“A Mediterranean Meditation” Dear Dante, If you ever get the urge to update your Inferno for the streaming age, let me offer you some field notes from the Mediterranean’s less-than-divine comedy. I write as a lifelong outsider, although related through my children, still Dutch, and a perennial observer of the curious ways people cling to,…
Author: phaedrasfables
A Toast for the Unapologetically Strong
“Owning My Choices: The Cost of Giving Roots—And the Art of Moving On” Today, my daughter is out on a boat, surrounded by friends who will never see the raw edges of her soul, captained by a father who has always been more concerned with appearances than connection. He’s the type who’ll invite me to…
“Royalty & Trumpeteers”
No Crowns, No Kings, Just New Disguises for the Old Game Dear Dante, You know how people born into royalty love to drone on about their “noble bloodlines” and “ancient heritage”? What a load of rubbish. Their ancestors were the biggest thugs in the neighbourhood—the ones who figured out that if you’re mean enough and…
“Saints & Syndicates”
Green Knights, Shady Cows, and the Comedy of Modern Virtue Dear Dante, It was something I read this morning that set this whole train of thought in motion. You’d appreciate this, I think: I was catching up on the news—no, not from a town crier or gossip in the piazza, but from that digital oracle…
“True Villainy: On Disgust, Betrayal & Display”
From parchment to pixel. Dear Dante, Forgive my prolonged silence—four years consumed by the theatre of survival, deadlines, and the daily farce we call progress. I return to you, not with a confession, but with a restless mind freshly agitated by an experience you would find both foreign and, I suspect, oddly familiar. Last night,…
“Stepping of Stage; Changing Venue”
The beauty of being both the researcher and the subject – doing the kind of participant observation that only comes from living the question. Life, for many of us, unfolds as a kind of theatre. We step onto the stage as children, inheriting roles from our families, our cultures, and the silent expectations that drift…
“Field Notes from the Kingdom of Fire 2.0”
How to Outlast a Dynasty (Without Losing Your Magic) A Bestiary for the Bloodline-Bound Every family casts shadows in particular shapes. Mine happen to prowl, slink, and occasionally combust. After two decades navigating the Kingdom of Fire—where names carry more weight than kindness and bloodlines run thicker than wine—I’ve assembled my own menagerie of survival….
“Field Notes from the Kingdom of Fire 1.0”
Dispatches of a Wolf Witch at the Family Table There are places on this earth where time stands still, and not in the poetic, “let’s linger in the moment” way. No, I’m talking about the medieval pockets that persist in modernity—where the men still roar, the women still simmer, and the family table is less…
“Abracadabra: On Memory, Mischief, and the Magic of Escape”
Ketavta ana, wa’eyk ana qayam * ܟܬܒܬܐ ܐܢܐ ܘܐܝܟ ܐܢܐ ܩܝܡ By the end of the seventies, flying to your holiday destination had become the new normal. A world apart from what we’re experiencing now. Back then, a plane trip wasn’t just transit—it was a portal to another reality. The stewards and captain seemed like…
“Abracadabra again; Fierce Female Follies, The Lustfurt Brothers”
What We Learn from Beauty, Kindness, and the Quiet Turns of Fate aka the magic of life If you’ve never fallen for two brothers in the same year, you’ve missed a shortcut to understanding both family dynamics and your own capacity for chaos. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even see it coming. But there…
The C.O.M.C. Files 