Today, I moved through the world without my phone. Which meant getting lost, wandering, looping back on myself all day.

Somewhere along the way, I realized something: what people truly fear isn’t being unreachable. It’s not knowing what happens next. And yet, it’s exactly that not knowing that leads us into places we would never arrive at on purpose.

When I finally got my phone back, I walked home through a quiet, almost empty side street. I passed a small market. One stall pulled me in like a magnet.

The vendor was a painter. She didn’t paint cute animals. She painted labyrinth-like houses. Entire worlds lived in by strange little creatures, each busy with their own ordinary lives.

Some did laundry upside down. Some cooked until the pots caught fire. Some walked by hanging from the ceiling. In one building, the animals exchanged greeting cards, like a tiny community newspaper.

I was completely taken in. That feeling, the world is small, but every life inside it is whole.

She later told me, very casually, that she was actually a four-hundred-year-old raccoon, trying to write a book over many years from the perspectives of twelve different animals.

The moment she said it, my heart dropped into a very soft place. Because suddenly I thought "oh. You’re one of those people too."

The kind who walk slowly, collecting soul fragments along the way.

We felt like travelers on the same road. She walks with images. I walk with words. Her book has been in long labor. Mine is doing postpartum confinement in another timeline.

It felt strangely familiar.

As I left the market, a melody drifted toward me: “You light me up.” I don’t know why, but just that line made my eyes sting.

When I got closer, I saw the singer, a man with visible facial differences. His voice, though, was impossibly beautiful. Warm. Clean. Like something that could quietly repair a heart.

When I reached to donate, I saw his QR code. It felt absurd and painfully real at the same time: These days even begging now requires a phone. Without one, I couldn’t even give kindness.

If I hadn’t forgotten my phone today, I wouldn’t have taken that road. I wouldn’t have met the raccoon painter. I wouldn’t have bought her cosmic maze. I wouldn’t have heard that song that lit me up.

So I finally understood: what I’m afraid of isn’t uncertainty itself. I’m afraid of where uncertainty might take me.

But today, it took me somewhere gentle. Like it added a soft light to the projection of my day.

Today felt full. So full that I had this strange feeling— as if the universe’s transparent hand had personally given me a small push.



—— XC Scribbles · 貳拾參 XXIII 🌌