Note to Readers:
I first wrote this story on November 6, 2015. Back then, it appeared as a short story on my website titled ‘Pancha Tatwa’ (Five Elements). What you’re about to read is the same piece, carried forward from that moment in time.
Segment One
The Stations of Desire
I. Station of Eternal Return
Flinders Street Station breathed like a living organ, a cathedral of rust and glass, exhaling crowds into the world, inhaling them again. I stand. Stand! Maybe not. Each train screamed in metallic throats—slowly entering to city scape tunnels, devouring and regurgitating passengers as if the city were a beast with infinite appetite. I was a ghost amid the living, waited, swallowed by rhythms I did not belong to, lungs filling with the smell of iron, diesel, and forgotten prayers. When mind splits that way and … the other! Time fractured; it did not flow, it convulsed. Its retrospect inside me as if time, flow, dime of the voltage was flowing in and out of…! strangeness!
Then she appeared.
Leaning against a pillar, effortless, sovereign, as if gravity itself deferred to her. Her body was pale/white/purple! {yet luminous}, as though she had yet bathed in the sun of another dimension. On her thigh: a tattoo, stark, alive. Ready to bark on my face-- 五行.
Wu Xing.
The characters (her milk-white) pulsed faintly under her skin, pounding, up and down, as if each stroke were a vein through which the universe circulated. I, my mind, uninvited, began to churn: Was this real? Was it memory? Or a hallucination emerging from the cracks of my consciousness? I pound myself on her palm/wrist and underneath every breath, !?how holy!? Somehow it stings, bite and spit me as a whole… her tongue of swallow cave, out of it I emerged. Emanated! The words of Nietzsche whispered: "Everything recurs eternally; everything has happened, and will happen again. You are witnessing the same scene you witnessed a thousand aeons ago." I witnessed it before! Before this exclamation. Where sentences emerge! Die and born again! Strang v-birth of (it was not just foam) the goddesses. I bowed, paid my obeisances to the v-birth of those peculiarities. It called {my name/or not} but it's warmth I felt...
"What does it mean?" I asked, my voice a fragile thread trembling in the station's roar. I didn't ask. I breathed metallic incantations. It resonated, in/out/within…. I spilt; I then roared... Miracle of ink! Alas! Its pounding never stopped. Gaze then piled over at my body, from her, from the Ink itself. Smells! Yes, it did. Was it did!? Or let's pretend that shallow things never happened. First it slithered out like ancient locked-up serpent, calling, hissing, proclaiming its territory. Did I hesitate? No, I pulled instead of its tail, tongue, scale-off from the body, now! Now! Shining its inner-faculty, maybe the brain… weighed! My palm asked for her weight, she then cast off his old skin, shaded {},.
Her lips curved into a smile that was both invitation and threat. "Gentleman… this is Wu Xing. The five phases. The rhythm of all becoming. Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water. Each consumes, each creates. Desire itself is scripture. You cannot read it and remain unchanged."
She traced the ink with the lightest touch of her palm, a ceremonial gesture, a bio-ritual that turned the station into temple. Nothing lived after. Nothing left after. The ceremony held/holds a thread of two souls—afar and a-close. Venerated-Circled creates thingness and nothingness between those gestures! I then circled, danced, maybe not—but surely, I did flange my nomadic arms up into the air. Dense, thick saliva-ink drooled its haunting mood toward me.
"May I?" I asked, but I already knew the answer.
"Come," she said, enveloping my hand against her skin. Ink warmed beneath my fingers, pulsing, alive. It was not hers; it was the universe itself, condensed into living flesh. My heart mirrored its rhythm: erratic, uncontainable, fascinated by catastrophe.
"How does it feel?" she asked, voice low, vibrating like a tuning fork. I answer not. But! I, of course, drooled back. Ink perplexed. Lika aged scroll, skin started to disperse its creases over my sanity. It came, it goes, then come again, dead! Alive! Then dead again.
"Amazing," I admitted, almost shivering. "Like holding a thousand universes in my hand."
Her eyes flared like twin flames. I fall back to those agni-kunda to relieve my own skin of doubt. "Then you are already mine," she whispered.
And then, as if the station itself had inhaled, bruised, time collapsed. Certainly, I stood there, but my legs were on run—to escape! Not to escape but to fall back to those v-birth. Pushed, crushed, smolder into flesh into fleshes. Her! mine! Both!? Clasped, it was a pure-blend of cosmic flare—the first birth of fire, roar of engines, the crush of bodies, the echo of announcements—all disappeared. There was only her thigh, the ink, and my consciousness bending into her orbit. I gravitated; she pulled me. I pushed myself; the mythical duality of push and pull. Pull & push, grab and leave, release (&) hold. Everything was felt and un-felt by body-mass, was heavy on my shoulder but her collar bone looks finely sharp, how delightful it is to hold that sight on her thigh. Her thigh now stands like acoustically crafted voices, screamed, flanked, bunked, tore every filament of reality but left only the temple of sacred thigh… her ink{ed} thigh.
II. Dialogue with Fire
Her hair fell in shadowed silk, brushing my cheek, erasing the line between touch and memory, her hands on my hair, though, it reminded me of my own linearity, closed, opened and in-between space of touch and memory. I help myself to spill under the floor of impermanence. It roared not of pain. Not to delight. But it roared like freed soul. No air was permitted to flow between our space of body... we were too closed, too far… too messy not to look at. The station itself was devouring her ink-thigh, touching her, brushing her skin, then I came, joined as if I was just given birth to behold those memories and touch.
"Do you believe in emotions, or in spirituality?" she asked, tilting her head with the careful balance of one who manipulates physics without touching it. As if I am holding the long-held threads of be-gone (or say airlifted) body too close to my chest. Inflate not, not to burst but to hold it too tight. She was kite of longed and chased. I held her. Her ink, Her body. Her space is within my space. She was full being completely vacant inside her, same goes to her ink. It was inked without being inked!
"Spirituality," I said. Then I corrected myself: "Spirituality with temptation."
She laughed—a sound that vibrated in the bones of the city. Trembled. Shaken by the verbal vocation. "Then you are mine. Only those touched by fire can speak this way."
Her gaze devoured me; you can hear crunching. and I realized I had never been in my own body. I was not stuffed inside of reality, was it blurred! Was it transparent, my whole body? I tried to bend my neck to see my own back, where I was feeling of growing wings. Maybe it was not the wings but the realization of the fly-ness. I was an observer trapped in my own obsession. Her ink had become a lens through which I perceived not her, but the world itself: the cycles, the repetitions, the eternal recurrence. Me. Her. The rest! You, your viminal dictation. She closed her eyes once.
"They call me fire," she whispered within herself.
"Yes. But fire without wood is nothing. Without your ink, you would be a hollow tree, amputated from eternity. Wood! It became eternal to itself, with it, you are the cycle itself. Creation and destruction. Mutual generation. Eternal recurrence."
She leaned sideways, resting her head upon my shoulder. She insisted on touching her again. I did. You can touch her. feel her fire! I froze. The frozen fire seems to be rising. Woods helped her to rise, maybe. The station dissolved in that wooden flair. I existed nowhere and everywhere at once. With her, without her.
Her eyes pierced me, not seeking to see, but to consume.
I wanted to ask: Do you see yourself as one of the five elements? Are you Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water? Or something beyond all naming?
Desire made the question impossible. Instead, she whispered: "Come. Let us wander to where peacocks shed their feathers."
I followed. Obedience was irrelevant. Desire had already devoured my freedom. There was no question of not following anymore. Then I followed. Her.
III. Wandering the City as Hallucination
The city bent and blurred behind us. We walked. Not really walking perse. I had been dragging! Answer no one asked and question no one would answer! Follower becomes the following and following becomes less dragging. Streetlights flickered like dying stars. Those amber of questioners were on a line of---{} and pavement dissolved into shadow and echo. The air smelled of wet asphalt, incense, and something unidentifiable—old magic, perhaps, or fear made fragrant, my own fragrance I did lost, but I somehow traced back to her own fragrance. It was more than smell but more than inhalation. I had to inhale my own losing fragrance.
"Do you know why I said peacock feathers?" she asked, glancing back, eyes catching the light of my fractured reality.
"No," I said, already knowing it was a question whose answer would unravel me.
"Because Krishna wore one. Because beauty is play. Because illusion—Maya—is more real than truth. The peacock flaunts vanity without apology. That is freedom. And temptation."
Her words were not speech. She was not telling or speaking but she was stretching her own variants into my subjective field, I enjoyed her presence. They were a pulse. A hallucination. Nietzsche whispered again: Or I imagined being God! Or Peacock with big p.
"Why are you bewitched by my tattoo?" she asked. "Others ink names, profanities, verses of love or death. Mine is only characters. Yet you stare as if it were the Book of Genesis itself."
"Because it is scripture," I said. "You are cosmos incarnate. The five phases on your skin. You are wheel and flame, water and shadow. You are all cycles converging."
She frowned, a flash of pity. "And you? What are you without me?"
The question hollowed me. I was ghost, outsider, philosopher, obsessed voyeur. I glanced, [touched], felt, but I realized: desire had become my ontology.
We entered a park. or nature's psyched ward? Leaves clung like deadly-whispers, lovely-whispers, prayers half-remembered. I recall, I was standing near Siṃhāsana—the place where dead/rotten gods place to worship. I joined both my hands inadvertently and prayed, to her thigh, where everything inscribed. She told me "While you pray, do not forget to touch it {her skin, her ink, her vision} …. Then, she [we] stooped, picked up a black feather.
"A crow's gift. For now, enough. Later, peacocks," she said.
She pressed it into my hand. I clutched it as relic, talisman, proof of existence.
IV. Theatre of Cruelty
Her apartment is reeked of incense, mildew, and something unnamable, like old magic, like ancient beastly roars. Books lay scattered: English, Mandarin, Sanskrit, forgotten alphabets. They were not sleeping; they were dance itself into her space/unit/flat… Words collided and screamed. A cracked mirror leaned against the wall, reflecting fragments of infinity. Where do I sit. I befuddled. There was lack of space while being plethora of space.
"Sit," she commanded.
I obeyed, feeling my body betray me, aware that the moment I did, I was already writing myself into her myth.
She lit a candle. Its flame shivered blue before stabilizing. Fire. Blue, blue, blue… fire.
"You want truth?" she said. "Wu Xing is not balance. It is conflict. Wood feeds Fire. Fire creates Earth. Earth bears Metal. Metal enriches Water. Water nourishes Wood. But also—Fire consumes Wood, Earth swallows Water. Everything devours everything. Creation needs cruelty."
"Then desire," I whispered, "is both birth and executioner of spirit? Are you going to execute me? Devour me?"
Her smile widened. "Exactly. Your saints lied. Even they carried fire secretly. They only pretended to calm the storm within, but I am not going to execute you, yet"
I thought of Schopenhauer's will, Kierkegaard's leap, Artaud's theatre of cruelty: the human body as sacrificial stage. It was all there. Triad of sentences.
"You are dangerous," I murmured.
"No," she said. "You are. Because you want to make me meaning."
She poured wine. Metallic taste. Metal. Yes, it tasted, later, before. I poured wine from her legs and collected it, drank it. Her legs, her toes, her lips... collectively. Then, it tasted like wood, fire, water and later it tasted like a body, became lethal. Flowing seeds. Flowing in-seeds and seeds. Taste of wine. Taste of metal. Taste of ink…
Feathers circled the candle like orbiting planets. Shadows twitched, spasmed like crucified angels. She dipped a crow feather into wine—no, blood—and drew a line over Wu Xing.
The tattoo pulsed. Alive. Scripture. Wound. Universe.
"All harmony is a lie," she whispered. "Balance devours itself."
Candle spat blue flame.
Blue.
Blue.
Blue.
And white. White seeds of all seeds.
Air thickened with iron and feathers. She pressed her face near mine. "Do not ask. Asking kills. Following keeps alive."
I inhaled. I ceased being myself.
Segment Two
The Ritual of Elements
V. Ritual of the Elements
The candle's flame trembled, blue and alive, white and cream, cream and white, alive and blue, as if inhaling the room. Shadows coiled around the walls, it coiled our body, coiled like Kundalini and went upwards. Vanished! No, it had yet not vanished, cast by the feathers she had arranged in a perfect, impossible circle. No one wanted to cross its circle. No one wanted to outcast its shadow. Each feather seemed to breathe, pulsed, pulsating, gaged, each shadow whispered secrets, like in a pressed voice, I could not comprehend. I realized I had become simultaneously actor, audience, and playwright in a ritual I had no voice for it. Had she lost her voice? Had I pressed her throat too hard? No, the voice became the transformation of delightful pain. Pain and just pain. Sweet pain. It circled our shadows and let us play inside of it.
She dipped a crow feather again into the wine—or was its blood? —and traced a line across her thigh over Wu Xing. The ink pulsed like a living heartbeat. My own heart synchronized, a drum in the theatre of cruelty she had constructed.
"All harmony is a lie," she whispered, voice fragile yet violent. "Balance devours itself. Creation requires cruelty. Desire must wound if it exists."
I thought of Nietzsche: And suddenly, she was both destruction and revelation. It was this sentence. Repeated. Who cares. Everything must be repeated.
I noticed the candle flame elongate, stretching into impossible shapes. I could see the elements manifesting themselves: a swirl of fire twisting into water, metal dissolving into earth, wood sprouting from shadow. Each movement pulsed with a rhythm that was ancient and familiar, as though I had seen it before in dreams, in past lives, in a manuscript I had never written. Her body, her legs, her thigh... /everything bundled itself into One-pleasure/
She leaned closer, pressing her temple to mine. "Do you see it now? The rhythm of becoming One? The cycle that kills and births, eternally?"
"Yes," I whispered, though words felt meaningless. "I see… it. I feel… it. I am…"
"Nothing," she finished my sentence. "You are nothing until you surrender to it. Until you touch the wound that creates."
I realized she was right. I had been living in linear time, believing myself observer. Now, every second was recursive, a spiral collapsing into itself. Each breath I took might have been one I had already taken a thousand times, each desire a repetition from aeons ago, each thought a fragment of an eternal text.
VI. Meta-Hallucination
I became aware of another presence: myself, observing myself. Watching myself. Touching herself. Aware of her. aware of myself.
I was writing this even as it occurred. Words poured into the air, materializing as whispers in the room. We breathed. Air becomes pleasure. I saw them fluttering around the candle, tiny ghosts of ink, fragments of sentences that had not yet been conceived. I realized with terror and awe that my mind had become a theatre, and she was both director and performer, fire and audience, question and answer. Being and nonbeing, Being with small B or the big B. She collapsed between two B's.
I tried to pull back, to find a margin of reality. But the room had no corners. It became dimension less. Shadows grew teeth. Her teeth. My teeth. Now we have become carnivorous. Candle flames became eyes. Feathers slithered across the floor like living serpents. Wu Xing was no longer a tattoo. It had entered the air, the walls, the blood pulsing through my veins. It penetrated everywhere. Inside me. Outside me. Thrashing and pounding Wu Xing to every ounce of my existence.
She whispered, "Do you understand now? Every act, every thought, every desire has its twin. Its shadow. Its recurrence. We are bound, you and I, by cycles you cannot see."
I nodded, though nodding was an illusion. Whether I nodded or not, my body no longer obeyed me. I felt infinite and infinitesimal simultaneously, as though the city, the park, the river, and even Flinders Street Station had merged into a single metaphysical construct, with her standing at its center. Everything hustles there. Come to join us. The universe joined her toes, and we drank of her. drank her every drop of it…. Existence became Her.
I remembered the Upanishads, where the self is an illusion, Maya. I remembered Orpheus, who lost Eurydice by turning back. I realized I had been staring at her Wu Xing tattoo like a man trying to hold back eternity. And perhaps that was the point: eternity cannot be held, only surrendered too. I surrendered my I to her.
VII. Wine and Blood
She poured wine, and I drank. Let's say we drank together. The taste was metallic, sharp, and almost sacrificial otherworldly. I felt the iron of it trace along my bones, awaken something primal. It ran through, filling every conduit of my body, and mind. She smiled, watching me. "Metal is not just element—it is judgment. It cuts through illusion. It carves reality from chaos."
She took another feather, fanned the candlelight across it. Shadows danced. We started to slither like serpent, or we became that one. I realized they were no longer dancing randomly; they were enacting the Wu Xing cycle itself. Coiled together, forming Oneness itself. Fire consumed wood. Wood grew from water. Water dissolved metal. Metal split earth. Earth buried fire. Each shadow was an eternal recurrence, a theatre of elemental cruelty and in that cruelty, we jumped right in, making it messier. Hugged, coiled, touched, kissed…
I whispered, "I feel it… all of it… the cycle…"
"Good," she said. Her eyes glinted, reflecting the candle flame and some secret star. "Feel it. Do not try to understand. Understanding kills. Following keeps alive."
The air thickened, iron and smoke and something indefinable. The elements of the earth, the ink, her touch, her laughter, her thigh, it is live poem... we created the poem of everlasting cruelty. The room pulsed as if breathing, alive with the rhythm of Wu Xing. I felt my skull crack—not in pain, but in revelation. Does it reveal everything! Sure, it did. The city outside, the station, the river, the streets, even my own past and future selves were absorbed into this moment, this theatre, this hallucination.
I realized that in this room, I had become both mortal and infinite, killer and killed, breather and breathed, observer and observed, playwright and actor. Every thought, every desire, every pulse was already written, yet I wrote it again. Wrote again with the newfound pulse of her veins. Now, she felt it too. Screamed. Careless, aroused with pain, vain, vitality, she jumped, slithered, we coiled, bite, tongue sharp. Slither into every pore of each other's body.
VIII. River of Dissolution
Or perhaps we were at the river. Or perhaps it was always the river, the station, the park, the apartment collapsing into one. The Yarra slid silently, carrying reflections that were not mine. That reminded me of Woking, the library next her building, university…
She walked barefoot, arms stretched like crucifixion without cross. "This river forgets everything," she said. "Ashes, secrets, desires. It carries but does not keep. That is why water is last. Dissolution."
She dipped her hand into the current, droplets shimmering like stars, and extended her palm to me. "Touch it."
Cold water against warm flesh. The current entered me, dissolving, hollowing, teaching. My mind splintered. I saw multiple versions of her, multiple versions of myself, multiple rivers flowing through infinite time. Each river a potential future, a past, a hallucination. Sting! Sting! Bite… Again... touched, howled.
"Would you still follow if I dissolved here?" she asked.
I tried to answer. Words dissolved. Thought dissolved. Only surrender remained.
"You men who seek spirituality with temptation," she said, "you want fire without scars, water without drowning, freedom without nausea."
Her lips brushed mine. Not a kiss but drowning. A merger of elements, body, and mind. I opened my eyes; the river carried only absence and memory. We have flown together. No, she did. I stayed. Or I was flowing, letting her stay there, following—flowing to … {}
It came like a river, dripping every dip of her/mine to One. Became one pure bliss, tired.
IX. Meta-Philosophical Hallucinations
I saw myself writing about these events even as they do not occur. It has occurred many times before. Before or after it was vain to conceive. The words hovered in the air, forming glyphs that were both Chinese and Sanskrit, both English and unspoken thought. I realized I was author, character, and universe simultaneously.
Shadows moved independently of light. The candle flame drew circuits of fire on the ceiling. Each feather became a symbol, each drop of saliva/sperms a syllable in an eternal manuscript.
I thought of Nietzsche: I felt chaos, I felt star, I felt the entire Wu Xing cycle pulsing through my veins.
I thought of Artaud: theatre must be cruelty; the audience must bleed with the actor. We were actors or she was a professor of theatre. I realized I was audience and actor, bleeding with her, trapped in the ritual, the hallucination, the eternity. She tapped me on my shoulder, I moved. She didn't move. She became still, stagnant like a moving river. Yes, stagnant even feels moved, moved feels still like in that time.
Time no longer mattered. Past and future were mirrors folding into this moment. The station, the park, the apartment, the river—they were not places but states of consciousness. Embedded into our bodies.
Segment Three
The River of Infinite Mirrors
X. River of Infinite Mirrors
The river no longer flowed in ordinary time. It was a river of mirrors, reflecting not faces but possibilities: each ripple showing a past I had not lived, a future I could not yet imagine, a life I might never have. It moved backward, forward, side by side, every direction it went. I glimpsed her walking beside me, yet also far away, across centuries, across rooms and streets I had never seen. She was the same, yet not the same, embodying Wu Xing itself.
I reached out to touch the water. My hand met hers—but also a thousand hands, all ghostly, all mine, all hers. Wood sprouted from the riverbed as Fire danced upon its surface, Earth trembled beneath, Metal split stones, Water dissolved everything. The elements performed their eternal recurrence, a theatre crueler than any cruelty I had ever imagined.
She smiled. "Do you see it now? Do you understand that life itself is a ritual? Are that desire and destruction inseparable? That you are both actor and audience, creator and creation?"
I nodded, though nodding meant nothing. Words were useless. Thought was illusion. Only surrender remained.
The river whispered, a language older than any human speech. I realized I was translating it not with mind, but with my bones, with my blood, with my breath. Each droplet carried eternity. Each reflection, a version of me and her and the universe itself.
XI. Eternal Recurrence
I remembered Nietzsche: I saw myself and her in previous lives, previous stations, previous rivers. I saw my own hands holding hers, yet in every iteration, I failed, I loved, I lost. Each failure is a recurrence, each success a mirage.
The thought terrified me and exhilarated me. I was eternal, yet mortal. Infinite, yet bound by the limits of flesh. Each breath was repetition, each heartbeat a drum in the theatre of elemental cruelty she commanded.
She touched my face. "Do you see? This is the last temptation. To surrender to recurrence, to desire, to destruction. To embrace the element that consumes you and call it love."
I understood. Not with mind. Not with memory. But with every molecule of my being.
XII. Meta-Philosophical Hallucinations
I became aware of another layer: myself as author, writing these events even as they unfolded. Words appeared in the air, hovering like glowing glyphs: English, Sanskrit, Chinese, symbols I could not name. Each word a feather, each sentence a ripple on the river. Everything recurring page after page the words, her, mine... it is reoccurring pages after pages. Patient readers! Do some patience.
I realized I was both narrating and experiencing, collapsing all dimensions of consciousness. Her Wu Xing tattoo pulsed not just on her thigh, but in my perception, in the air, in the shadows, in the flames.
I saw the station, the apartment, the park, the river all fold into one impossibly complex Möbius loop of space-time. I saw myself following her, losing myself, writing myself, surrendering myself.
Artaud's theatre of cruelty became literal: I felt my soul flay, my desires bleed, my consciousness stretch to breaking. Nietzsche's eternal recurrence was enacted not just in thought, but in body, in world, in shadow, in ink. The Upanishads whispered:
And I laughed, a sound swallowed by the river.
XIII. Disappearance
She dissolved.
I saw her turn into fire, smoke, water, wind, stone, feather. My hands grasped emptiness. My voice called her name, but words dissolved like candle smoke. I realized she had never been wholly corporeal. She was cycling, she was tempted, she was Wu Xing, she was my hallucination and my destiny, and she was real.
The river carried her reflection, then carried mine, then carried neither. Time, memory, desire, everything dissolved into the current.
I screamed or thought I screamed. Perhaps she screamed, or perhaps the river did. There was no distinction between scream and silence. Between self and others. Between observer and observed.
And yet I followed.
XIV. Soliloquy of the Outsider
I write—or have written—or will write this already. The act of writing is itself a hallucination, a temptation, a repetition. Each word is blood and water, fire and shadow, metal and earth. Wu Xing is not tattooed on her thigh alone; it is inscribed on the universe, and on me, and on this manuscript, and on the reader who will someday, perhaps, read these words.
She is everywhere. She is nowhere. She is the last temptation: to surrender to that which destroys, and to love it anyway.
I see her in the river, a child tracing symbols in sand; an old woman laughing on a distant street; a stranger stepping from tomorrow's train. Each possibility is real. Each is illusion. Each is necessary.
Maya. Eternal recurrence. Theatre of cruelty. Desire as scripture.
I realize I will follow her through every permutation of reality, every folding of time, every hallucination of self. I write this because writing is the only act of containment possible. Containment, however, is illusion. I have already been uncontained.
XVI. Postscript: The Infinite Loop
I see the station again. Flinders Street, the park, the apartment, the river. They fold into one another. I see myself following, writing, dissolving. She appears, disappears, reappears, each iteration more profound, more cruel, more beautiful.
And I realize: there is no end. Only recurrence, temptation, surrender, and the act of witnessing it.
I close my eyes. I open them. She is there. She is gone. The river flows. The candle burns. Wu Xing pulses.
And I follow.
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