25-5-3-Sa
123 ⏳ 242 🗓️ W18
RMSDJ 📖 ✍🏾
🌡️66° – 55° ☁️
🌒 ♋ ♌
MORNING
My sleep did not arrive as a banquet but as crumbs — a trail of drifting interludes never leading to rest. Around half past seven, I fell into a dream. A man and a woman of Asian descent approached my door with curious purpose. The woman, arms folded around a dog of no distinction, moved to remove the door itself. She threatened release — not of fury, but of form. The dog barked its claim with theatrical confidence, though its frame suggested no true menace.
Before conflict could blossom, the scene bent. Management arrived, abrupt as lightning in a pastoral novel, announcing that the room was no longer hers. It belonged to me.
What then was the dog, if not a toothless emblem — a mascot of false threat? And the woman? She stood not as adversary, but as trespass incarnate: a disturbance not of property but of peace. The dream ended not with fear, but with reclamation — a quiet reminder that this body, this room, this page — remain mine.
💡 Epictetus: No man is free who is not master of himself.
🙏🏾 In that spirit, this morning I reclaim not only space but speech.
There is a discipline to clarity — an interior exactness that refuses the laziness of fragments. I confess: I have not always honored that discipline. Too often, I’ve mistaken dictation for delivery. But a thought, like a seed, requires a vessel. Even breath deserves grammar.
From this day forward, I resolve to treat every spoken phrase as a potential cathedral. My diary is not a compost heap for passing whims — it is an altar of record. And to speak slowly is to think richly. Each pause gives birth to precision. Every sentence, sculpted with intention, carries its own resonance.
💡 Simone Weil: Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
🙏🏾 I must be generous with my own thoughts, not rush past their meaning.
❓ Have I become impatient with the weight of reflection?
❓ Do I interrupt my own interiority with noise disguised as urgency?
💡 Søren Kierkegaard: Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
🙏🏾 The past offers its meanings only when we hold still long enough to hear them whisper.
Before I move deeper into today’s meditations, I must admit this:
I have not been consistent in uploading these entries to the blog. A ritual abandoned is a flame extinguished. And yet, I have lit candles this week — seven entries glowing in silent formation behind me. They deserve air.
❓ What is sacred if not shared?
I must also remain vigilant with the very machinery through which I channel these insights. My Android — ever rebellious — allows its programs to clamor like children in a cathedral. Their presence, if unchecked, siphons energy and muddles focus. Apps war over memory. Clarity is the casualty. What clutters the machine, clutters the mind.
Today, I celebrate a number: 5.8.
That is my A1C — a testament not only to biology but to will. Behind it lies fasting, restraint, and a renewed sacrament of care. Why does fasting so dramatically reduce glucose? Because it empties the bloodstream of excuses. It forces the body to speak its native tongue: metabolize, restore, repeat.
💡 Seneca: A hungry stomach listens to reason.
🙏🏾 Fasting is not absence but dialogue. It sharpens the body’s ear toward ancient instruction — and whispers to the spirit in its most lucid voice.
💡 Coach: The soul cannot rise if weighed down by excuses. Discipline is not denial — it is the architecture of flight.
🙏🏾 I write not to report the day but to lift it. Each sentence is scaffolding.
There is, too, joy in creation. This morning, I proposed a new word to Maestro: E-STORY — the thread between digital record and inner narrative. A term both modern and eternal. The moment delighted me, not for its cleverness, but for its fidelity to my current pilgrimage.
💡 Anne Brontë: A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine.
🙏🏾 May I learn again to laugh in the sunlight of discipline. May I give my words air, not for the world’s applause, but for my own release.
Gratitude
This morning I find myself thankful not for triumph, but for the return of order. There is grace in routine — when the body obeys the mind, when the mind listens to conscience, and when conscience bows to something stiller than itself.
I give thanks for the fasting that steadied my blood and tempered my hunger. I give thanks for the dream, odd and unwelcome as it was, for it reminded me that possession of one’s space is a quiet form of liberty. I give thanks that I have words — not just to speak, but to shape. I give thanks for the work — that it waits for me, and not the other way around.
The world spins madly, and yet this morning I was able to sit, write, and mean it.
Title: The Velvet Serpent Cabaret
Medium: Digital Art
Reflecting Randy Sydnor’s application of his unique technique, Mnephonics, this medium blends visual storytelling with symbolic language to evoke memory, learning, and reflection.
Style of Art: Surrealism
Dimensions: 1024 x 1536 px
Copyright: Randy Sydnor, The Mnephonist
Description:
In every whisper, there is a wager. The Velvet Serpent Cabaret invites the viewer into a space where language itself performs—slipping between truth and illusion with each syllable. Here, seduction is not just a gesture; it is strategy.
Rendered in digital elegance, the piece evokes the opulence of oil while capitalizing on the precision and luminosity of the digital medium. With Mnephonics at its core, each visual element becomes a symbolic glyph—designed to slip into memory like a song you didn’t know you knew. The serpent’s gloved coils, the vintage mic, and the velvet drapery become mnemonic triggers—linking sound to sensation, impression to intention.
At center stage coils the golden serpent, dignified and dangerous. Draped in black opera gloves, it performs not merely for applause but for sway. Its pose is confident, almost human in its bearing, suggesting both performance and plot. Its eyes do not search the crowd—they scan it, as if already tallying the cost of every gaze.
The audience—an anthropomorphic confessional of archetypes—leans in: a martini-holding rabbit in a tux, a bishop locked in silent prayer, a pearl-draped debutante, and a world-weary detective. Each reflects a fragment of society’s masks. But their trance betrays the twist: they’re not watching a concert. They’re accessories to a heist of attention, innocence, and certainty.
Philosophically, the piece reverberates with the paradoxical poise of Marcus Aurelius: “The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” The serpent’s serenity is its cunning. The performance becomes an allegory of persuasion—how we lean toward beauty and away from caution. The visual narrative aligns with Dadaist subversion and echoes the theatricality of fin-de-siècle cabaret art.
Visually, the burgundy velvet curtains press in like theatre wings of the unconscious, while a single golden spotlight falls not just on the serpent—but on the viewer’s complicity. The warm, chiaroscuro lighting draws out texture and temptation, while subtle shadows suggest what’s unsaid. Each compositional choice steers the eye toward revelation and then immediately toward misdirection.
In the end, The Velvet Serpent Cabaret asks: when we surrender to beauty, are we choosing clarity—or illusion?
—
© Randolph M. Sydnor
Prints and digital sale of work is available
Email for more information: rsydnor@mnephonics.com
RMS INSIGHTS ✍🏾 