Bojoy
Chapter One: In the Beginning of Our Journey
In the beginning of our journey, Bojoy was born quietly, without announcement or sign. No one marked the day with celebration. There was no story yet—only presence, a beginning. The world did not lean in, but it made space. From the first breath, Bojoy was part of something already moving: the long leaving, the condition of exile that shapes every entrance. Nothing was explained. But those nearby understood that this life, like all others, began in the middle of something unknown.
There was no name for what Bojoy came from. No word, no shape—only the sense that something had stirred. In the quiet that followed birth, before others spoke, there was simply being. The Mystery was not hidden; it was just not yet divided. Bojoy did not ask questions—there was not yet a Bojoy to ask them. But already the Mystery was at work, pressing gently, drawing lines that would one day be called identity. The beginning was not about who, but that.
Bojoy entered a world already in motion. There were names for things, and expectations waiting to be met. Family came first, close and quiet, shaping early habits. Then the wider circle—language, gesture, custom. These were not taught so much as absorbed. Without knowing how, Bojoy began to fit into a shape that had already been made. There was little room for questions. The story had started long before.
Bojoy came of age in the middle of the American century. It was the time of Eisenhower and Walt Disney, when everything seemed to promise progress. Television glowed in living rooms like a new kind of hearth. Science had become a kind of priesthood, and technology its gospel. There were rules about how to live, what to want, and what to believe. Bojoy learned them without knowing they were being learned—through cereal boxes, classroom maps, movie posters, and the steady glow of television. Beneath the surface, older currents stirred. Ancient conflicts reappeared as economic systems and political ideologies, reshaped into television reality. At the dinner table, the world was still clean, hopeful, and upward-moving. The American Dream was the story being served.
One morning, the principal of our grammar school stepped into the classroom. The building we were in had been built in 1941, and we all knew it would be torn down the following year. The new elementary school—clean, brick, electrified, and well-ventilated—was nearly finished next door. The contrast between the two buildings was almost surreal: the fading walls of Roslyn Avenue School beside the polished promise of the future.
That morning, after the Pledge of Allegiance and the morning prayer, the principal launched into a kind of patriotic sermon. He spoke about America—its greatness, its blessings, its promise. Then, with sudden emphasis, he pointed his finger across the room and asked if anyone could spell it. “A-M-E-R-I-C-A,” he shouted, and then added with a smile that wasn’t entirely kind, “And if you can’t spell America, you don’t belong in it.”
I froze. I didn’t know how to spell it. And I was terrified he might call on me.
It was the first time I realized there was something much larger than my little hamlet—larger than the neat rows of Levittown houses, the smooth streets with no fences between neighbors, the world of weekend cartoons and Spin and Marty. Something vast, serious, and unseen was forming around me. And I didn’t yet know my place in it.
Bojoy didn’t question the story—not at first. The world had its script, and everyone seemed to know their lines. School rewarded repetition. Television rewarded attention. Adults smiled when the right words were said. Bojoy moved along as expected, carried by the shape of things. There was no resistance, only a quiet sense of distance. The dream was bright, but Bojoy felt far from it, as if watching through glass.
Nothing seemed wrong—yet something remained unsaid. It hovered at the edge of things, not loud enough to confront, but present. Not a wound, but a weight. And beneath it all, there was something older, quieter, deeper than confusion. A kind of fear—not dramatic, not even clear. Just a presence, always there, like static behind the signal.
Bojoy began to see that this fear wasn’t just theirs. It lived in the culture, in the systems, in the stories people repeated without question. It was the fear of the unknown, the fear that held the world in place. The fear that created identity and then called it truth. And for the first time, Bojoy saw it. Not just in themselves, but in everything around them.
The shift came not through a crisis, but through a turnabout. A reversal. Something turned Bojoy to face what could no longer be ignored. It wasn’t collapse. It was awe. Not knowledge, but recognition. As if a great door had opened—not into danger, but onto an open horizon.
This was the crisis: the inherited world had no answers for what Bojoy now sensed. And this was the clearing: the space where those answers were no longer needed. Bojoy stood in the presence of something they could not name. It was not visible, but it had weight. It drew their attention with the seriousness of truth.
The fear they had always carried revealed itself as the world’s fear. And in that revelation, something essential came into view: the origin of identity. The binding force. The story beneath the stories. And now, it stood exposed. Not destroyed. But seen.
Bojoy didn’t leave the world. They still woke up to the same alarm, stood in line for coffee, waited for buses that ran late. But something had changed. The change wasn’t visible. It didn’t give them answers. It gave them a different kind of attention.
They spoke less, listened more. Sometimes they didn’t know what to say, not because they were confused, but because the words others used no longer felt like home. They showed up to work, answered emails, smiled when appropriate. But they noticed how often people asked questions they didn’t want answers to, or gave answers they didn’t believe.
They entered the fields of education and psychology, not as an expert but as a listener. Bojoy sat with people others passed over—the injured, the anxious, the angry, the lost. Youth without resources, elders without families, minds pushed to the margins. Bojoy did not arrive with answers. They arrived with attention.
Within institutions, Bojoy remained at the fringe. They weren’t promoted. They weren’t dismissed. They simply remained where things were most human. Around them gathered the misfits and the deeply feeling. The system tolerated them, sometimes even needed them. But it didn’t understand them. And when the tension grew too great, Bojoy was asked to leave.
They moved on. To another institution. Then another. First a treatment center for youth, then a psychiatric facility. Always the same pattern. The ones in power didn’t know what to do with Bojoy. The ones in need recognized something in them. And each time, exile returned. Quietly. Firmly. Again.
And so Bojoy found themselves in the desert. Not of sand, but of meaning. No plan, no title, no destination. Just a trusted Volkswagen bug, a meditation cushion, a few clothes, and the growing sense that something greater was carrying the story along.
Exile no longer felt like punishment. It felt like clarity. The institutions had no place for them. But the unknown did.
Bojoy looked out over the flat horizon, one hand on the wheel, the other resting in their lap.
What a strange trip this has been, they thought. I wonder where the next water hole will be.
End of Chapter One