One
The light is white, relentless. A Sydney summer. The heat is a physical presence, a hand pressed against the back of the neck.
Cristiano walks to the station. The pavement is scorched, smelling of eucalyptus dust and dry exhaust. He passes the rows of large, silent houses in Turramurra. Indolent suburb. Tthere are no cats on the street. They are hidden behind glass, watching from the cool of air-conditioned sills. The sky is pale, drained of color by the humidity, a vast and empty bowl.
On the train, the air is stale. The North Shore line rattles toward the city, a silver snake through the green canopy of the gullies. Cristiano watches the reflection of his own face in the glass, superimposed over the scorched scrub flying past. He carries his life like a hidden weight—the house sale, the legal papers, the quiet, aching memory of his children. But he is composed.
Earlier, in the cool dawn, he had practiced his Buteyko. The air entered his nostrils in a thin, invisible stream—light, slow, deep. He had practiced the View from Above, rising mentally until the suburb was a mere speck. He had meditated on his Memento Mori. He is aware of his breath. It is a rhythmic, secret anchor. He is in the flow of everything. He is poised.
He gets off at St. James. He walks through Hyde Park. The grass is yellow, dying under the glare. He walks lightly. His feet barely seem to touch the parched earth. He moves through the heat by embracing it.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales is cool. It smells of floor wax and silence. He moves through the grand courts, looking for a center. He descends the mobile stairs where the group has gathered.
He is early. He sits. The chairs are not in a circle. They are arranged in long, rectangular tables, a rigid, bureaucratic formation. It is a geometry that kills intimacy. It forces the gaze forward, toward the distance middle, toward the “topic.” Never toward the person beside you. He waits. People drift in, their voices hushed, bringing the scent of the outside heat with them.
The facilitator begins. The protocol is established. Talk turns to Artificial Intelligence and Politics. Trump, his hair. Albanese. The massacre in Bondi. No, the slaughter in Gaza. They speak with a shallow intellectualism, a way to avoid talking about themselves.
Cristiano sits absorbing. He says nothing.
His breathing remains light, but beneath it is a sharp uneasiness. He observes the ego in the room—a thick, invisible fog. He watches the man to his left speaking to hear the sound of his own authority; his aggressiveness is due to the fight he had with his hormone’s wife before breakfast, his words polished like stones but hollow. To his right, there is a woman. She wears an expensive silk scarf despite the heat, her fingers constantly smoothing the fabric. Her eyes move restlessly, seeking a camera, a mirror, or a gaze to affirm her presence. She nods with a performative empathy that feels like a costume, her face a mask of practiced concern.
They are all hiding. They use the big topics to drown out the sound of their own hearts. They are terrified of the silence between the sentences. Cristiano knows the pause between the notes is the real music. He sees the way they curate their vulnerability, keeping the “wardrobe” of their true lives locked.
But as he watches their fears—their desperate need to be a portrait of what they are not—he sees something else. Beneath the artifice, he sees the innocence of their struggle, the insomnia nights, the sadness. He sees the pain of people trying to belong in a world that feels increasingly mechanical. A sense of compassion springs in him, softening the edges of his judgment. They are merely lost in the same heat.
There is an uneasiness in him, a low vibration. He feels the urge to leave, to walk back into the blue, indolent suburb and let the heat consume the irritation. But he stays.
He did not know why he went there. He only knew his destiny was calling.
Tags: Sydney, Stoicism, Art Gallery of NSW, Buteyko, Contemporary Fiction, Introspection, Memento Mori