VOICES - before it was written

Francis Rosenfeld

These are spoken fragments—reflections, passages, and pieces of stories that have not yet settled. Some of them have written forms. Some of them point to places that already exist. Some of them are the only version. francisrosenfeld.substack.com

  1. Angel: A New Novel by Francis Rosenfeld

    7h ago

    Angel: A New Novel by Francis Rosenfeld

    I’m delighted to announce that my new novel, Angel, is now available on Amazon. A story of wonder, mystery, and the fragile connections that shape our lives, Angel is the latest addition to my growing library of fiction. The book will soon be arriving on Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other major distribution channels. I hope you’ll join me on this new journey. #Angel #NewRelease #Books #Novel #FrancisRosenfeld This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    10 min
  2. Rachel: Reading from The Garden - To Heal

    4d ago

    Rachel: Reading from The Garden - To Heal

    “Are you sure it was the leaf?” Rahima asked, while stirring the pot of blue liquid to get the color evenly distributed through the fibers. “I don’t know.” Cimmy scratched her head, unconvinced. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell.” She frowned and changed her mind. “What else could it be?” “But why would placing a leaf on your wound make it better?” Rahima asked. “It doesn’t make any sense!” “I know, I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” Cimmy pondered, working through her logical explanation out loud. “Maybe some of the plant’s substance fused into my skin,” she said tentatively. “That’s crazy talk, even for you,” Rahima shook her head, appalled. “There,” she grabbed onto her friend’s arm and held on to it. “Am I leaving part of my substance in your arm, too?” Cimmy thoughtfully considered her answer. “You are not actually going to answer that, are you?” Rahima protested, exasperated. “Why would that be so hard to believe?” Cimmy asked, puzzled at the reaction. “Because it’s crazy,” Rahima stated the obvious. “Maybe it only works with leaves,” Cimmy walked back her hypothesis. “Maybe it doesn’t work at all,” Rahima returned the more plausible response. “Maybe not,” Cimmy relented. They watched the pot in silence, stirring occasionally to prevent the color from settling on the bottom. Cimmy eventually blurted out. “But, say, if it were possible, wouldn’t you want to try it? What’s it going to hurt? It’s not like you’re not hurt already!” “Maybe I don’t want to spend three weeks delirious, hoping I don’t die from the fever. Who knows how those leaves might foul up your blood?” Rahima asked, concerned. “How would they foul up my blood?” Cimmy continued the flow of logic. “With whatever they might get inside your wound?” “So you’re saying they can blend some of their essence into my blood?” Cimmy picked up the logical dissonance. “Yes! No!” Rahima got all turned around inside her head. “You don’t understand!” “How don’t I understand?” Cimmy continued, unrelenting. “Either it lends its essence to your blood or it doesn’t.” “It’s not that simple,” Rahima protested. “We do know things that can turn your blood foul, but we do not know things that can heal your wound.” “What’s the difference?” Cimmy went on, unperturbed. “For one, I’ve seen blood turn foul. I haven’t seen a wound healed by a leaf.” “Until now,” Cimmy corrected her. “Until now,” Rahima agreed in principle. “If that’s what happened, that is.” “What else could it be?” Cimmy restarted the logical cycle. “What if it’s not and you could have made it worse?” “What if my blood ran foul if I didn’t use it?” “What if your blood ran foul because you did?” Rahima offered the gloom and doom alternative. “Besides,” she continued, frowning, “there is no way to verify that. Unless you hurt yourself again.” “I’m not going to hurt myself on purpose!” Cimmy protested. “Well, then we’ll have to wait for the next time you do it on accident and try to see if the leaf makes your blood turn foul,” Rahima continued in the most natural tone. “Rahima!”Cimmy couldn’t believe her ears. “Remind me not to get on your bad side!” “I’m just saying,” the latter replied, trying to appease her. “How else are you going to find out?” “Maybe we can boil the leaves and drink the water, see what happens,” Cimmy continued, inspired by the blue liquid brewing in the cauldron. “You’re going to poison yourself!” Rahima exploded. “So you agree that it will do something to my body,” Cimmy continued. “So would a knife, but you’re not going to swallow that either,” Rahima retorted. The logic had come to a stopping point, so they continued to watch the pot in silence. A few minutes later, Cimmy couldn’t help herself. “How does it poison me, exactly?” “Here,” Rahima offered her a ladle of blue dye. “Drink this!” “No!” Cimmy shook her head. “Why not? How is it different? It’s a boiled plant!” “But it didn’t heal my wound. It stained my shirt,” Cimmy replied. “Maybe the other leaf can stain your shirt, too. You haven’t tried,” Rahima argued. Cimmy acknowledged her friend’s objection and put testing the leaf for dye pigments on her list of things to do. “But it also healed my wound.” “You don’t know that,” Rahima disagreed, stubbornly. “But say it did. How would you be able to tell apart the plants that heal your wound from the plants that stain your shirt?” “How do you tell apart the plants you eat from the plants you use to make baskets?” “I don’t know, you grow up with them, you get taught by your parents,” Rahima hesitated. “How do you think they figured it out the first time? I mean, somebody must have figured it out at some point.” “I guess starvation wises you up really fast,” Rahima frowned. “So does blood sickness.” Cimmy’s eyes turned dark suddenly. Life was harsh and cruel in their village, which had been visited by loss more times than the girl wanted to remember, and every time it did a deep sense of helplessness and inevitability set in, a sense that they were all slaves to an implacable fate. Maybe it was a fool’s errand, but, according to the widely held opinion, she was a fool already. It wasn’t like she had a reputation to maintain. Reputation, Cimmy thought, was incredibly damaging to a person’s creativity. It kept one locked into a state of being one didn’t belong to anymore, like a tree whose growth is stunted so it continues to fit in a dish. What good is your reputation when fate comes for you? That said, she blessed crazy with both hands, wrapped the sky blue gossamer veil around her head in an even more eccentric manner, if that were possible, and planned to go out into the fields and figure out the plants that heal from the plants that stain your shirt like her life depended on it. She had absolutely no idea how she was going to do that, of course. “Maybe you can go blindfolded and hope to stumble upon them,” Rahima offered, half jokingly. “You think that would work?” Cimmy asked seriously. Rahima shook her head in dismay and pulled out the blue cloth, which had finally achieved the desired hue, out of the cauldron. “Do you think you can find other plants to get more colors?” she asked, pleased with the results, and went to spread the cloth on thistles to allow it to dry. “At least we won’t run the risk of poisoning ourselves while doing that,” Cimmy thought. Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    7 min
  3. Pearl: I Looked for You - a love poem

    Jun 5

    Pearl: I Looked for You - a love poem

    In the woods, by the lake, on the streets, I looked for you. In the faces and gestures of strangers. In songs long forgotten, in the smell of your favorite foods. In libraries and records, I looked for you. In the waves on the shore, in the black moonless night. In the sunset, in the thunderstorms, in the snow falling on Christmas Eve I looked for you. Beyond sanity, beyond life and death, through the bowels of the earth, I looked for you. So don’t tell me I didn’t look for you. I looked everywhere. Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash Music - Murmur by Lost Ghosts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    1 min
  4. Elena: Listen to a new chapter from The Garden - The Good Herbs

    Jun 3

    Elena: Listen to a new chapter from The Garden - The Good Herbs

    […]Cimmy washed the shirt repeatedly for the next several days, but the blue was there to stay. In light of the disaster du jour, Cimmy had another heretical thought, the kind that had reliably gotten her in trouble since she had started taking her first steps into the world. A shirt that was stained blue was not acceptable, but if she managed to make the entire shirt blue, that would probably be alright. She wasn’t given to situational analysis, and therefore she did not contemplate the impact of being the only person with a blue shirt in a village full of tan ones, so she went back out into the field and picked a large bundle of the weeds with blue flowers, took them home and boiled them together with her shirt. Problem solved. She was surprised to find a knotted bundle of threads at the bottom of the pot after she threw away the blue water, threads a lot softer and silkier than the scratchy thistle fibers her shirt was made of, and they were all bright blue, like the sky and the waters, and looked so beautiful that they didn’t seem to belong to this world. There were no such colors and such softness in her world, and while looking at them and feeling their softness caress her fingers, she wondered whether she didn’t actually venture into that dream world of hers after all. She spent all afternoon removing the bits of woody stem still stuck in the wondrous fibers, and then she unraveled the knots and split the sturdy bundles into thinner and thinner threads, until they were lighter than the breeze and so thin she could barely see them. When she was done, she ended up with a lot of thread, so she stretched it on the loom and made a piece of cloth out of it, finer than gossamer and lighter than the breeze, a cloth whose color seemed to have been drawn directly from the sky.[…] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    11 min
  5. Eliza: Oracle - a poem about time

    Jun 3

    Eliza: Oracle - a poem about time

    Dreams are our futures sharing with our pasts, and we their interpreters, frustrating the first and misunderstanding the latter. We rewrite our pasts every time something changes while pretending to live in a present that doesn’t exist. See? It didn’t even last one second. How many selves do we churn through over the course of a lifetime, and are any of them truly us, or is there no us at all? Photo by The 50mm Snaps on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    26 sec
  6. Ethan: A Reader Recently Asked

    Jun 1

    Ethan: A Reader Recently Asked

    Q: Why do mirrors appear so often in your work? I didn’t notice that myself, so whatever it is, it must dwell below the threshold of reason. Ask yourself: what does a mirror do? It transforms the three-dimensional image of a subject into a flat representation that looks like it, but lacks substance and depth. A mirror is to an object like a memoir is to a person’s real life: no matter how much detail is rendered in it, it can never capture the essence of what being that person was truly like. Q: What is the difference between memory and imagination? I don’t think there is a fundamental difference. The images and concepts they create in your mind are just as real whether they’re a replica of a place or situation you encountered, or a manufactured reality you constructed. The power of their emotional content is the same, and they both have the ability to awaken your intuition and spur you to action. This lack of distinction is precisely what enables visualization, empowering you to craft for yourself a future that is both unfamiliar to you and highly desirable. It is also what makes ancient and abstruse spiritual practices understandable: altered states of consciousness, dream incubation, vision quests. Q: If a reader could walk into one of your stories, where would you send them? I would send them to Generations, the happy, carefree world where the children of Terra Two grew up. Nothing is impossible in that world. It is a place without dangers where advanced technological breakthroughs made the mere intention of creating something enough to bring it to life. Q: Why are doorways, thresholds, and hidden rooms recurring motifs in your writing? There is a lot more to this life than we can see, or even know exists. I was raised on fairytales and later developed an interest in transcendental concepts. These two ends of the spectrum share a similar intuition: that whatever that is that lays beyond our perception or understanding is accessible through some hidden, mystical knowledge. The quest for that hidden knowledge has haunted enlightened people throughout history. Q: Is nostalgia a place, an emotion, or a form of time travel? I think it’s all three: nostalgia transports you back in time to the person you used to be back then, and to places that no longer exist. For a brief time you become that old you again, in a place lost to the past. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    2 min
  7. Guillome: Found in Translation. Listen to an excerpt from Between Mirrors, in French

    May 29

    Guillome: Found in Translation. Listen to an excerpt from Between Mirrors, in French

    Réflexions Nous tenons pour acquis qu’un reflet n’est qu’une copie virtuelle de la réalité, mais il est bien davantage que cela. Un reflet est un mélange, une superposition de l’image projetée sur le support qui la reçoit. L’image qui en résulte est un peu de réel, bien qu’inversé, semé dans la substance même de la surface réfléchissante : si cette surface est de l’eau, le reflet épouse sa fluidité et son mouvement incessant ; si c’est du verre, il adopte sa nature éthérée et son apparence presque immatérielle ; si c’est un miroir, il prend les brusques éclats du vif-argent. Cela est également vrai pour des éléments que nous ne concevons pas habituellement comme des surfaces réfléchissantes ; par exemple, nous ne voyons pas les reflets que nous projetons sur les autres, mais ils sont toujours là. Dans chaque interaction, il y a un peu de nous-mêmes mêlé à l’immense ensemble de leur personnalité, de leur intellect et de leurs émotions. C’est pourquoi il est impossible de connaître pleinement une personne : on ne peut jamais la voir sans que notre propre personnalité ne soit projetée sur la sienne. Les reflets les plus subtils sont ceux que nous projetons sur notre environnement, sur cette vie plus vaste avec laquelle nous échangeons constamment notre souffle et dont nous faisons partie de façon inextricable. Même dans l’immobilité parfaite, nous transformons le monde simplement en y étant présents. Nos émotions, comme l’eau, comme le verre, comme le vif-argent, déforment l’essence de ce qui existe d’un instant à l’autre, transformant l’enfer en paradis puis le paradis en enfer en un clin d’œil. Elles nous font détester le soleil de mai et désirer les brumes de novembre ; elles nous font percevoir certaines choses comme belles ou laides d’une manière que personne d’autre ne peut comprendre ; elles recréent littéralement notre monde, une émotion à la fois. Les stoïciens, les esprits cérébraux, les réalistes pragmatiques rejettent cela comme des sottises ignorantes, l’œuvre d’esprits inférieurs incapables d’accéder à une raison plus élevée. Ils tiennent la nature immuable de la réalité pour une vérité de foi et s’ancrent dans son absolu, même lorsque la réalité se contorsionne pour valider leurs croyances. D’une manière très concrète, nous vivons dans des mondes de notre propre création, constamment influencés par les interférences de la vie des autres, mais dont l’essence même ne peut être transformée que par nous-mêmes, tout comme un océan est sans cesse agité par les vagues, les remous et les courants sans jamais cesser d’être un océan. Enfin, revenons aux miroirs. Il y a quelque chose d’inquiétant à se tenir entre deux miroirs parallèles. On a l’impression d’être aspiré, reflet après reflet, dans un monde sans profondeur qui ressemble exactement à celui où l’on vit, mais qui ne l’est pas. Votre être se trouve partagé entre la droite et la gauche, et pendant un bref instant, aussi fugace que déroutant, deux versions de vous-même vous regardent en retour, rebondissant à l’infini d’un miroir à l’autre jusqu’à ce qu’il soit impossible de distinguer laquelle est laquelle. Si vous observez attentivement au loin, vous remarquerez que leur point de vue change peu à peu, comme si ces mondes infinis avaient subi un léger mais perceptible déplacement et étaient désormais différents. Et instinctivement, vous savez qu’une fois sorti de ce tunnel de réalité, votre propre monde ne sera plus tout à fait le même. Donnez à une personne curieuse et obstinée un morceau de réalité qui semble se décoller à un coin, et elle s’acharnera à soulever cette fine pellicule jusqu’à l’arracher complètement, surtout après qu’on lui aura répété de ne surtout pas le faire. Qui pourrait résister à un ordre — même formulé à la négative — martelé dans son esprit pendant vingt ans ? Les ordres et les interdictions sont les deux faces d’une même pièce : tous deux concentrent l’attention et intensifient la réaction émotionnelle envers leur objet, et qu’ils agissent de manière positive ou négative, leur efficacité est diaboliquement similaire. Très tôt le matin, avant que l’aube ne commence à répandre ses teintes bleues et violettes, Claire descendit l’escalier sur la pointe des pieds, silencieuse comme une souris, s’efforçant désespérément d’apaiser son cœur rebelle. Elle ne voulait pas s’avouer qu’elle avait peur ; elle ne voulait même pas y penser. Pourtant, son corps était incapable de dissimuler les vagues d’anxiété qui parcouraient ses veines et rendaient sa respiration rapide et superficielle. Lorsqu’elle atteignit le grand hall, elle sentit soudain l’air devenir plus froid malgré la chaleur étouffante qui régnait à l’extérieur. Sa densité semblait différente elle aussi, et elle percevait contre sa peau une charge statique qui lui donnait la chair de poule et jouait avec ses cheveux. Tout le sang qui s’était retiré de ses mains et de ses pieds, les faisant picoter tandis que son menton s’engourdissait, afflua soudain vers ses joues. « Claire, » se dit-elle, « ce serait peut-être le bon moment pour faire demi-tour et retourner au lit. » Une composante récalcitrante de sa personnalité intervint aussitôt, la poussant au-delà des bords des miroirs et jusque dans l’entrée. — Génial, marmonna Claire entre ses dents. Il est déjà trop tard ! À force d’entendre sa grand-mère lui répéter de ne pas rester dans l’embrasure de la porte afin de ne pas gêner le passage, elle s’attendait presque à voir une foule surgir de nulle part sur le chemin de ses occupations. Pourtant, les miroirs ne lui renvoyaient qu’une réplique parfaite de son état présent. — Qu’est-ce que tu croyais voir d’autre, idiote ? se réprimanda-t-elle à voix basse. Elle rassembla son courage et s’approcha de l’un des miroirs pour contempler les reflets infinis d’elle-même. Tous arboraient la même expression terrifiée, et Claire se fit la réflexion qu’il était décidément trop facile de lire ses émotions sur son visage. Ses yeux semblaient brillants, écarquillés par l’appréhension, et reflétaient les formes vagues qui habitaient son esprit — ces impressions impossibles à décrire rationnellement mais dont on ressent pourtant la certitude — dans leurs minuscules miroirs bombés. Ce ne fut pas dans les miroirs eux-mêmes, mais dans leurs reflets, que Claire reçut sa surprise du jour. Là, dans l’interminable rangée d’yeux qui s’étirait vers l’infini, elle se vit avec des fleurs dans les cheveux, souriant largement à quelque chose qu’elle ne pouvait pas voir mais qui semblait se tenir juste derrière elle. — Sainte Grâce ! Elle recula brusquement, presque malgré elle, et aurait juré avoir heurté quelque chose de solide. Elle se retourna aussitôt, mais il n’y avait rien derrière elle, sinon les premiers rayons du soleil qui avaient enfin réussi à percer le voile de l’aube. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    6 min
  8. Samantha: But Love Always Is - a poem about abiding

    May 19

    Samantha: But Love Always Is - a poem about abiding

    My spirit is heavy with the time I squandered driving in first gear, one light shining dimly to dispel the darkness, all the way holding on to the promise my ancestors cherished that love always is. I feel it finding my keys when I’m late and frazzled. It adjusts the blanket over my shoulders when I shiver, and touches my forehead, concerned, waiting for the fever to break. I hear it whisper the right answers to those questions meant to catch me unaware. So just in case you can’t see it clearly through the tears and worry you might have dropped it that dark night when you took out the garbage in the middle of a snow storm, don’t worry, it is still there, I can see it from here, love always is. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com

    1 min
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These are spoken fragments—reflections, passages, and pieces of stories that have not yet settled. Some of them have written forms. Some of them point to places that already exist. Some of them are the only version. francisrosenfeld.substack.com

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