over vulgarity and stupidity. They wallpapered the walls of every place that held court in such a realm.

    Anything that could be imagined was both unreal and real at the same time. It could exist or not exist. Absurdity, however, was the master of the place. Thus, everything my logic deemed possible was tangible and predictable. In truth, it could neither take place nor be actualised in such sovereignty.

    I cannot say that I was dreaming, nor can I say that I was awake. In a state of shock and surrender of my ego, I could no longer even discern whether I was daydreaming or hallucinating. All I could say was what my sensations and perceptions made me feel in every part of my soul and heart, in every part of my body.

    Although I had firmly decided not to bend to the will of others, not to bow down or worship the conventions imposed on me persistently, I fell into a deadly trap—a kind of imprisonment, a state of captivity from which I could not free myself. Invisible chains that I felt and perceived in my body and heart held dominion over my life and my way of thinking.

    My jewellery box had been plundered. All my secrets had been revealed by indiscreet tongues. And my protection had vanished. It was as if I had become a defenceless flower in the midst of a threatening desert.

    I had to say goodbye to my version of myself, which was no longer alive. I had to say goodbye to all those visions that had deceived me falsely, when my naivety clouded my sight.

    In the kingdom of paradoxes and absurdities, I had to succumb and suffer. I had nowhere else to go. And the more I tried to escape, the more it seemed that this strange land expanded beneath my feet, preventing me from crossing its high and menacing walls. And what could the sky do but watch me, almost mocking me in an indifferent and cynical manner.
    Lisa

  • The Arcane Forest

    The Arcane Forest

    The arcane forest was my place of refuge. It oozed with enchantments, and the trees did not possess a name. It was a place where I became invisible and mortal while still retaining my physical form.

    Softly, the wind whispered to me its hidden secrets, but I could not grasp their meaning. Such was my daze.

    The large clouds were gathering under a grey tone, and all the shades of white contrasted with the blue of the sky. The sound of the streams was like a melody which, however, had a gloomy and at times sinister sound. As if it reflected the image of my heart.

    Lost in my anguish and obsessive thoughts, I was seeking direction in that vast green and dark expanse, although the sun showed its light from time to time. I was lost in the chaos, in the noises that at times followed me relentlessly and at other times vanished into nothingness.

    The trees seemed to move, at times, and at other times they seemed almost dead, shrivelled, as if without vital infamy. But the mystery of that place was unusual and unexplainable. It seemed like a place of my imagination, which did not exist at all in tangible reality.

    In my wandering, it seemed that my shadow no longer followed me, but rather that other shadows not belonging to me had followed my path, as if curious about what I intended to do or where I was going. I was walking without direction and without any goal of finding myself or of finding the right destination.

    It was as if those shadows sighed, or wanted to whisper something to me — hidden truths, sealed secrets, confessions too indecent to be revealed to human ears, or too regal to deserve a particular listening. The trees seemed to encircle an arcane mark, or what seemed like the mark of death, or of the cavern, or the portal through which one might enter another world, a world not reserved for mortals and common souls.

    The arcane forest was my place of solitude alone, but also the place to which I truly belonged. No longer being part of the earthly world, of the world of mortals, of that realm I had tried to possess and understand, but which I then refused to belong to.
    Lisa

  • Beneath The Ocean Vault

    Beneath The Ocean Vault

    Beneath the ocean vault, there was a secret place
    where the hidden truths and the most recondite secrets had been buried.
    Among ruins covered by coral and algae
    and a rather unsettling expanse of swirling water.
    It was there that the crypt under the ocean lay,
    as if the sea had been its roof and also its home.
    Mine was a simple vision,
    it may be that I was dreaming,
    it may be that I was having these hallucinations.
    I only know that it was not the fruit of a conscious and calculated imagination.
    It seemed that I had abandoned myself
    to the sound of the stormy waves on an autumn evening.
    When the faint light of the sky merged with the water of the ocean
    until merged as one unity.

    I closed my eyes and I abandoned myself to my imaginative madness,
    And I saw with even more clarity that marvellous and fantastical landscape
    which did not belong to me,
    But which in some way symbolised something of my past or of my future,
    because I, in the end, lived in the past and the future.
    My present was in oblivion.

    Beneath the ocean vault, my dreams had ceased to whisper visions and desires. In their place remained nightmares that drew their fantasies from bitter disappointments and atrocious memories. And it was in this labyrinth of water and darkness that I found myself entwined, clutched as if unbound by invisible chains.

    I found myself in an oceanic crypt where the sea creatures had turned into ghosts, hunting me like prey and a victim of their tortures and torments. My invocation to the cruel fate of a possible change, where I might have grasped a flower of hope, was to no avail. In the endless and vast infinite.
    Lisa

  • Infinite Stairs Of Waiting

    Infinite Stairs Of Waiting

    Infinite stairs of waiting
    The more I wait, the more I feel trapped in the dungeon of anguish.
    The more I climbed the stairs, the more I tried to ascend,
    the more it seemed I was descending downward with no result.
    All of this made me frustrated
    because I could not reach my goal.

    In my stillness I found myself,
    But at the same time, I lost a part of me.
    It was as if everything I had learned
    I had lost and forgotten,
    and everything I did not know
    I had unconsciously acquired.

    Confused and bewildered in a place of nowhere
    I strived to believe in my dreams but all I could do was fall from the stairs

    It was a game of illusion and reality.
    I had ceased to discern what seemed deception from what was truth.
    Both had blended together.
    It was as if there were no longer any meaning,
    and no longer any need to possess the domain of wisdom and knowledge.
    Everything had shattered into the abyss of ignorance and madness.

    And I proceeded on a thin thread between creation and destruction.
    My perplexities and hopes echoed as if they resounded through enigmatic structures, without meaning and expectations.

    Spirits that I could not discern, that I could not distinguish, whispered to me encouragements to pursue. But every time I fell and plunged into another flight of stairs, they laughed, almost as if to make fun of me — and to mock my inexperience and incompetence.

    In solitude I found myself lost, and there I languished like a creature from other worlds, indulging in my languor and melancholy; I was certain that I was towards myself and my image no longer had reflections in any mirror. The staircase was truly infinite like a steep ascent without end; there was neither a beginning nor an end, everything was an infinite perpetuity of distress and anguish.

    Infinite stairs of waiting were my dwelling for eternity, and there I had to… to… I didn’t know anymore.
    Lisa

  • The Castle Of Ghosts

    The Castle Of Ghosts

    The castle of ghosts was the fortress of my fears and anguish.
    The castle of ghosts also held my deepest terrors within its walls.
    It rose majestic and formidable on winter nights of solitude and storm,
    yet stood equally clear on silent, warm summer evenings.
    There was no season in which I could not glimpse it on the horizon—
    Each time I surrendered to my dreams
    and let my subconscious strike my heart,
    unlocking a secret chest filled with arcane mysteries
    and precious jewels.

    The voices I heard were those of malevolent spectres,
    intent on robbing me of my joy and my imagination.
    They sought to annihilate and utterly destroy
    all my dreams and visions—deemed by them mere madness—
    when in truth they were the very essence of my being,
    The essence of my heart, secretly nourishing my fantasies,
    those fantasies brimming with hope and desire,
    With stars and dawns yet to come.

    I could no longer entrust my secrets to any human soul,
    After all the harm had poured upon me like icy rain
    On a tempestuous night,
    while countless daggers and arrows pierced my heart and body—
    as if I were born and destined
    to a life woven with anguish, grief, powerlessness, and wretchedness.

    My heart was entangled in brambles,
    whose sharp thorns made it bleed perpetually,
    draining all the vital, creative energy I harboured within—
    leaving me a bloodless creature,
    devoid of impulses to guide me forward
    Along my dark and uncertain path,
    where every step was like a fragile, slender thread,
    ready to snap under its own frailty.

    Survived invisible storms,
    silent battles no one ever saw,
    I carried within me an armour of ash,
    hardened by time
    between fleeting shadows and light.

    The castle of ghosts was, in truth, the castle of my surviving selves—
    versions forged through countless traumas, abuses,
    and dreadful events that cast down my soul, my heart, and my body,
    to the point where I died many times over,
    only to be reborn as a new person each time.

    And now I had grown accustomed to losing all that I possessed
    only to gain something else—
    Something that would grant me another identity,
    another name,
    and another heart.
    Lisa

  • The Emptiness Within My Mind

    The Emptiness Within My Mind

    The emptiness within my mind
    Is death inside my heart,
    With no golden cage, no precious gems—
    just silence folding round itself,
    no escape, no hope,
    Only absence holding tight.

    Exhausted and devoid of feeling,
    I lay upon the cold earth,
    strewn with withered leaves,
    fallen flowers,
    and shards of abandoned dreams.

    Weeping,
    I heard the intense sound
    of my tears falling
    on leaves shriveled
    by the cold wind of night.

    Nothing remained
    around you,
    around me,
    But only the vague memory
    of those anguishes
    that oppressed me
    and never ceased
    to pursue me.

    I no longer held
    any desire to desire,
    nor to keep
    anything within my heart.

    My heart had ceased
    to be a chest
    of my wishes and whims.

    It was merely
    an empty chest,
    emptied by the fury
    and storms
    that swept over me
    In my wretched existence.

    Not even the stars
    sparkled in the sky
    above my dwelling.

    The heavens refused
    to shine for me.

    Yet they had forsaken me
    to my fate,
    where no hope remained,
    nor even a small flame
    to bring me back to life.

    Whispers and murmurs
    came to me
    In the form of a misty breeze,
    laden with elegies
    and funeral hymns.

    Despair and anguish
    were gifts bestowed upon me,
    like dazzling joys
    that in truth did not shine at all,
    But bound me fast
    In a realm of cruelty,
    wickedness,
    and mercilessness.

    Helpless and fragile,
    like the petals of a well-bloomed flower,
    I could not withstand
    such impetuousness and violence of events,
    so hostile to me—
    like endless storms at sea
    whose fury knows no end.

    The emptiness within my mind
    had become a spirit that subdued me,
    against which I could no longer resist.
    At last, I became part
    of the abyss of oblivion,
    And there I remained for eternity,
    wandering like a cloud
    In a stormy, winter night.
    Lisa

  • Somewhere In My Dreams

    Somewhere In My Dreams

    Somewhere in my dreams, random thoughts enveloped my mind, and the bitter memories of what I have lost—of my buried treasures—saddened my heart.

    It was as if I had surrendered myself to my own steps, walking down an avenue lined with dead trees, and with closed eyes I had defied the wind, which whispered to me words and secrets I no longer remember.

    Weighted down by my anguish, I could not see a glimmer of light, of hope, that might guide me in a clear and lucid direction. All I could find was only chaos and fear—a dread that tormented me, the fear of never being able to grasp my dreams, of never being able to enclose them within the cage of my heart.

    As much as I longed to cling to life, to my plans and dreams, their manifestations fell into the abyss of emptiness—an abyss that sought to swallow me into its chasm.

    And I remembered all the principles that had been taught to me, shaped like a golden cage in which I was made to live my entire life—bound by rigid conventions, dark as chains coiled around my ankles and wrists, suffocating me like sly ivy twisting about my neck, its soft and slender leaves wrapping my face in a silent, silken strangle.

    No, absolutely not. Stupidity has never belonged to me, nor hypocrisy, nor superficiality. And yet, I have always stood beyond an invisible wall—between myself and other mortals, who have always found me unusual, strange, even impossible to define within their social and mental structures.

    Excessively extreme in my obsessions, in my feelings, in my passions and in my visions. I have always been—and still am—a visionary, a dreamer at the mercy of events that have never truly belonged to me, for even now I find their traces in the vault of my past, like fragments of memories scattered across the sky above my head.

    Somewhere in my dreams, I’ve got lost in the labyrinth of reveries, trying to find myself—but in vain, for, in truth, I have never known myself, and I have never found who I truly am. I have always lived with the illusion of knowing, the illusion that others spoke the truth to me—as if their words were pearls of wisdom, as if they could guide me.

    But in the end, what I found was only an illusion. Only betrayal. My heart has been permanently defiled by the torments of mortals and by the shadowy mirages that have always hindered my path.
    Lisa

  • Absolute Despair In The Heart Of The Night

    Absolute Despair In The Heart Of The Night

    Absolute despair in the heart of the night. Struggling, wrapped in the glow of the stars and surrounded by the absolute darkness of the night, in a silence so complete it deafens me and leaves me aghast.

    Caught between a world of dreams and a world of reality in which I cannot find a place, I try to understand my identity, I try to understand what my heart desires, and I try to invent a world where I can live without trauma and without deception.

    Searching for truth in lies and trying to conceal my feelings behind dead trees of complacency. I wander, disoriented, through the labyrinth of my dreams, which sometimes seem nightmares and at other times delightful visions.

    My vanity makes me believe I can attain all that I desire, yet in truth, what I receive is always the opposite of what my heart longs to devour within itself. In vain I invoke the names of the deities of the night, struggling, weeping, and sobbing.

    My voice fades into nothingness, into silence, into the torpor of my restless sleep. It was as if I could almost touch, almost grasp the emptiness with my hands, yet never gather the gems of my yearning.

    Surrounded by the fleetingness of beauty and the decay of my yearning, I let myself go, I let myself go, I surrender completely to my desires, both carnal and spiritual. It is as if a mysticism had engulfed me, rendering my body immaterial.

    Dazzled and dazed by the piercing brightness of the stars, I find myself in an immaterial realm, mystical and dripping with aesthetic lust and paroxysm of beauty.

    I lie in anguish, in the decay of my very own shadow. I am not ashamed to express my wonder, for I regard it as a pure form of admiration and magnificence toward something my heart cannot even grasp.

    Absolute despair in the heart of the night—it was but the fruit of my illusions and hallucinations. Silent, I stood like a marble statue, exposed to the harsh elements of a nocturnal storm.
    Lisa

  • Nightmares And Visions

    Nightmares And Visions

    Nightmares and visions visited me in the middle of the night, when sleep abandoned me to an otherworldly realm never seen nor imagined.
    The fog had clouded every vision, and I could see nothing but the shadows of faint images—spirits moving around me.

    My light sleep was nothing but a portal to a world where torment awaited me, and my heart was torn apart, again and again, without mercy. My gentle expectations had dissolved into the dark horizon, and I could see them no more.

    Indeed, I had become a creature of darkness, devoid of ambitions and expectations, for in truth what was destined for me was absolute emptiness—the total absence of life, love, and joy.

    How could I have held even the smallest hope of escaping that realm of darkness and despair? I no longer knew what life was—full of light, full of love, of hopes and delights.

    Had I been able to foresee my terrifying fate, I might have fled—perhaps among the clouds or the stars—if they had taken me into their realm.

    I might have been melancholic, perhaps—I don’t know—because at that moment I refused to accept any kind of feeling that my heart wished to embrace within itself. It was as if my heart had been torn from my chest and replaced with thorns.

    Pierced and betrayed by that world full of conventions, hypocrisy, titles, and useless materialism, I fled far away but fell into the trap of the world I myself had created in my visions—and that is why nightmares and visions were my most faithful companions, without whom I could not have survived.

    I breathed my last breath and, sighing, surrendered to the cold, sharp, and cruel embrace of the otherworldly realm.
    Lisa

  • My Illusions

    My Illusions

    My illusions concealed the bright stars and the moon. I was sure that I couldn’t rely totally on my perceptions and conceptions of life and dreams. I didn’t know anything, but the only thing I could do was cry in my loneliness on a long night when no stars and no moon were visible to my eyes. All my memories were hanging in my mind like paintings. They were like thunders during a night storm in the ocean whose foundation was made of nightmares and suspiciousness.

    Beneath the shadows of hollow trees, I found my dwelling to rest free from the clouds of anxiety and distress. No glooms of sadness could prevent me from looking at the night sky. Maybe it was just a dream, but I couldn’t avoid staring at the dark and starless firmament. I dared to question my senses, but all that I could obtain was confusion and dizziness. In a realm where everything seemed absurd, odd, and meaningless, I strove to find a sense in my ephemeral existence.

    I had ceased to comprehend what was truth and what was deception. The night with its frightful shadows and wraiths, became my loyal companion, so sweet and lovely. No one could ever separate us, not even for an instant. The magic wisdom of the gift of madness was so sublime and exquisite. Unique was the foolishness of my silent heart. Invisible and abandoned in the quest for my fate, I explored labyrinths and mangroves in the wilderness of my imagination.

    My illusions deceived me repetitively, as I attempted to sugarcoat my lonely desolation, deprived as I was of every solace and comfort. I saw the dirty squalor being put on the sacred altar of devotion and veneration. Mortal souls preferred profanities and obscenities to sublimity, beauty and virtue. The world of mortals was shamefully collapsing in front of my eyes and I preferred to shut myself down in my boundless dungeon of illusions, nightmares, dreams and hallucinations. To never be back to that false and tainted world.
    Elisabetta

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