Writer of Fictions
“You get lost in thought, a reverie, until someone comes along and asks what you're thinking about; erasing your entire world.”
SHUHARI
We are all students and teachers, constantly learning from one another, our environment, and ourselves. In this academic dance, lessons cultivate until the song ends, and the time comes to find a new partner. But what happens when the lessons become painful, when we fail, and self-doubt sets in?
Adapted from the Japanese martial arts concept, Shuhari takes you on a spiritual journey from learning to mastery through a poetic dialogue between teacher and student. This conversation about life, loss, and our deepest fears illustrates how learning from one another helps to better understand ourselves in facing life’s challenges.
守 Shu—Witness
Listen and learn, so that you may understand…
破 HA—Approach
Question what you understand, so that you may know…
離 RI—Yield
Let go of what you know, so that you may transcend.
A Love Unrequited
Giulia Vitale was the prima donna of the opera, A Love Unrequited. When the diva fell in love on the eve of Epiphany, life imitated the art of unrequited love. Enamored of the voice of another, she forgot the sound of her own. The one that serenaded her also betrayed her; sabotaging Giulia’s career and closing the opera. Hiding from her shame, she wandered from lover to lover, life to life, masquerading in the guise of others. Eventually, she became her mask, and her face fell into shadow… until her descendant, Gwendolyn Faye, would take her place on the stage.
Haunted by the legacy of her lineage, Gwen struggles to match her grandmother’s resonance. She finds solace from this familial burden in the arms of the mysterious Isaac Sylvain. Reminded of her ancestor’s failed romance, she resists his charms to focus on her impending debut. But Isaac is not so easily swayed. Though Gwen does not reciprocate Isaac’s love, she cannot ignore his influence, which threatens to derail the opera. Like Giulia before her, Gwen must rise to the occasion and reclaim her ancestral voice, or fall victim to A Love Unrequited.
“No one knows what happened to Giulia. But some hear her distorted cries in the dark alleys of New Orleans, seeking her voice every year on the eve of Epiphany. Through the Carnival season she wanders, they say; vowing her ascension to the stage.”
