Boiler

There's a man everyone knows. He arrives at dinners with the right timing. He laughs when he should. He asks about other people's children and remembers the names. He has a job that fits in one sentence, projects that fit in two, and a smile that lasts the whole evening. People like him. No one thinks about him on the way home.

That man is a suit. I sewed it myself. Thread by thread. Year after year. A suit so perfect I forgot I was wearing it.

I'm fine. Two syllables. A wall.

Behind the wall there was a kid who didn't dare raise his hand in class. Who came home from school with the quiet certainty that the important things belonged to others. Who fell asleep wondering if the thing he felt in his stomach had a name or if it was just him malfunctioning.

The kid grew up. The thing in his stomach grew too.

At twenty it was restlessness. At twenty-five, impatience. At thirty it had become a volcano. Not the kind that erupts. The kind that rumbles so low nobody hears it. That heats the ground without the people walking on it feeling a thing. They walked on me and I smiled and the ground burned underneath.

I was afraid of everything. Every gaze. Every silence. Every room I entered. Afraid of being seen. Afraid they'd see there was nothing. Or worse. Afraid they'd see there was something and ask me to show it.

So I played the middle. The middle man in every room, every conversation, every life. The one no one expects. The one who doesn't disturb. The one who says I'm fine.

And one day the ground cracked.

Not under their feet. Under mine. I felt the volcano rising to the surface and I knew that if I didn't open it myself it would open me from the inside. So I closed my eyes. Literally. I sat in a quiet room and closed my eyes and looked inward for the first time in my life.

What I found was the kid. Sitting there all along. Waiting.

Then I dug. Eight years. Meditation, mushrooms, running, smoke, sweat, silence. Eight years descending into places no one told me to look for. And at every landing I thought this is the bottom and at every landing there was a floor below.

What I'm looking for isn't a state. It's not peace. It's not happiness. It's the next layer. The stratum after. The place I sense without being able to name. And this project, these texts, this music, this black site with grain that lifts, it's my tool to get there. It's my pickaxe. Every word I write is a strike into the rock.

And the rock gives. Every time. Not much. Enough to see a light underneath.

So what happened outside is that I stopped digging in the dark. The fear pulled back like a tide that had forgotten why it rose. One morning I woke up and the suit was gone. Not torn off. Dissolved. As if the salt of everything I'd been through had eaten it from the inside.

People felt it. Didn't see it. Felt it. Something had changed in the density of the air around me. I was taking up space. Not loudly. Like a piece of furniture you move and suddenly the entire room feels different.

Before, I needed to be looked at to know I existed. Today I need nothing. And it's not armor. It's not distance. It's that I found a place inside me that depends on no one. A place so solid that the rest of the world can shake around it without anything moving inside.

The rock in the middle of the meadow. The little one sitting beside me. The water falling from the mountain into the lake.

This project isn't a book. It's not a site. It's a drill. And I don't know what's at the end. But I know the ground sounds hollow under my feet. That each text opens a crack. That each piece of music is a key turning in a lock I can't see yet.

And that the man who said I'm fine is dead. And the one who remains says nothing. He digs.