Turn the Page
A Myth of the Book of Life, the Floating Island, and the Birth that Found the Center
There is a way to tell time that has nothing to do with clocks.
Some people count hours and days.
Others count cycles: storms, seasons, arguments, reconciliations, moments when everything spins, and moments when something finally holds.
This story is about one of those moments.
A moment when the spinning found its center.
The World That Would Not Hold
Long ago, before cities, before temples, before anyone believed the earth was stable and round, there was a goddess named Leto.
Her name carries an old echo. Some say it is related to lēthē – forgetting, concealment, what is hidden beneath the surface. Leto is the veiled one. The quiet endurance. The mother who carries what is not yet visible.
She carried children inside her.
Not ordinary children.
Two forces that would change how the world moved: one would become the clarity of daylight, and the other would become the mastery of instinct, the guardian of wild boundaries.
But Leto had a problem that was not only personal. It was cosmic.
No place would receive her.
Not because she was evil.
Not because she had done wrong.
But because powerful jealousy and fear had spread a rule through the world: no solid land was permitted to give her safety.
So Leto wandered.
She was in pain.
She was exhausted.
She was desperate, because birth is not only creation. Birth is a demand: the world must make room.
And the world refused.
This is what it feels like when life is turning but cannot land, when anger is rising but cannot soften, when the body wants release but nothing offers ground.
It is not a clean “journey.”
It is frantic and raw.
It is spinning and dizzying.
The Floating Island
Eventually Leto reached something that was not quite sea and not quite land: a drifting island named Delos.
Delos means “the visible,” “the revealed.” A strange name for a place that floated unnamed and unclaimed. It was as if revelation itself had not yet found ground.
Delos was not anchored.
It floated.
That matters, because floating things are not fully claimed by laws of land. A floating island belongs to the threshold between worlds. It is not stable, but it is available.
Delos did not welcome Leto with warmth.
Delos simply did not reject her.
And sometimes that is enough.
Leto stepped onto Delos – and even there she could not rest. The island moved beneath her. The world still had no center.
Now listen carefully, because this is where the myth becomes a map.
This story was not only set in an ancient world.
I discovered it in a particular year, at a precise time.
A year that carried three powers at once.
It was a century ruled by Discernment – the force that knows what must descend and what must rise again. The Greeks would have called her Persephone: she who has walked below and returned, and therefore can tell what belongs to shadow and what belongs to light.
It was a year governed by Fate – when the Wheel turns and the Moirai spin threads that bind beginnings to endings.
It was also a year marked by Law – not punishment, but balance. Themis, who measures what leans too far and restores proportion.
And the story came into speech on a day of the Wheel itself – a day when Fate was not abstract, but turning.
Discernment watching.
Law measuring.
Fate turning.
But more quietly than all three, this story was born in the month of the Papesse – the Keeper of the Book – whom we may understand as Selene, the Moon.
Selene’s name comes from selas – brightness, shining light. Not the harsh blaze of noon, but reflected illumination. She does not generate fire. She reveals what is already there.
She is older than judgment.
Older than law.
Older even than the spinning of threads.
She does not intervene.
She illuminates.
She watches the tides rise and fall.
She sees what the sun reveals too quickly and what darkness tries to conceal.
If Leto wandered under the turning of Fate, she wandered under the gaze of Selene – the primordial mother of reflected light before articulation, the silver witness before speech.
If the Wheel spun,
it spun beneath Selene’s silver.
And on that day – the day of the Wheel – as midnight approached and the world stood on the cusp between turning and mastery, the Moon did not blink.
Because she knew.
She knew that Fate must turn.
She knew that Law must hold.
She knew that Discernment must separate what ends from what begins.
But she also knew that there is a moment when the spinning finds its center.
In the year of this telling, Fate was turning strongly.
Law was weighing everything.
Discernment was not punishing – but deciding.
So Leto’s labor did not happen in an empty universe.
It happened under three pressures at once:
Fate turning the Wheel.
Law holding the scale.
Discernment separating ending from beginning.
All under the watchful eye of Selene.
And Leto felt all three as pain.
The Keeper of the Book
And above this turning world – quiet, still, and watching – there sat another figure.
She is not a goddess in the usual sense, and not a queen, and not a judge. She is something older and stranger:
the Papesse – the Keeper of the Book.
If you have never heard of her, imagine this:
A woman seated in stillness, holding an open book in her lap.
She does not shout commands.
She does not chase people.
She does not strike.
She knows.
Her power is not force.
Her power is not speed.
Her power is hidden knowledge, and something even more important:
She knows that the world can be read more than one way.
Most people think a book must be read forward: page one, then page two, then page three – always marching toward the end.
But the Papesse holds a different kind of book.
Her book is written so that when you read it backward, the meaning becomes deeper.
Not because forward is wrong – but because forward is not the only path.
The Book Written Backward
In the Papesse’s open book, the pages are not numbered in the usual way.
One page is marked by Law.
The next page is marked by Time.
Law measures.
Time passes.
But in the Papesse’s book, these pages are arranged so that the reader can move backward -from Law to Time, from time to deeper forces, all the way toward origin.
To understand this, imagine entropy – the way things naturally scatter, disorder increases, people lose their calm, and arguments split into a hundred sharp pieces.
Forward motion often increases entropy.
But what if the Papesse’s book does the opposite?
What if turning her pages backward is a way of reversing scattering?
A way of gathering what has been torn apart?
A way of returning to what was whole before it fractured?
This is the Papesse’s secret:
the origin is not ahead of you. The origin is behind you.
Not behind you in the past as nostalgia behind you as a deeper layer of reality, beneath the noise.
And the path to it is not by pushing forward harder, but by turning the page.
The Cry Before Midnight
Leto’s labor reached its breaking point near midnight – on the cusp between two states of the world:
the state where everything spins without center
and the state where something finally holds
That cusp is the razor-edge between Fate turning blindly
and mastery entering the world.
Leto screamed.
Not politely.
Not poetically.
The scream of a living being who cannot be denied.
And in that screaming, another sound appeared – at first barely audible:
A whisper.
Not one whisper. Many.
Because when things fall apart, language falls apart too. People shout in different tongues. Meaning scatters.
So the whisper came in several voices – five streams searching for one channel:
Turn the page.
Tourne la page.
Γύρνα τη σελίδα.
Verte paginam.
Întoarce pagina.
At first they were buried beneath the fight.
Like a child crying while anger fills a room.
Like a thought that tries to rise when the body is overwhelmed.
But the whisper persisted.
It grew louder and louder, not because it became violent, but because it became aligned.
The fighting was chaos.
The whisper was instinct attempting to become center.
The Turn That Changes the World
The Papesse heard the whisper.
And she did not calm Leto with words.
She did not erase pain.
She simply did what she always does:
She placed her fingers on the edge of the open page and she turned it backward.
Not forward into more scattering.
Backward toward origin.
In that one motion, something changed.
The sea did not stop being sea.
Fate did not stop turning.
Law did not cease measuring.
Discernment did not disappear.
But the world gained a hub.
The floating island remembered that it could be still.
Delos anchored.
The waters gathered around it the way a spinning wheel gathers around its center when the axle finally locks.
The Birth of Artemis
And then Artemis was born.
Her name is mysterious. Some link it to meanings like “unharmed,” “safe,” or “whole.” Others hear in it something intact and untamed. Whatever its origin, it carries the sense of that which cannot be easily violated.
Not as softness.
Not as decoration.
Not as a dream.
She was born as the first act of mastery.
In the old world, force was wild anger with no direction.
In the new world, force became something else:
instinct held with grace.
power that does not destroy.
strength that becomes steadiness.
Artemis did not silence the lion of rage by killing it.
She held it.
She did not end the turning.
She centered it.
This is why her birth matters.
It is not only the arrival of a goddess.
It is the moment the world learns:
There is a difference between spinning and choosing.
And the first step to stability is not to deny force, it is to redirect it.
It is to turn the page.
Artemis Helps Apollo Be Born
Only after Artemis was born could Leto finish the labor.
Only after instinct had arrived could clarity arrive.
The second child was Apollo – whose name has been linked to light, to shining, to driving away darkness. He is articulation. Song. The sun that names what the moon has already revealed.
Before you can reason, you must regulate.
Before you can speak clearly, you must find ground.
Before Apollo’s light can rise, Artemis must anchor the land.
Artemis is that ground.
Apollo is what comes after.
The Fool at the Beginning and the End
The Papesse closes her book, and you might think the story ends.
But her book never truly ends.
At the beginning of her book is the Fool – wild, laughing, wandering, uncontained.
At the end of her book is the Fool again – still wandering, but now returned to wholeness.
The same figure.
Different meaning.
The journey is not a straight line.
It is not “progress” as accumulation.
It is return.
You begin as unshaped life.
You scatter.
You fight.
You lose the ground.
And then, if you are lucky, you hear the whisper.
And you turn the page backward
not to undo your life,
but to recover the origin that was never destroyed.
The Phrase That Crosses Generations
And here the myth touches my human world.
Because there is a phrase that belongs to this story.
A father once said it to his daughters when they were overwhelmed, angry, wild with feeling:
“Turn the page.”
And later, when the father was overwhelmed, the daughters returned it to him:
“Dad… turn the page.”
That is how the Papesse’s knowledge moves through the world.
Not in lectures.
Not in commandments.
In a simple sentence that becomes a ritual.
In a whisper that grows until it becomes clear.
In an instinct that becomes mastery.
In a page turned backward toward origin.
And that is why, on a night balanced between turning and mastery, the world found Delos, and Artemis was born.
Because somewhere inside chaos, a whisper learns to become the center:
Turn the page.
And then came the song: “Turn the Page”
Turn the Page
Cold in my bones.
Fire in my chest.
Pieces scattered.
No place to rest.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
papapapa-papapapa-papapa-pa-pa-papa…
papapapa-papapapa-papapa-pa-pa-papa…
The center breaks, the edges fly
A screaming wind splits open sky
The ground dissolves beneath my feet
In blinding noise and freezing heat
As gravity begins to fail
My heart is tearing through the veil
I run but find no place to land
Just shattered dust and shifting sand
Turn the page to seize the spin
Return before the scream sets in
The path is neither left nor right
But in the dark, away from light
Γύρνα τη σελίδα!
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-page
Γύρνα τη σελίδα
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-page
Turn the page.
And in the storm, a shape appears
To bear the weight of all my fears
A floating point inside the drift
Where heavy tides begin to shift
papapapa-papapapa-papapa-pa-pa-papa…
papapapa-papapapa-papapa-pa-pa-papa…
What is that..?
Where am I…?
A whisper cuts the noise in two
A tiny path comes into view
A drifting land inside the sea
A place to set my spirit free
Turn the page to seize the spin
Return before the scream sets in
The path is neither left nor right
But in the dark, away from light
Γύρνα τη σελίδα!
I feel my instinct, sharp and clear
A steady pulse beneath the fear
I find the hub inside the storm
I plant my feet.
The world reforms.
Turn the page.
The lion rests. The fire obeys.
The moon stands watch through silver haze.
The rising sun begins to blaze—
I found my grace. I turned the page.
papapapa-papapapa-papapa-pa-pa-papa…
papapapa-papapapa-papapa-pa-pa-papa…
Turn the page…
Γύρνα τη σελίδα
Turn the page…
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-page…
Turn the page.
The song does not retell the myth directly. Instead, it inhabits its inner movements.
The opening spoken lines — “Cold in my bones. Fire in my chest. Pieces scattered. No place to rest.” — establish the condition before anchoring. The body is divided between freezing and burning. There is no stable ground. This mirrors Leto’s wandering and the floating island before it holds. The experience is not abstract fate, but lived fragmentation.
In Verse 1, the imagery widens:
“The center breaks, the edges fly.”
This is the moment when structure collapses. The “center” is no longer secure; the “edges” are no longer contained. The world becomes centrifugal. The dissolving ground and freezing heat describe the contradiction of overwhelming external conditions assaulting internal warmth.
Verse 2 intensifies the instability. Gravity fails. The heart tears “through the veil.” The veil here is not mystical decoration; it is the thin membrane between coherence and collapse. To tear through it is to lose orientation. There is motion without landing. Shattered dust, shifting sand. This is the Wheel turning without a hub.
The Chorus introduces the first act of agency:
“Turn the page to seize the spin.”
The choice is not to stop the motion, but to seize it, to redirect it. The path is described as “neither left nor right,” which rejects dualistic reaction. Instead, it goes “in the dark, away from light.” This is a descent before ascent. It echoes the mythic truth that Artemis, instinct mastered, arrives before Apollo’s light.
The Greek line, Γύρνα τη σελίδα, reinforces the command. It is both translation and intensification. The repetition across languages suggests that the instinct to reorient is not confined to one culture or one voice.
Verse 3 introduces the turning point:
“Inside the storm, a shape appears.”
The shape is not yet defined. It is possibility emerging within chaos. A moment of clarity and hope. It bears fear; it becomes a point inside drift. This is Delos before anchoring, something not yet solid, but no longer nothing.
The chant that follows returns the listener to the rhythm of fragmentation. The spinning has not vanished; it is being reorganized.
The spoken interlude — “What is that? Where am I?” — is a moment of cognitive reset. It acknowledges disorientation honestly. It does not pretend clarity has already arrived.
Verse 4 answers quietly:
“A whisper cuts the noise in two.”
The whisper is instinct. It is not louder than the storm, but it is sharper. It reveals “a tiny path,” not a highway. Stability begins small. The drifting land inside the sea becomes a place “to set my spirit free” — not by escaping the storm, but by finding footing within it.
The Bridge makes the internal transformation explicit:
“I plant my feet.
The world reforms.”
The reforming of the world is not a miracle imposed from outside; it is the consequence of planting one’s feet. The center is recovered. The hub is found beneath the storm.
The single line, “Turn the page,” after silence, functions as the birth moment. It is no longer frantic. It is declarative.
In the final verse, force is no longer destructive:
“The lion rests. The fire obeys.”
Rage is not erased; it is mastered. The moon stands watch, instinct remains vigilant. Only then does the sun rise. Clarity follows grounding. Light follows stability.
“I found my grace. I turned the page.”
Grace here is not softness. It is balance regained. It is the condition in which force and clarity can coexist without tearing the center apart.
The song, taken as a whole, traces a movement from fragmentation to anchoring, from scattered edges to centered presence. It dramatizes the mythic pattern in personal terms: instability, whisper, choice, grounding, and renewal.
Each time the page is turned, the world does not change completely. It re-centers.
And that is enough.
A Note on Return to Origin
I once read an article about the most common Romanian swear word and how, stripped of aggression, it can be understood as something else entirely—a crude but direct command to return to origin.
Du-te-n pizda mă-tii.
Not as insult.
As mythic instruction.
Go back to where you came from.
Return to the source.
Reset to origin.
If anyone ever finds that article again, send it to me.
Because sometimes wisdom hides in places polite language avoids.
Turn the Page
Somewhere inside chaos, a whisper learns to become the center:
Turn the page.
Γύρνα τη σελίδα.
And on a night balanced between turning and mastery, the floating island anchored, the world found its hub—
—and Artemis was born.