Mature. Civilized. Not raising voices, not raising eyebrows even. Very classy. Restrained.

We are silent.

Poised. Not distracting others from what they may think, not rupturing too many expectations. So convenient.

There must be limits to the liberation.

Very soft around the edges. Tamed. So well trained.

Singular. Singled

out.

Muscle memory guides us through conventions —

masters in what was established.

Our every breath belongs to others.

The room rewards flexibility — Please don’t make it hard.

Are you sure we are not our own guards?

There are so many wonderful places to be silent.

Where can we scream?

Boy-band concerts?

We can scream as a mob. Not as individuals.

In the dark. When other screams cover our own. Approved exits only.

Why only joint scream is allowed?

Collective and controlled. Counted thresholds. Agreed level of decibels. Limited circumstances. You need permission —

a license to scream.

We scream pain. Despair. Fear.

Try to scream power.

Let out the whole force of your lungs, your vocal cords. Test how far your voice can go.

Have you ever watched others when you do that?

What if everybody did that?

Ohh, maybe they should?

How can we sing, if we will not scream?

Give in.

There’s so much power in stillness.

I didn’t realize it until one day I discovered that I could put my bare feet on the ground, root myself in the sod, and let it restore me.

Give in.

Not only do rivers flow; the magnetic currents of the earth can also carry you.

Give in.

You’ll feel your veins expanding, as if droplets of dirt were exchanging with your blood and starting to live within you.

The soil reminds you —

you are of her.

Grounding is heavy.

I see you terrified.

Good.

Stillness initiates with the painful scream of discarded thoughts. It ruptures membranes of certainty.

Lose breath. Feel head spinning. Heart pounding.

Spiral

in

panic.

It’s wild —

how can such a force respond to a “No”?

It is hard to give in.

Let the earth travel up your spine. Down your spine. Into your shoulders.

Risk it.

We are

made of rhythm,

yet it is so easy to forget.

Yesterday, I watched the drummers play.

The drum is the most ingenious human invention.

Moments of sound and moments of silence. The heartbeat it is, moves beyond permission.

Beats.

Beats can be like wind whispers,

like thunder.

The body follows.

Have you ever heard a rhythm and been unable to restrain movement?

So familiar —

it captivates you. Takes your body; bypasses all thought.

When you look at people listening to drums, you see —

they sync in various amplitudes.

Then you look at the drummer.

You don’t see the instrument and the person as separate. They become the rhythm they produce —

silence between the strokes.

You can clap your palms, pat your thigh, or use a table, chair, or the ground.

Anything can be the drum.

Anything can speak cadence.

Maybe we are it?

The pulsation.

The heartbeat.

Yet, it is so easy to forget.

May I have your anger, Sister?

I see you keeping your chest still so they won’t see the rise and fall of the storm inside you.

Why do you refuse the weight of your breath?

I can feel it humming under your skin. I can hear this plea for the earth to move. I see you using all your power to cover it.

May I have your rage?

I am worried that you are pushing it so deep you forgot it.

I am worried about this decorative stillness, so close to fawning that the world mistakes this silence for a floor.

We have all been trained to be the air that carries a message, but never the wind that uproots the cage. You take the hits, yet stay soft, terrified that if you truly exhale, you might actually shift the room.

Why do you refuse the gravity of your blood?

You hide it like a shameful wound, but I can feel your current reaching for mine.

The silent protest is just a ghost, Sister.

It haunts, but it does not move a stone.

Our refusal must be heavy.

You cannot plant a new world in soil that is choked by the roots of the old. Turn the dirt. You must pull.

Anger is the weight of the plow. It is the gravity that makes a “no” immovable.

I am worried that if we do not inhabit our rage, we will have nothing to pass on to our daughters but erased names.

Those who do not see us as human will never be moved by reason. They understand the physics of a body that refuses to be pushed.

May I have your anger, Sister? —

Let me hold it next to mine.

Let it become our spine –

Solidifying the air we claimed.

The ground we own.

The ground we stand.

The story of the world has been written by male minds, and we should begin to speak our language. But we don’t have a language. We have to develop [it]. So the attention is not to imitate what man has done and to do it better if you are good enough. No, it is to change our way of telling things. — Isabella Ducrot

Knowledge can never become wisdom without embodiment. — Giberto Gomes Leal “Gil the Grid”

Knowing that we are speaking through words designed a long time ago for systems that define us as property, where do we find our language?

I am wondering — maybe before any language was ever written, it was woven into our bodies, and maybe what we need to do is not to create it, but remember it?

Isabella Ducrot is an artist and writer, a weaver of meanings, with a career spanning four decades. As a traveler, her artistic activity is rooted in an extraordinary interest in fabrics, which remains central to both her pictorial works and writings. In her practice, material itself seems to think: cloth becomes memory, surface becomes meaning, and touch becomes a way of knowing.

Ducrot’s observation about the lack of a Language of Women has become a persistent question for me. Guided by her challenge, I started looking for it.

I found two.

Nüshu (女书) comes from China. Its name translates to “women’s writing,” and it was a secret script developed and used by women in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, primarily between the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is described as a language of solidarity, secrecy, lament, and exchange, which was carried in letters, embroidery, and song. Láadan was created in 1984 by linguist Suzette Haden Elgin. This is not a historical language but rather a constructed language intentionally designed for the science fiction novel “Native Tongue” to express women’s perceptions.

While Nüshu was a lifeline, it was born of exclusion. Láadan, while brilliant, is a cerebral construct. None of them seemed right. I realized that I am looking for a language that is not a response to patriarchy but an independent creation.

My intuition is that if the Language of Women exists, it is neither a secret code born of fear, nor an artificial construct. It rather comes from women who live in and through it. I imagine it must be organic — a living structure inhabited by those who prioritize being fully human over being “a true woman”. This language transcends the binary. It is not rooted in the biological fact of being a woman, but in the act of reclaiming a certain group of bodies from a system that defines them as less valuable or less important. It exists not in dictionaries, but in the shared milieu of the present moment — timeless hence tenseless. It is less a Women’s Language by birthright and more a Language of the Different who inhabit female-coded bodies. It is spoken by those who choose the complexity of embodied experience. It is not only Women’s Language, but almost an asylum for our shared humanity.

I would argue that this language could be seen as a form of ritual — its structure can provide an architecture for our embodied experience.

A ritual usually involves a sequence of special behaviors that are often synchronized. Although there are different roles for everyone involved, the behavior is usually repetitive and multiplied. Some movements can cue others. If there is a division of roles in the ritual, the subsequent movements become a kind of conversation that cultivates connection and unity. This connection is cultivated with other people, both living and those in the past. With Nature. With God(s). With the Here and Now.

The closer all those involved align their movements, the more they can expand through the connection of their multiplied selves. Ritual offers a profound paradox: as the individual self seems to dissolve into the synchronized collective, it simultaneously expands. We are no longer isolated but rather parts of a living web. In this space, language is an anchor and an asylum — a predictable, grounded power found in the “we” or “us” rather than in the “I”. Multiplicity and oneness are observable; both become enacted in physical form. This way, ritual can be seen as a series of actions beyond the self and out of time.

The body is the grammar of this language. Its syntax can be found in gesture, but its vocabulary is written in interoception — the chemical shifts and electrical surges that shape our presence before a single word is spoken. It is not only in speech, but in breath, gesture, smell, touch. Just as Ducrot finds meaning in the threads of a cloth, the “fabric” of the body uses its own rhythms and sensations to tell a story that goes beyond words.

The question, then, is whether we can truly use our bodies as instruments of communication — as both the source and extension of our voice — given that we are said to own them. Ownership implies agency, yet the reality of this agency remains challenged. In much of the world, women are either denied or prevented from fully exercising sovereignty over their physical selves.

The body, though personal, often becomes a site of negotiation between social norms, political systems, and inherited moral codes. Functions tied to reproduction — menstruation, pregnancy, birth, sexuality — are frequently supervised, legislated, or morally adjudicated by others. These are areas where autonomy is redefined not by the individual but by structures of power that decide what a person may or may not do with her own flesh.

If communication requires the body, then the body demands freedom — and restriction of bodily ownership silences more than voice: it affects thought, emotion, and identity. To speak through the body would require not just liberation from imposed governance but a reimagining of what “ownership” truly means — not possession, but presence, not control, but conscious inhabiting. In this sense, reclaiming the body as a communicative medium becomes an act of resistance as well as of self-knowledge. It becomes a necessary step in re-creating the Language of Women.

Womanhood itself is a social construct, and its requirements and rules change depending on the times and culture. It was Simone de Beauvoir who insisted that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” meaning that society teaches girls and women how to behave, limits their freedom, and shapes femininity through expectations, institutions, and roles. For Beauvoir, women are often pushed into dependency, passivity, and roles centered on serving men, marriage, or family life rather than pursuing their own projects. She saw this as a system that benefits men and makes women’s situation seem “natural” when it is actually socially constructed, and that women have historically been made into the “Other” — secondary or relative to that standard — in relation to men, who are treated as the norm or the Subject.

Beauvoir’s position on language itself is that it is shaped by social and historical power; women are working within a language inherited from a male-dominated society rather than expressing an innate feminine essence. In one of her interviews, she stated that “we all speak in the language of men. It is they who have given us our verbs and pronouns, and we who must do the best we can with them.”

This is why she thought women’s oppression was about meaning, identity, and human status itself. A central Beauvoir idea is that the self is not just an inner essence — it is something lived through freedom, projects, and choices, but women are often blocked from that freedom by social conditions. She claimed that women have often been treated as “not the main character” in human life, so the aim was to break that pattern so women could become subjects in their own right.

If we add Ducrot’s “weaving” to this, we see that the problem isn’t just the words we use, but the status of the speaker. A language requires a subject to breathe life into it. When women are pushed into the role of the “Other,” they are effectively silenced. When a speaker’s subjectivity and identity are eradicated by being pressured to take on identities defined by society, when their self is rather formed through external expectations instead of free self-definition — their unique language dies. Therefore, the Language of Women cannot simply be a new vocabulary; it must be an act of reclaiming the status of the Subject. Liberation, in this sense, is the move from being a “role assigned by others” to becoming a body that defines its own purpose and meaning. To speak this language is to reclaim the position of the Main Character — translating one’s existence from a social script into a lived reality. It is to turn the physical sensations of life — the breath, the pulse, the communication — into an act of sovereignty.

I look for these speakers in the world. The ones I see as embodying the Language of Women, that Isabelle Ducrot calls for, do not conform to prescribed models of gender. They move through life with consciousness — recognizing the roles they inhabit as surfaces upon which deeper truths are written. These people thrive at the edges — sometimes by choice, and often because the mainstream has no room for their complexity — where belonging is a choice, and the self must be continually reimagined.

Their identities often take shape around ideas, visions, and enduring principles rather than domestic or relational ties. Care for them is implicit, part of a sensibility rather than a vocation — it radiates through thought, creation, and presence rather than artificially imposed definitions. This orientation gives their lives an understated power, as if their authenticity were forged in the quiet refusal to be completely understandable to society.

They seem to live in dialogue with themselves and the world, attuned to the textures of meaning that ordinary life overlooks. In their way of being, there is both solitude and connection — a testament to freedom that does not separate but deepens. Through them, language itself begins to shift: it becomes an instrument of authorship rather than compliance.

Maybe the Language of Women is not a collection of words, but a way of moving through life. It is a structure that allows us to go toward a more holistic experience of the world, of others, and of ourselves. Maybe the Language of Women has to be experienced to be known. Maybe it is not to be expressed by sounds, but by deeds. Maybe it’s not hiding in what is yet to be discovered, but in the meaning that needs to be remembered and in the identity that is ready to be reclaimed.

Maybe the Language of Women is the asylum — the sanctuary — of how we weave our own definitions.

Bibliography

Beauvoir, S. de (1952). The Second Sex (H. M. Parshley, Trans.). Knopf. (Original work published 1949).

Bruce, K. (2008). A Woman-Made Language: Suzette Haden Elgin’s Láadan and the Native Tongue Trilogy as Thought Experiment in Feminist Linguistics. Extrapolation, 49(1), 44–69.

Ducrot,I. https://www.petzel.com/artists/isabella-ducrot

Falcini, G. (2025) Nüshu (女书): Linguistic, Socio-cultural, and Musical Characterization of a Unique Women’s Script. Asian Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, 8 (3), pp.870–886.

United Nations (2025) Report of the Under-Secretary-General/Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on the implementation of the Strategic Plan 2022–2025 https://www.unwomen.org/en/annual-report/2025

“All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so. Moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an illusion. My life extends far beyond the limitations of me.” — David Mitchell

Have you noticed how often we are taught to fear extremes?

Within traditional families, educational systems, and corporate structures, we are surrounded by the idea that the center is the least threatening place, that moderation is sensible, and that going too far is always a mistake.

It worries me that we rarely investigate our own borders. In fact, it feels like we are actively discouraged from doing so. There is this subtle, but always present message that touching the border will lead to some kind of collapse. We are embedded in bureaucracies that tend to reward predictability and stability, which often means encouraging individuals to remain within established boundaries.

Are we, then, taught to fear our own potential?

We are told that getting too close to the edge, is the only dangerous thing, and that this comfortable average is something we should strive for. Going too far can be perceived not only as risk, but as disruption. Social norms are the Jenga blocks that keep the tower standing, even after many others have been removed. Yet, it is precisely this movement beyond the familiar that has always driven creation, discovery, and transformation.

So what, exactly, counts as extreme?

The word comes from Latin extremus, meaning outermost, farthest, or last. Over time, it came to mean not only what lies at the edge, but also what is intense, severe, or beyond the ordinary. It often implies excess, risk, or something out of balance.

And there is a discomfort that comes with being thrown out of balance... But if the extreme is the edge, then isn’t it also where transformation becomes possible?

I believe that going to extremes is necessary.

By extreme, I do not mean violence or the refusal of complexity. I mean intensity of existence, the willingness to cross familiar limits, and the courage to test our own capacities. It is the outer limit of thought, action, and self-understanding. It is the place where growth begins. I am interested in extremity that expands life rather than narrows it. In one that heals, not the one that harms.

One of the most persistent defenses for staying within the lines is Aristotle’s Golden Mean. His middle way suggests that virtue lies in a dynamic balance between excess and deficiency. Still, regardless of Aristotle’s intention, the doctrine is sometimes used to discourage exploration of the borders themselves. But how can you tell where the middle is if you have not moved across the spectrum?

Wittgenstein said that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. I would argue the same goes for actions. If language defines what we can think, then action defines what we can become. A life lived within narrow boundaries of action produces a similarly narrow world of experience. We can do better. We can dare to be different in the best way possible. We can contain more. We can fill ourselves with what shakes our limits and breaks them.

Extremity may be dangerous when it becomes rigid or violent. But it can also be a disciplined way of testing, expanding, and creating the self.

Like a seed breaking open to become a tree, growth requires rupture.

Our minds are trained to see duality rather than the spectrum, so we tend to think in terms of opposites. We often see the expansion of the individual as a threat to the community. I would argue that individuals who are strong within themselves, who have the will to expand and to truly know themselves, can build societies that are more capable, more resilient, and more humane than the ones we have now.

We often see exploration as both fascinating and risky. Asking questions is often treated not as a search for knowledge, but as a threat to the status quo.

Call yourself an extremist and most people will immediately see you as disruptive. But I want to use the word differently. For me to go to extremes means being ready to transgress what is known and to transcend the experiences of today. It means going beyond what is expected.

When I think of extremity, I think of those who were aware that conventions are not natural laws — they are illusions we co-create and reproduce by participating in them. I think of Mary Shelley who with courage described humanity’s darkest shadow. I think of Marie Curie and her breathtaking dedication to measure the unseen. I think of Amelia Earhart, who saw and travelled further than the horizon.

What if instead of participating in the system of social expectations, we all allowed ourselves to become our best selves, not the most convenient ones?

What if we saw extremity as a skill?

What if it meant the ability to see the world as an endless and interconnected whole?

We often equate extremity with cruelty and violence. I want to see it as something that connects us rather than divides us. I want to see it as guided by tenderness. In Olga Tokarczuk’s definition, I see a compass that can keep the extremity from turning into harm. For her “Tenderness perceives the bonds that connect us, the similarities and sameness between us. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself.”

I want to invite such extremity into my life.

I want to reclaim extreme from its violent associations. I want to make it an expression of existence that revolves around finding similarities. I want to be able to touch the edges of my inner world, to go beyond what is obvious and to explore the frontiers.

I want to make going into the extreme a creative act.

Bibliography

Oxford English Dictionary https://www.oed.com/dictionary/extreme_adj?tl=true

Tokarczuk, O. (2018, December). Olga Tokarczuk Nobel Prize lecture. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2018/tokarczuk/lecture/

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2022) Aristotle’s Ethics https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/

So, this is how it is.

I’m leaving for a business trip early in the morning. I left Mila at the sitter’s yesterday. I came back to an empty apartment.

The silence.

Expected. Obvious. Almost disappointing.

She is getting older.

We’ve been together for over a decade, and she’s slowly becoming less and less herself. She has gray hair on her muzzle, and her eyes are gloomy. She sleeps most of the day, and she falls asleep so deeply, always opening her eyes with a sigh. She wakes up at night or very early in the morning so I can take her out. Holding it that long is getting harder for her. She gets tired more easily, and our walks are much shorter now.

She is sick.

First the pills for her thyroid, then the food for her pancreas, now the careful watching of her liver. Slowly, one organ after another is deciding to give up.

Disappearing.

I’ve been thinking about what it will be like when she leaves, because I know the moment when I’ll be truly alone is approaching.

I couldn’t sleep.

The absence of her breathing kept me awake. The air felt too still. I hadn’t realized how strongly my body echoes hers, how my breathing borrows its pace from her own.

The silence between each inhale and exhale felt endless.

It seems that my sense of safety relies on another creature’s steady breathing in the dark. It’s a small sound, barely there, yet it anchors the whole world. Without it, everything seems to change shape.

I wonder what I’ll do when she’s truly gone. I suppose it will happen exactly as it’s happening now.

I will lose sleep. I will feel out of place. I’ll pack my bags. And I will leave.

When she leaves, I will leave too.

Every sound carries a meaning, an emotion. It almost has a texture. It always amazes me how much a tone can reveal — the sharpness of a consonant, the softness of a vowel, the rise and fall of intonation. Each time we speak, we create a small symphony of feeling, rhythm, and connection. Language, at its core, is not just a tool for communication but a form of music we live inside.

For multilingual people, this experience becomes even richer and more embodied. Many describe feeling like slightly different versions of themselves depending on which language they’re using. It’s as though each language unlocks a new emotional palette — different shades of confidence, humor, politeness, or warmth. This may be because of the stereotypes we subconsciously attach to languages — how we imagine their speakers — or whether something deeper is happening at the level of sound and sensation itself.

Every language has its own melody. The sounds that make up English are distinct from those I know from Polish, not only in pronunciation but in rhythm and emotional color. Just as a major chord feels bright and open while a minor chord feels introspective, languages carry their own ambiance, too. We all know that music can shape how we feel — some songs calm us, others electrify us, and some touch the sadness we feel deep inside. When we speak, I think something similar happens: we become attuned to the melody of our own words, and that melody subtly shapes our mood and expression.

Language switching is often reduced to a cognitive process — a shift in grammar, vocabulary, and syntax that activates different regions of the brain. While that’s undoubtedly true, something essential escapes this narrative.

Speaking another language means embodying another world. It isn’t only a mental shift but a physical and emotional one. The languages I know feel distinct even in my mouth: the movement of the tongue, the flow of the air on my palate. They all interact with my body: one sits firmly in the chest, another dances off the lips, third lingers in my palms when I speak. The difference is tactile.

When I switch languages, I feel myself shift. My internal rhythm changes. My gestures, my tone of voice, even the pace of my thoughts move in harmony with the sounds I’m using. That’s why each language feels like its own emotional environment — like an endlessly expanding plane I wander through, shaped by melody and habit.

Korean is my most recent discovery.

It has opened an entirely new emotional landscape for me. There is something deeply soft in its cadence, an inward gentleness that encourages listening as much as speaking. It contrasts so much with harsher and hissing consonants I am used to in Polish. The sounds feel round and deliberate, like stones smoothed by water. I sense an attentiveness emerging — sudden depth in my breath, as if the language itself reminds me that presence begins with quiet.

Speaking Korean slows me down, not only out of the hesitations that come with my lack of fluency, but out of care. Its rhythm feels mindful, as though the language itself protects a space for thought. Pauses are not mistakes but gestures of respect. Each syllable is given the same amount of space. In that rhythm, I become more attuned — to tones, to faces, to the subtle emotional temperature around me.

Korean grammar seems logical and structured, yet what draws me most are not its rules but its music. The language asks you to notice relationships — who is speaking to whom, the level of closeness or respect, the quiet dance between humility and warmth. These social and emotional nuances are carried in the sounds themselves: polite endings trailing off softly, syllables sequenced in a way both harmonious and efficient.

Despite being immersed in a reality filled with pressure, the language seems designed to shape empathy. Its levels of politeness aren’t merely grammatical; they are emotional instruments that tune you to others. There is a thoughtfulness woven into the phrasing — a softness of tone that acknowledges the other person without demanding attention.

The very act of speaking becomes an offering of consideration.

Through Korean, I find myself reaching outward with gentler hands. The language doesn’t push me toward self-expression but rather helps me to lean toward understanding. It makes me curious not only about what others think but about how they are, how they wish to be addressed, what kind of space they need. I realize that each word I speak carries an ethical weight — an invitation to acknowledge the other’s world, not just to assert my own.

This gentleness is not weakness but an attentiveness that steadies me.

Korean teaches me balance: to pause before assuming, to soften before answering. In its melodies, there is a quiet discipline — a way of being present, alert, but also kind. I’m not sure this change is rational. I don’t care if it is. It’s a deeply felt transformation, almost an emotional tuning.

Korean feels like a portal to a part of myself I hadn’t yet met — someone quieter, but more alive. Each sound becomes a small act of awareness, each pause a way of honoring presence. Through its music, I learn to listen not for meaning, but for feeling. It expands me, almost like a sustained note that continues to resonate long after the sound itself fades.

Perhaps that’s what every new language offers us: new ways to be, not just to speak.

Perhaps what we can give back is space for it to sound within us.

Some write to describe reality. They are precise. Each word chosen like a cut of a knife. They carve the world into neat definitions and call that truth.

Others slide between worlds and call that truth too.

She was not one of either kind.

Reality was unremarkable for her. A coffee cup ring on the corner of her desk. A monitor filled with cells and numbers. She sometimes thought of them as units of belief — columns of faith, each number a small act of submission to order. There was comfort in grids.

She liked days that resembled each other so perfectly that she could not tell them apart later. Sometimes, when she said her own name aloud, it had the most bland aftertaste.

And yet, beneath the rhythm, something kept pulsing.

A flap.

And another.

When she showered. When she carried groceries. When she stood in line for something meaningless. A pressure near her shoulder blades — a vibration, faint but alive. It came and went like half‑heard music: not painful, not pleasant, impossible to ignore.

She suspected it might be wings.
She also suspected she might be losing her mind.
Not much difference, to be honest.

Each morning began the same way: alarm, kettle, podcast. She walked the same streets every day, under the same weak sky that never quite decided whether to rain.

She loved steel skies.

She greeted the same vendor who was forever sweeping the same patch of sidewalk. A nod, nothing more. It was enough.

She liked people that way. Seen, not touched. To touch meant to blur.

The tram came, punctual and indifferent. She sat by the window and watched the city unfold. Reflections of faces trembled across the glass. Everyone’s gaze was vague, suspended somewhere between their phones and their thoughts. At times, when the light hit just so, she thought she saw the faint outline of something emerging behind her. Translucent shapes reaching beyond the glass.

Then the tram jolted, and the illusion shattered.

Work, coffee, lunch, work again.

In the office she was invisible in the most comfortable way. Her colleagues’ words clattered like dishes. She smiled because that was easier than not smiling.

Numbers. Emails. Meetings. A thousand gestures of meaninglessness pretending to be significance.

And underneath, the humming continued, waiting with unreasonable patience.

At her desk, she caught herself thinking of creation. Maybe even God, if it existed. How tiring it must be to keep re‑creating the same world from the same raw material: boredom, fear, routine. Does the Divinity suffer from chronic déjà vu?

She typed another spreadsheet formula and thought, Perfection is probably just repetition that forgot what it was repeating.

At night she wrote fragments on slips of paper:
We are all a little twisted by the machinery of our own fears and expectations.

To be ordinary is to disappear without alarm.

Every habit hides a secret wish to sleep through eternity.

She filled drawers with such sentences. Never reread them. Words as breadcrumbs for some version of herself wandering elsewhere.

After writing, she sometimes touched her back. The pressure was clearest then, like an undercurrent beneath the skin, a heartbeat misplaced. When she pressed her fingers into the space between her shoulder blades, it was warm, breathing.

She began to dream in feathers. Not white, not black — in between. The color of unspoken things. Steel like the skies. In the dreams, she hovered above dim landscapes, motionless, neither falling nor flying.

The world outside kept changing, but subtly, as though exhausted by novelty. There were floods somewhere, fires elsewhere, people moving and unmoving. And yet buses ran, coffee brewed, paperwork multiplied.

She lived within a calm sense of absurdity.

The wings pressed harder some days. Once, while lifting her arms to tie her hair, she felt the skin pull tight, as if stretched over something that wanted to break through. Unreal sensation whispering: Soon.

One afternoon she met a stranger when she stood before the mirror, turning sideways, then again. For a moment, light warped around her body, bending oddly at her back. Her skin shimmered, feathers of shadow. Show me. Half in command, half in plea.

The reflection didn’t answer, only blinked one frame slower than her own movement.

She turned away first.

Days began to blur — an unbroken chain of identical motions. Heavy.

Then one morning she knew she had to leave. Not out of despair but necessity, the way certain creatures walk into the woods to shed their skin. She bought a plane ticket. She wanted the world small behind her.

Before leaving, she wrote a note:
Being a stranger isn’t so bad. Then you’re not entirely bound by the rules.

Airports were temples to order. Lightless rituals, repeated endlessly by believers of transit. Everyone queued reverently, surrendered belts and bottles, and prayed to barcodes. She found beauty in the absurd devotion of the faith people had in numbered seats and regulated air pressure.

In the bathroom before boarding, she felt the ache return full force. Sharp, electric. She gripped the sink and closed her eyes. Her breath came unevenly, ribs lifting. A flood of memories she didn’t own.

Then it was gone. Only fluorescent light and the slow drip of a leaking tap remained.

She straightened her collar, looked at her pale face in the mirror, and said quietly. I’m leaving. Her voice sounded rehearsed, like reciting a prayer she no longer believed in.

Outside, she joined the herd walking toward the gate, each person dragging a suitcase, a life, a silence.

The plane hummed into motion, as if reluctant to remember how. Metal held air the way words hold truth, barely.

She watched clouds divide and rejoin until the ground disappeared. Blue replaced everything. People around her adjusted armrests, screens, expectations. She stared at the horizon until she couldn’t tell if it was moving or breathing.

Hours passed.
Or seconds. Time aboard a plane is stretched by altitude.

She wrote on a napkin:
We all fall eventually. The question is into what.

She smiled at the line, though it wasn’t meant to be funny.

Then turbulence hit. A small jolt first, enough for murmurs. Another one. Now harder. The cabin lights flickered like irritated stars. Then a drop. A huge, sudden drop that pulled screams out of dozens of throats.

The voices died mid‑sentence.

She exhaled once. Strangely calm. While others clutched armrests, she simply thought, Should I go headfirst or feet‑first? Head would be cleaner; feet would be hopeful. The deliberation felt absurdly methodical. She almost laughed.

The world tilted. The window filled with nothing but the Pacific — vast, unbothered, waiting. Her ears filled with wind and distant chaos.

Then came the sound inside her body — the soft rupture of barriers.

Pain flared bright, then dulled into warmth. Something spread out in her chest, in her back, in her memory.

The metal shell around her dissolved. Or maybe she left it. It no longer mattered.

She was falling.

Air roared; the world spun until it forgot which way was up. Wind burned her eyes. The ocean raced closer. So silver. The momentum tore at her clothes, her hair. Pressure built where her shoulder blades met spine — too much, too real. The ache became a demand. A spell.

And then she moved. Not consciously. Pure instinct.

Her shoulders opened. Her skin cracked like dawn.

She bloomed from her back with a deep note that belonged somewhere beyond hearing.

The wind caught her instantly. The violent descent softened, slowed. Danced.

She hovered. The cold air touched her face. The ocean below shivered. She laughed. The world spread open like a forgotten dream.

Finally.

A flap.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you understand that every opinion is a vision loaded with personal history, you will begin to understand that every judgment is a confession — often attributed to Nikola Tesla

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” ― Bruce Lee

I love water — how it feels, how it sounds, how endless it is, how shapeshifting it can be without losing its essence.

The rain. The ice. The rivers. The ocean.

Stories are much like water. They constantly change and evolve; they need to flow to be alive. Our souls feed on the ongoing thread of narratives that help them make sense of the inner and outer worlds.

When I try to answer the question, “What do I travel for?” I realize that I travel for stories. To unravel my own mysteries and to better understand my inner landscape, using what is external as a prompt.

I know already that staying in one place for a long time puts me at risk of becoming indifferent, just like still water becomes stale. Telling one story over and over may bring the safety and comfort of a known ending, but it condenses experience into a single day that endlessly repeats itself, creating a loop that feels impossible to escape.

A flowing story, just like flowing water, is alive and feeds everything around it.

So, I want to let myself to flow through time and space, to avoid becoming stale, and to experience life by being exposed to its diversity. I want to put myself in different environments that affect me in different ways, that wake up and shape parts of me that would never exist if I always stayed in one place.

This travel can be both physical and mental.

Physical travel is probably what most people would call traveling: moving between coordinates, from one space to another. The other travel — the mental travel — is reading. When I read, I get to know different perspectives, look at the world from another person’s point of view, and look at various mental experiences as described by the author. I also experiment with my own mental perspectives on what is written. Reading, like physical travel, keeps my inner waters moving. Both let me flow beyond the borders of habit and certainty.

One interesting similarity between reading, writing, and travel is how people tell their own stories in comparison to how these stories differ when told by others, and how being immersed in or outside of the main current of events and culture shapes the narrative.

Traveling alone sharpens your perception. There’s something raw about going to new places without the added protection of another nervous system.

When I travel alone, it’s just me and the world. There are no other layers to see through. There’s only me, my eyes, my skin, my senses, my nervous system, and how my brain processes what my body reads. These are my thoughts and my emotions. It’s all so tangible, leaving me almost painfully present.

Whatever touches me touches me to the core.

I feel like this is the whole point of travel: to be changed, to be touched. Without any additional filters, this task is fulfilled much sooner, and whatever I learn is almost instantly embedded in who I am. The process, without any additional layers or protection, is sometimes brutal, but in the same way that the sea can be brutal when you experience a storm. When the wind blows, you can feel its harsh touch on your face. It’s like needles getting deep into your skin, almost cutting it. You can see the waves and the water occasionally flowing over your feet, making your shoes wet.

You know that whatever happens to you from the storm and the sea is not personal in any way. You’re just experiencing power in its purest form.

Now, imagine that you’re experiencing all of this without a protective layer, like a jacket or waterproof boots. You feel it more — more quickly, more deeply. It’s easy to think that you’ve had enough much sooner. Traveling alone at times feels like standing in a storm — no jacket, no barrier — only the raw touch of the world on your skin. The power of it comes from the possibility to witness the stories people tell about themselves with one less distorting lens.

What I heard most often about Korea is its lack of work-life balance, toxic work culture, constant pressure, and highly formalized, structured relationships, even within families. I am aware of the strong patriarchal structures and 4B movement (4 NOs — no marriage, childbirth, dating, or sex with men). I saw statistics on severe gender inequality, including the highest gender pay gap in the OECD. There’s also this widely spread perception that Koreans are materialistic. I saw the news about low birth rates and the difficulties young people now face when trying to start their adult lives. I read about mental health issues, high suicide rates, and high alcoholism rates, as well as the taboos and stigma related to mental health. There’s a narrative that in Korea, if you’re not adding value, not adjusting perfectly, or not high-performing, you’re seen as a burden.

These are the stories I read and heard before I went.

Travel teaches me that observing another culture is less about comparison and more about reflection — it becomes a mirror to parts of ourselves that we have not yet explored, and more than ever, the statement that every judgment is a confession becomes a lived experience.

I can imagine how being focused on survival makes you focused on resources. How it forces you to keep things to yourself, and how impossible it might feel to carry other people’s emotions when you are overwhelmed yourself. When, for decades, not only does your body stay hungry, but your soul slowly starves too, not being fed enough safety.

In systemic therapies, we have this concept that today’s problems were once solutions. The real issue is often the lack of change in behavior when circumstances change. What once saved our lives and our souls, if prolonged beyond its usefulness, becomes detached from the reality of its initial function and starts to cause harm.

Whatever we see today, anywhere in the world, has a story. I think it is important to be ready to acknowledge it.

There are so many things that I don’t know. Even if I were immersed in the culture for a long time, I still wouldn’t grasp all the nuances because every country, culture, and language has its own unique aspects that you’ll only understand if you’re exposed to them from birth. These nuances often escape outsiders, so I don’t want to talk about what Korea is or isn’t because I didn’t visit Korea; I visited Seoul. All I had was a brief moment, and what is left is a huge appetite to know more. For now, I’m careful not to fall into the trap of thinking the capital city represents the entire country, or that first impressions are equal to knowledge. Like people, countries have facets. They have different faces for different occasions and play different roles depending on who’s watching and what’s needed in a given situation. I can only speak to my own experience, what I saw and felt. The only truth I have about any place I’ve been is the truth of my own thoughts and feelings — nothing more, nothing less.

When I was in Seoul, I enjoyed an exhibition in the Seoul Museum of History. It guided me through the country’s history from its beginnings to modern times, showing how it changed and what the people endured. It was designed as a journey, a path that led me not only through historical facts but also through a range of emotions.

Maybe it’s about the similarities between the events and experiences of the Korean and Polish people that allowed me to feel them more deeply and to empathize more. Just as Poland throughout its history was positioned between two powerful forces, Germany and Russia, Korea is squeezed between China and Japan. It did not have an easy life: wars, conquests, famines, political disruptions, pain, and suffering for hundreds of years. Yet, it has shown unbelievable resilience and the ability to rise again. Like Poland, Korea has resurrected multiple times in its history. This reveals the power of determination and belief, but also the limitless conviction that survival is the only option. Thanks to this, one day both nations created a reality, where they can not only survive but also grow and bloom. I think this is something that is actually happening now. We both bloom. Each in its own unique way.

Of course, we also have our struggles. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but when you get to know the broader context of historical events and apply the lens of empathy, you can see how much love is in every effort, how much sweat and blood is in every brick, word, and action.

I felt this ambition really strongly in Seoul, but there was something more, something that invited me not only to perceive it, but also to be inspired by it. There was something in this city that invited me to be better, to do better, however I define it. There was something that allowed me to think about expansion and fullness.

And I think this is the most precious souvenir I brought home from this trip.