VOICES - before it was written

About VOICES - before it was written

These are spoken fragments—reflections, passages, and pieces of stories that have not yet settled. Some of them have written forms. Some of them point to places that already exist. Some of them are the only version. francisrosenfeld.substack.com (https://francisrosenfeld.substack.com/s/francis-rosenfeld-voices?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Francis Rosenfeld

Category

fiction · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

20 Sept 2025

Latest episode

20 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

53 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Rachel: Reading from Between Mirrors - Memories

   “Get out of the doorway!” The words boomed like thunder in Claire’s ears, now almost thirty years later, with the same intensity and pronouncement they carried the first time she’d heard Grandmother utter them, the first time of many. She smiled vaguely to the memory. It was vast, this mansion of her grandparents where she had grown up, but Claire didn’t know it at the time; she never questioned what she saw because she’d never known another way of life, she’d never ventured past the end of the formal alley flanked by huge oak trees, hundreds of years old, which led straight to its front doors. For her the mansion and its garden were the world. The most interesting feature of this large house, and the one that had prompted Claire’s memory, was its entryway. The double doors carved out of solid walnut had stained glass panes set in intricate wood tracery and were so heavy little Claire always needed both hands to pry them open. The doors were flanked by large crystal mirrors, parallel to each other, which ran floor to ceiling and reflected everything and everybody that passed between them into infinity, contours diffracted into rainbows in places by the finely polished bevels around their edges. She must have been five years old at the time, intensely curious about this exciting new world she’d been born into, wandering around the old mansion whose windows were frequently propped open to temper the sweltering heat of the Louisiana summers and whose broad surrounding porch offered welcoming shade during those afternoons when even the wind stood still. Nature afforded itself no movements and no sounds then, other than the eerie trilling of the tree frogs. This was her first memory of the mirrors: she was standing between them trying to understand why there were so many of her and why they seemed to get farther and farther away. She could still remember the way the white ribbons of the dress Grandmother had sewn by hand just in time for her birthday moved in the doors’ draft like they were alive. Little Claire had managed to smear cake frosting on the dress, a fact she was trying very hard to hide, and she remembered feeling somewhat relieved that all the Claires in the mirrors were also looking down with guilty expressions on their faces. A razor sharp ray of sun sliced through the stained glass suddenly, with the swiftness of a blade, and hardened the contours around everything, rendering the shadows deeper and softer than black velvet. For a second Claire could almost touch the substance of that shadow, feel its palpable nature. She got scared of it and ran out of the doorway, her frilly white ribbons trailing behind her, and promised herself to listen to Grandmother and steer clear of the doorway going further. Naturally, she forgot her promise the very next day. Claire’s fascination with this mirror world which she perceived as three dimensional due to its endless patterns of reflection had subsequently earned her many scoldings, but she simply couldn’t resist the attraction it exerted on her; she kept getting drawn to it like a compass needle to the north. Even now the fascination that weird alcove exerted on her made her feel guilty, an absurd emotion for a woman in her mid thirties, even one who was still trying to find herself. She decided to work on her assertiveness and stand wherever she pleased, since she was a grown up, gosh darn it, but her ears instinctively tuned in to hear if her grandparents were approaching, so she could get out of there before they saw her. She was grateful for her grandparents’ company and felt relieved to be back home, but she was also kind of embarrassed to move back in with them at her age. She shrugged. Life had unexpected ways to steer one’s journey and it had certainly taught her it was easier sometimes to accept them at face value. The world outside these familiar walls hadn’t turned out the way she hoped, nothing like the overheated imagination of her youth had painted it to be. The real world didn’t end up being her enchanted playground, quite the contrary, it stubbornly and consistently refused to cooperate. She was too weird for it, Claire learned. She didn’t exactly know how or why, but she didn’t seem to fit in it or understand its ways, the subtle cues and unspoken agreements that function so flawlessly in society and form the basis of common understanding. It’s not that her life had been worse than anybody else’s, it’s just that everybody else accepted it the way it was, without unnecessary commentary, while Claire, for whatever cursed reason, could not. She had questions in school which made her teachers uncomfortable, she had questions at work which made coworkers find her difficult, but worse of all, she had questions regarding social expectations that doomed any potential friendships before they even started. She often felt like a car stuck going the wrong way on a one way street with no places to turn. She couldn’t even remember what prompted her to pack up and come back to Louisiana on this self-imposed sabbatical she took because she didn’t have an alternative to it. “Get out of the doorway!” the real voice of her grandmother startled her from behind, and Claire let out a resigned sigh: she had fallen for the spell of the mirrors again and had lost track of herself. She obeyed, out of habit, and stepped out of the little alcove, somewhat disappointed that her endless reflections were now confined to just one body. “You never listen, bebelle,” Grandmother shook her head in distress. “Thirty years old and still you never listen!” “What’s wrong with it, maman?” Claire forgot to subdue the inquisitive streak that never failed to get her in trouble. “Why do you get so upset when I hang around the front doors?” “It’s bad luck, child! Do you need me to draw you a picture? Why would you want to invite trouble? God knows it is easy enough for it to find you anyway.” “Please, maman,” Claire besought her in her loveliest cajoling voice, one she hoped the elder would find too endearing to deny, “just tell me!” Grandmother dismissed her with an irate hand gesture, turned her back to the granddaughter and went to the kitchen. Claire was still standing in front of the doors, whose intricate stained glass and wood motifs, depicting angels and flowers, were close enough to get caught in the mirrors. They multiplied in ways that confused the eye and made the entire scene absolutely hypnotic. “Aren’t you hungry, dear?” the soft voice of her grandfather startled her from her second reverie. She felt his hand on her shoulder guiding her gently towards the kitchen. She was hungry, she realized, and weary, and grateful to be cared for again, if only for a while. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com (https://francisrosenfeld.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   19 Oct 2026

   The Room In Between

   The room was large and not brightly lit, a feature that had obviously been designed to create a relaxing ambiance and induce a meditative state. Its calming features worked in concert with the soft muzak tunes and the cozy leather chairs, whose generous width and soft cushions cradled the body into a state close to sleep. On the back wall there was a bar with under-lit glass shelving and strange looking bubbly bottles in unusual shapes and colors. They were all filled with liquids that looked better suited for a chemistry lab than for cocktail ingredients. The dark wood of the bar was topped with a bright white marble slab, streaked with deep green and bluish veins. Oriental carpets, which looked a little worn but definitely expensive, covered every inch of the floor, overlapping in places, so there was no telling what kind of flooring lay underneath. Here and there, on dark wooden side tables, generic ambient lights, elegant but subdued, cast a gentle glow. The walls were the only element in the room that seemed designed to draw attention. They were covered in intricate wooden inlay panels, not dark like the furniture, but in a range of warm golden oak hues, no two designs the same and with no discernible theme: exotic blossoms and twirling vines, geometric motifs, circular labyrinths, grids and landscapes, trompe l’oeils, flower garlands and abstract art. The entire wall was lit from the floor with wall washers, the way they illuminate important buildings and monuments at night and with the same eerie effect. High up close to the ceiling where the light of the floor lights was fading, the motifs seemed to come alive in the flicker of the buzzing bulbs, in an illusory motion so distracting that one would forgo even the slightest curiosity about what lay above. He couldn’t remember how he got there. He just knew he’d been in this room before, more than once, judging by the familiarity he had with its features. Find the rest of the story here (https://francisrosenfeld.com/The%20Room%20In%20Between%20Audio.php), or read this chapter in translation at frosenfeld.fika.bar (https://frosenfeld.fika.bar/ethan-reading-from-the-room-in-between-sunlight-01M587MMXBJD4TAG711WDSVT4V) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com (https://francisrosenfeld.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Elena: Reading from The Garden of Belief - Work in Progress

   It doesn’t take much to make the mind wander, especially when one is engaged in tasks that don’t require any mental processing. Cimmy got mesmerized by the silky texture of the onion’s skins which slipped under her fingers when she sorted the seeds by size into large wooden vats. Lost in her inner world, she went over the smallest building parts of matter again and again, wondering how come they stuck together in consistent ways, so that their composite was always a rock, or a girl, or a fronded leaf. None of it seemed random, as if reality itself bowed to a higher law with reverent obedience. After her random wanderings through reality and her unexpected growth leaps, Cimmy wasn’t sure about anything anymore. She wasn’t anxious, or afraid, because a deep instinct she couldn’t express told her she was precious and protected in this realm, or whatever one wanted to call this ever shifting reality; she was always its center and the reason for its accommodating changes. She felt like her whole life was nothing more than a conversation with this much larger intelligence, to which she herself belonged, a part of it, but not small at all, and imbued with the same gift of creation and change. Whatever this was, it was alive; she was sure of it. Probably made of the same living blobs that moved around, guided by unknown reasons, to keep it healthy and in balance. “Rahima,” she started suddenly, startling her friend, who was lost in her own world as well. Maybe everyone had his or her own world, and those small personal realities touched and merged into each other for brief stretches of time, and then became disjointed again. “Yes,” her friend replied. “Do you think there’s something up there?” She pointed to the sky. “Or someone,” Rahima nodded. “Who are you and what have you done to my friend?” “I’m serious. This, none of this, feels random.” “You think a higher power purposefully put Bertha and Josepha in charge of your life to torment you, stunt your growth and steal your joy?” “Maybe, in the large scheme of things, I’m not that important.” “How does it help you to know there is a higher power, but it doesn’t even know you exist? On the bright side, if it never pays attention to you, you can do whatever you want.” “True,” Cimmy thought. She enjoyed the freedom to follow up on her curiosity wherever it led, even to the metal-sweating rocks, if the spirit moved her. She returned to the subject that had been occupying her mind for some time now. “Think about it: if it has to follow up on everything to make sure the rocks rock and the plants plant and the humans human, how could it possibly have time to deal with me, or Bertha’s musings? We’re not that interesting.” “Maybe it runs out of thinking space, you know? Maybe that explains all the things that look ugly and unfinished: smelly swamps, barren lands, awful people.” “You know what that means, right? It means that when we were desperate and barely scraping by, eating bitter roots and starving, we probably were in the unfinished portion of the higher intelligence’s work.” “What bitter roots? What are you talking about, Cimmy?” And again, the reality bubbles, which had so easily merged for a while, suddenly bounced apart, making each of their personal worlds impenetrable to mutual understanding. Cimmy couldn’t understand her own jumping through realities, where everything was almost the same, almost, and because she couldn’t understand it, she always forgot that this Rahima, although she looked the same, had never shared those early experiences with her, like the other Rahimas did, and all the references to those times were wasted. “Never mind. Here. Now. Does this look like finished reality to you?” “I suppose. This is good: there’s an abundance of food and comfort, we’re in good health, and the meadow is beautiful. The world is beautiful, Cimmy, that’s what I think.” “We must be in the finished portion of reality, then.” “Why don’t you ask it, whatever it is? If it is a higher mind, it should be able to hear you.” “Especially now that we’re in a part that it already had a chance to work on, I suppose,” Cimmy agreed. That was a very good idea. Rahima never ceased to impress Cimmy with her unexpected insights: under a silly and easily distracted exterior, she concealed a deep fountain of wisdom. One must stay true to the scientific process. If one has an idea about how things are, one has the obligation to test it and accept the results, wherever they may lead. That was universally true, and what is universally true must apply to what kept the universe running smoothly, whatever one wanted to call it. If it had a mind, she should try to communicate with it and find out what it wanted, what it was like, and how she fit into its story. She did not know how one communicated with non-human entities, so she closed her eyes, trying to figure it out. Time passed around her, while she stood still inside it, like a boulder in the middle of a bouncy brook, until its spirited waters got blocked suddenly, drowning her in all their happenings, by Josepha’s angry shout. “What have you been doing with those onions? Bertha, come look at this: the whole day she did nothing at all! Three onions sorted, that’s all she accomplished today. And they’re sorted wrong too!” Bertha arrived, with a full head of steam, to throw more kindling on the fire of Josepha’s ire. She examined the contents of Cimmy’s bucket and then got in the girl’s face to intimidate her. Cimmy looked unimpressed, which infuriated the latter even more. “We can’t have someone like you ruin the efforts of every hard-working person in this village. When you were a child, we put up with your bad seed because we felt sorry for you, but not anymore. Bear witness to me, Josepha, when I declare she doesn’t belong to this community anymore. Go wherever your twisted soul leads you, girl, as far away from here as you need to be so I never have to see you again.” Cimmy got up, surprised by the insane request, even now, after Bertha’s deranged and abusive behavior had bulldozed her work and purpose so many times, unsure where to go, and what to do, disoriented by the abrupt and destabilizing intrusion upon her life. Most of all, she was sad to part from Rahima and wondered if the latter would eventually forget her, just like she would if she were to die. What happened after death, anyway, if there ever was an after? She put that on the list of things to ask the higher power, if she managed to get in communication with it, looked around to see if Fay was nearby, because she was absolutely determined not to leave him behind, and once she found him, left the village again, at sunset, without looking back. The familiar scents and colors of the meadow welcomed her, as she made her way to the seashore, in a daze, thinking for sure Rahima would try to look for her there, or come after her to the island, and she should try to leave a message by the raft, to let her friend know her whereabouts, so many thoughts, racing, racing, no longer held at bay by small and mindless manual chores. The moon rose over the ocean, and the luminous creatures that formed large pools under the water surface flashed blue and green under its silver light. Rahima was right; the world was beautiful, and if that was true, then this place where she found herself now was part of the finished reality as well, and as such safe and welcoming. Cimmy found a patch of tall beach grass on the shore and made her bed in it, from which she could look up at the bedazzled firmament, where a profusion of stars filled her with wonder. How could the higher power have time to talk to her when it had to work so hard to make that infinity of stars and keep them steady in the sky? She pondered whether all those lights she saw up there were finished, and figured maybe some of them were not, maybe some were unstable, ugly, and scary. Who was to know? She had no way of telling, since they were impossible to reach, at least for now. And thus Cimmy solved the problem that had tormented sages and saints forever: if there was a God, how did he allow so much evil in the world? It was very simple. God’s reality was still a work in progress, as yet unfinished. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit francisrosenfeld.substack.com (https://francisrosenfeld.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Contact VOICES - before it was written

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