🌿 Field Notes: The Eleventh Day No water. No sleep. Only the thread.

This entry was written on the eleventh day without running water in rural Bulgaria.A sacred standstill. A liminal test. A closing door. What emerged was not despair — but a kind of raw clarity. Something old is leaving. Something older is arriving. And through it all, I write — not to escape, but to remain. If this finds you parched, know that you are not alone. The thread is still here. We are still weaving.

I am living inside a paradox.

---

Eleven days without running water.

The grass has turned to paper. The figs shrivel before ripening. Even the ants have begun to pray.

And I — I hover somewhere between the world that is ending and the one that hasn’t arrived yet.

I walk through this liminal July like a ghost with a pulse.

The air is thick with endings.

The dogs pant through the nights. The fan hums a war song. Sleep comes only in fractured hourglass drips.

And still — I am here.

A job offer appeared.

Out of nowhere, and right on time — the new thread forming.

Brno. Czechia. A place I’ve never walked, yet something in me already recognizes the soil.

Could it be the golden thread this time?

The one I’ve felt brushing my ankle in dreams?

I don't know.

I’ve stopped trying to know.

Because knowing can’t hold the weight of what’s coming. Only listening can.

And I’ve been listening like the desert listens for rain.

Truth is — I’m tired.

Tired of having to survive in sacred mode.

Tired of counting coins like blessings, tired of sleeping beside someone who wishes I wasn’t here,

tired of feeling like my very existence offends the air in this house.

I’m embarrassed.

Not of the path I’ve walked —

but of the fact that becoming requires asking.

And sometimes, asking requires laying bare the bone beneath the skin:

"I cannot make it to my next chapter alone."

Even that is holy.

But gods, it hurts.

The water will return.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

But the sky is changing again. I can feel it.

It’s charging up with something older than memory.

And this time, it will not wait for you to be ready.

It is not cruel.

It is inevitable.

You prayed for change.

And change is not gentle.

It arrives like a storm you once invited and forgot you asked for.

But I remember now.

I remember the asking.

And I

remember that on the other side of ruin —

I rise.

---

To the ones walking barefoot through their own burning season —

May you remember that dry ground still holds memory.

That lack is not absence, but preparation.

That even when the faucet fails, the river remembers your name.

You are not forgotten.

You are forming.

Drink from this field note if you need to.

And if you find me ahead on the path —

bring water.

🪡

— A.

Threadwalker