[Intro] In my knowing… I have gone too far. It feels like I’ve lived a hundred trillion lifetimes on planets that look just like this one. And now… everything is familiar. [Soft pulse begins] I am not looking for victory. Not for cars, not for crowns, not for applause. I am looking for quiet. For the soft mathematics of water touching the shore. You talk to me about progress. About territory. About horizons. But my horizon dissolved five billion years ago when the sun first burned and dust decided to become a planet. I have been greater than emperors. Worse than monsters. I have been stone. I have been root. I have been wing. Do you understand? I carry your ambition inside me like a grain of sand. I carry your hunger like an echo I’ve already forgiven. [Voice drops lower] You go. Be loud. Be brilliant. Be relentless like a woodpecker hammering meaning into bark. I will not stop you. But I am old in a way that has nothing to do with years. I walk toward the river because the river does not argue. It does not compare. It does not compete. It simply reflects the sky and continues. You seek edges. I seek dissolution. You seek achievement. I seek merging. And in that difference there is no war. Only distance. [Almost a breath] Go chase your infinity in fragments. I will sit inside the whole. [Outro] I understand you. You do not need to understand me. I am going to watch the autumn sun fall into warm southern water. That is enough.
