The Illustrated Encyclopedia of an Imaginary Universe

Nothing can hold you back—not your childhood, not the history of a lifetime, not even the very last moment before now. In a moment you can abandon your past. And once abandoned, you can redefine it.

If the past was a ring of futility, let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward. If the past was a brick wall, let it become a dam to unleash your power.

The very first step of change is so powerful, the boundaries of time fall aside. In one bittersweet moment, the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged.

—Tzvi Freeman

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Tonight, I will be an alien in a forest of the familiar. I will fidget and smile too much. I will yearn for home, for books, for movies, for quiet. To turn off.

But a part of me hopes that, once lost in the underbrush, I will find these reclusive yearnings transformed somehow into comfort in old leaves turned toward me and away from me, toward me and away from me.

The breeze is forever capricious in its orientation.