I enter the portal again tonight.
The desert greets me with its familiar stillness—
dry air, cool enough to breathe easily.
I stop in front of the Sky Cabin but don’t go in.
Not yet.
The sky is too beautiful to ignore.
So I stand there, head tilted back, letting the stars fill me.
The Milky Way arches overhead like a quiet question:
what are you doing here, little human?
Gratitude.
That’s what I’m doing here.
Grateful for a place to retreat to—
even if it only exists in imagination.
The Cabin is real enough in the ways that matter.
As I stand there, I think about order.
About Fate.
The Stoics said that Fate is God—
the pulse that moves everything, including me.
I wonder how much of my life is already written.
Do I really choose,
or do I simply agree with what was chosen long ago?
I’ve read so much about it, and still the question lives on.
Maybe it’s not meant to be solved.
Maybe it’s meant to be lived with.
Epictetus said that only our opinions and attitudes are up to us.
I think about that often—
how many times I’ve planned something,
a lesson, a concert, a walk,
and watched the plan crumble or shift into something else.
Maybe that’s the Order, doing its quiet work.
If I make it to the store, as Epictetus says,
it’s because the universe let me.
If not, it didn’t.
But my attitude—
that’s mine.
That’s always mine.
The stars seem to nod in agreement.
The desert doesn’t argue.
I stay a little longer before I finally step inside.
The Sky Cabin waits patiently.
Some nights, that’s all I need—
to remember that freedom isn’t control,
it’s trust.