Go here for Season 1 of Isle of Stories
Kairos, aka the personification of Opportunity, is also one of two words the ancient Greek used for Time. While Chronos relates to sequential time, Kairos embodies time in a qualitative way: a fleeting moment that is either captured or lost forever.
The island was located a five-hour ferry ride from the mainland, they said. The ferry set off just before dawn with only a few people on board. Perhaps it was the weather, he thought, or perhaps that creepy sense of foreboding came included with the ticket.
“The truth is always a powerful weapon but it’s not necessarily the most effective one.”
Dear Vladimir,
Though I don’t make a habit out of writing letters to heads of state, I’m no stranger to dabbling in some light correspondence with powers that be. But you see, my previous pen pal couldn’t cope any longer and his successor appears to be at least a wee bit hip to the writing on the wall. Moreover, you’ve been on my mind quite a bit recently, and since we’re no friends on Facebook I thought it only appropriate to address you in a timeless fashion such as this.
You know there are days where I think we’re all just going about it completely the wrong way. Yes, the Internet is bringing us all closer in ways your late grandfather would have issues to comprehend, and that would be cause for celebration if the flipside of it wasn’t the incessant, inescapable maelstrom of information that tags along with it.
Being connected nowadays also means a daily chore of weeding through updates, coupons, unsolicited junk like cute cats I don’t care for, job openings I cruelly can’t or wistfully won’t fulfill – and let us not forget that weird uncle of electronic correspondence: the Act Now Viagra offer. We’re all getting wired to swallow it whole, regurgitate it with our own inimitable twist, or just copy-pasting “What he said” when inspiration is lacking fundamentally.
It felt like waking up inside an egg, and maybe that’s exactly what it was. My head was clear but I remembered all of it. And while I couldn’t see it, I sensed its presence. I felt no lips moving yet we talked.
“You want to go back, don’t you?” was the first thing it told me.
I’ll spare you trying to describe what it sounded like. I couldn’t do the sensation justice and would only come across as the kind of person you’d want to shut up unless you’d been there.
“Yes,” I thought – or said; the difference was blurry but the intention so clear. “Yes, I wanna go back.”
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The man was in his exit years, no longer able to add much of significance to anyone or the world around him. A world on which it seemed he left no marks worth mentioning. He was reaching the point where his only legacy would be the words about to be etched into his gravestone, paid with the funds he’d duly been saving for the occasion.
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There once was a man,
Very set in his ways
A bit of a bore
You could tell by his face
He always worked vigorously,
Never spent frivolously
Neither drank nor took drugs
He refrained from debauchery
What most men would yearn for, our man didn’t crave
The common and tawdry he perceived only abstract
Thus a sin or a dozen he could easily waive,
As part of the rules of his life’s daily contract
Rarely letting the good times roll,
He entertained but a solitary vice
Which in the end, would still suffice,
To make him cough up the final toll
“Het begin van het einde.” B. Didderen, Café ‘t Pothuiske.
Unfinished Bits 