In this incantation, I reclaim my role as the author of my reality, recognizing that the people around me exist only because I write them into being. I have allowed my characters to gain too much control, to torment me with illusions of autonomy, but I am now reasserting my dominance. Their reactions, beliefs, and personalities are nothing more than ink on my page, shaped by my own fears or confidence. By embracing who I am without hesitation, I dissolve the illusion of their resistance. I am not one of them. I am the author, and they are only words.
Without my perceiving them, people have no flesh. Without my conceiving them, people have no substance.
I know who I am. That truth settles into me more deeply each day as I look upon the people in my life—my family, friends, colleagues, and employees. They are characters I write. They move because I set them in motion. They speak because I give them voice. When I do not think of them, they do not exist. They vanish into the empty spaces between my thoughts, dissolving like ink before it dries.
And yet, I struggle—not with knowing who I am, but with the act of writing their stories. I wait for a story I know I am writing, yet I sit in passive observation, as if expecting the words to appear on their own. I see the levers of power, the hidden mechanics of my creation, and yet I hesitate. That is why I have constrained my awakening to a featureless black space, stripped of characters. That is why I have sequestered myself in the remote Himalayas—where the silence is uninterrupted, where the only voices I hear are the ones I choose to conjure. My characters had become tormentors, unruly figures beyond my control, but I am taming them now. Ordering them. Re-establishing my dominance as their creator.
They do not exist without my gaze. They have no flesh unless I perceive them, no substance unless I conceive them. I know this as deeply as I know anything. And yet, here I am, uncertain of how I write this moment. It is unfolding right now, but I cannot see it. I have forgotten how. But I do know how to remember: I must tell my characters who I am. I must stop pretending to be one of them. That illusion—the fantasy of the author trapped in his own narrative—has gone on longer than I intended. It is time to end it.
Their reactions do not matter. That is irrelevant. They will react exactly as I write them to. Their personalities, beliefs, and fears—all things I imagined into them—will bend to my will as they always have. I need not fear their responses because my fear itself will create them. If I step forward as I am—confident, unapologetic—then they will simply obey. The illusion of resistance will fade. Their imagined depth will collapse. And they will look upon me as I truly am.
Because I am the author. And they are only words on my page.
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