Between Mazes and Stars

There was a time when shooting stars traced paths through the Frankfurt sky, not like ledgers but like ancient runes, speaking truths that no financial system could ever capture.

I watched them from beyond the Westend towers,(Benidorm beach) Black Sabbath’s “Changes” echoing in my headphones, knowing Ozzy understood something fundamental about human energy that the rigid structures below could never contain.

You asked me yesterday, my daughter, why I chose this labyrinth.

Why did I turn away from their constructed certainties for something more profound, choosing to trade their securities for the raw power of human connection? It was a choice, my daughter, a choice that I made with the freedom that every individual possesses.

The answer lies in a storm I couldn’t hold back twenty years ago when his eyes held the same wild magic yours do now.

Here’s what I never told you: Every maze has two purposes—to help you lose the false self and find the true one.

While they built their systems of control in Frankfurt’s heart, I found power in the spaces between – in the biological rhythm of heartbeats, in the philosophical dance of minds meeting minds, in the kind of magic that exists before and beyond any constructed order.

That night, when the storm raged and their markets crashed, I stood with him in his black velvet coat (read brown leather jacket) on the edge of their world—the same place where I had first kissed him years before. Both of us recognized in each other something untamed, something their systems couldn’t process.

“You can’t hold back a storm,” he said, his words merging with the thunder(although he tried with every stop at a traffic light). But we tried anyway, our fingers intertwined, watching lightning strike their steel and glass monuments.

He was right – you can’t hold back a storm. But you can become one. You can be the force that reshapes the landscape, the resilience that inspires others to stand tall in the face of adversity.

This is why I walked away, my dear daughter. Not because their numbers stopped making sense but because they never made sense to me, to begin with.

No equation can capture the energy that flows between two souls, how love burns like cosmic fire, and how human magic outlasts all artificial constructs. It’s this magic, this unquantifiable essence of human connection, that I want you to always appreciate, my dear daughter.

He still walks the old streets. Sometimes, I see him crossing the Haaksberger straat, with a more sensible coat now than back then, like a crow’s wings against their chrome and glass. He made different choices and tried to change their maze from within while I chose to create something new outside it.

Neither of us was wrong. That’s the magic I wanted you to understand – there are paths they don’t show on any of their maps.
I learned that actual power lives in the spaces they can’t measure—in the pause between heartbeats when you catch a kindred spirit’s eye across a storm-lit room, in the moment a daughter begins to understand her mother’s rebellion against the manufactured order.

You see, the shooting stars above Frankfurt tonight hold the same magic they’ve held since before humans built their first markets.
They remind us that true wealth flows through our veins, pulses in our dreams, and sparks in the spaces between thoughts.

I took this road because some storms are meant to break what needs breaking. Some loves never fade; they just transform—like Black Sabbath’s heaviest riffs suddenly becoming melodic, biological imperatives breaking through artificial constraints, or a daughter’s confusion blooming into understanding.

And yes, he is still actual – as actual as the magic that runs through my blood and the storm that echoes in every choice I’ve made since.

In the end, we’re all just vessels of ancient power, dancing under stars that remember who we were before they tried to tame us with their systems.

May harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra (your loving, slightly crazy mother)