Daphne and Stu stood at the picture window overlooking the front yard of their mother’s home, talking quietly.
“I don’t know,” said Daphne, “something’s not right with Mom.”
Together they peered out the window at Mildred, who was busily watering her vast garden. “How do you mean?” asked Stu.
“She talks to her plants,” whispered Daphne. When Stu gazed at her skeptically, she said, “Really. She even has names for them.”
Stu laughed unconvincingly. But when his sister didn’t share the humor, he grew concerned. “Well, Mom’s always been a little edgy, Sis.”
“No,” she disagreed. “That doesn’t even begin to describe it, Stu.”
“What would describe it, then?” he asked.
“Try bat-shit crazy,” suggested Daphne.
Out into the garden they walked, stopping behind Mildred at a safe distance, observing.
“Ooh,” said Mildred, upending a watering can over a peony. “There, that’s good, take a long drink.” Mildred tittered.
Daphne and Stu exchanged a glance, looked back at their mother, who moved onto an azalea bush. “You take a drink too, Bob.”
Stu nudged his sister, whispered the word, “Bob?”
Daphne made a twirling motion with a forefinger next to her head.
“Mom,” said Stu quietly, “come on into lunch.”
Mildred shook her head. “Nope. I’ve got to feed my babies.”
“Babies?” he asked.
“Of course,” replied Mildred, taking up a huge bottle of liquid fertilizer. Dipping an eye dropper into the bottle, she began dispensing plant food, drop by drop, onto individual blades of grass.
“Mom, lunch is ready. How long do you expect this to take?” asked Stu worriedly?
“Well, the last time I counted,” said Mildred, “there were more than 400,000 blades of grass.” She began humming a merry tune.
“Mom,” said Daphne, stepping across the lawn and reaching for her mother.
“You’re crushing them!” shrilled Mildred in horror. “Get off, get off!”
Daphne leaped back onto the pavement.
“Ooh,” wailed Mildred. “You hurt Aaron!”
“Who’s Aaron?” asked Stu?
“The dandelion,” replied Mildred, cosseting the bent weed in her age-spotted hands.
Stu made a pained face at Daphne, who rolled her eyes. “I told you so,” she mouthed silently.
The next day Stu called Mildred’s doctor with what they observed. Dr. Zeel thought they were overly alarmed, but agreed to have Mildred in the next week.
Dr. Zeel told Mildred at their appointment why her children were concerned. Mildred laughed and told the doctor “Oh, that’s just a game I play to keep myself amused. I know the plants don’t listen to me. I’ll try to be more discreet around the kids.” The doctor did some tests and told Mildred everything looked good and not to worry.
After she got home Mildred called her children and scolded them. “You shouldn’t have gotten my doctor involved,” she said. My plants won’t like you after I tell them what you did.”
Daphne and Stu were more concerned than ever about Mildred, but couldn’t think of what to do next. Mildred wouldn’t speak to them.
In the following weeks Mildred’s children had to rethink Mildred’s relationship with her garden. A three hundred foot redwood which didn’t grow within seven hundred miles sprang up overnight in Stu’s backyard. Dandelions broke through Daphne’s sidewalk and driveway, fracturing the concrete. Other mysterious botanical phenomena occurred throughout the world.
Even Mildred did not know that her plants talked to other plants. Fruit trees refused to grow fruit, wheat and other plants that normally provided the staff of life did not cooperate as well. While sympathetic with the plants, Mildred recognized that she had to prevent a global catastrophe. She convinced her children to apologize to her plants so they could pass along the forgiveness to humans.
Stu and Daphne felt really stupid, but based on the gravity of the situation, they knew they had to do it. With Mildred helping to prepare their remarks, her children addressed the plants in the garden.
“Plants in Mildred’s garden, we were foolish,” muttered Stu.
“We didn’t consider your feelings. We were wrong in thinking that you didn’t really understand what Mildred was saying,” added Daphne.
Stu added: “We know plants have rights too.”
In tandem they murmured, “We beg your forgiveness and hope that you can convince the other plants that humans depend on to provide food for them again.”
Mildred has listened in. When Daphne and Stu were done, Mildred bent to the ground, then rose up and told them how her plants answered. “They will do what you want under one condition.”
Stu and Daphne answered in unison “Whatever they want. We’re good for it.”
Mildred assured them, “Oh, it’s easy and I’ll do it. All they ask for is a double ration of the fertilizer treat I give them.”
Stu asked “It’s that easy? Can you start now?”
“I’m on it in the next five minutes. It’s a good thing I stocked up on their treat.”
Good to their “word” Mildred’s plants passed on the kids’ apology and worldwide, the plants returned to their normal behavior.
Four prosperous years passed before food crops went on strike again, protesting overcrowding, abrasive weed killers and that pesky hedge trimmer thing.
Nowadays, it is difficult to imagine life without social media. They have become an integral part of our lives: some people use them to stay informed about the news, others to communicate with friends, and some to gain knowledge. Especially among young people, the role of social media is enormous.
However, their impact can vary from person to person — for some, they bring benefits, while for others, they become a reason for wasting time. For me personally, social media brings more benefits. Because I try to use them properly.
For example, through the “Ibrat Farzandlari” app, I do various exercises to learn German, English, and other foreign languages. This app helps me improve my vocabulary and make my speech more fluent. In addition, through the “Mutolaa” app, I read new books and stories every day. Such platforms awaken in me a love for reading and an interest in books.
However, unfortunately, not all my peers use social media correctly. Some spend most of their time watching useless or even harmful content. This reduces their attention to studying and negatively affects their mood. Some, on the other hand, become too immersed in the virtual world and gradually distance themselves from real-life relationships. In my opinion, the problem is not in social media itself, but in us, the youth.
Because we are the ones who choose how to use them. If we use them to gain knowledge, learn languages, and stay informed about new events, they will be useful. On the contrary, if we use them to waste time, compare ourselves with others, or follow meaningless posts, they will harm us.
Social media, in fact, is a great opportunity for young people to expand their thinking, express themselves, and work on self-improvement. The important thing is to know how to use them in the right way. In conclusion, social media can be both useful and harmful — it depends on how we use them. I believe that every young person should learn to use social media in a way that brings benefit. Because every opportunity gives a real result only when it is used correctly.
Dr. Antonello Turco’s Holistic Method Is Art and Culture
From Italy, having spread to other European countries, Dr. Antonello Turco’s holistic method has arrived in the USA.
It is a method for physical and mental health that, especially, has a direct and tangible connection to art.
It is certainly a cutting-edge method for physical and mental health.
I have known Dr. Turco for a year, and our relationship has become increasingly interesting and intense, as it encompasses aspects of both the physical and spiritual, but above all, always related to creativity and art.
Now, if extreme attention to appearance was once exclusive to our world of celebrities, this aspect has extended to everyone in the space of about fifty years, albeit with some discrepancies resolved precisely by Dr. Antonello Turco’s holistic method.
Dr. Turco began with a degree in Nutrition and Sports Sciences, followed by years of experience in fitness and coaching, daily developing a method that places creativity and art at its core.
For those in the celebrity world, everything is geared toward serving the audience , and therefore, the more one’s health, physical appearance, and ability to constantly optimize one’s persona improve, the more fame, one thinks it increases.
Generally, this process is often at the expense of one’s private life, since for those in show business, the priority belongs to public life, not private life.
One of the reasons for Dr. Turco’s growing success is precisely that he “gives” everyone the full range of elements that can generate optimal physical health, including excellent physical appearance.
Despite this, Dr. Turco is often in Malibu and Hollywood, and global stars flock to seek his advice.
The really interesting aspect is that the “Dr. Turco Method” is constantly evolving and therefore we will talk about it again since it is becoming a cultural and artistic motif in itself.
Contributor Taylor Dibbert seeks reviewers for his new poetry bookOn the Rocks.Please email us at synchchaos@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Also, we will stop accepting submissions for November’s first issue on October 25th. You may still submit after that date, but your work will go into our second issue for the month.
Now, for this month’s second issue, Learning From History.
Sayani Mukherjee muses on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
Kelly Moyer’s film, created together with Hunter Sauvage and starring Robert P. Moyer and Annie, draws on ancient myth to understand the United States’ modern political situation. Abigail George analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of certain leadership styles illustrated by Donald Trump and several African leaders. Patricia Doyne speaks to the hubris of American political leadership. Andrew Brindle and Christina Chin’s tan-rengas explore society’s injustices and contradictions.
Patrick Sweeney’s one-line senryus decenter the author as head of the universe. Mark Young contributes a fresh set of altered geographies. Baskin Cooper describes encounters slightly mysterious and askance. Christopher Bernard describes the frenzied, ghostly glamour of Cal Performances’ recent production of Red Carpet.
Mahbub Alam extols the beauty of morning and nature in his Bangladeshi home. Jonathan Butcher’s poetry explores the different rooms in which we make our lives and the stories they could tell about us. J.T. Whitehead shows how external cleaning can parallel interior personal development. Srijani Dutta discusses her personal spiritual journey in prayer to the divine of at least a few faiths.
Alexandros Stamatoulakis announces his new novel The Lonely Warrior: In the Wings of the Condor, about a man discovering himself in the midst of a tumultuous modern environment. Chris Butler’s wry poetry explores long-lasting, but hopefully not implacable, truisms of the human condition. Ana Glendza speaks to the fear and insecurities that come with being human. Kavi Nielsen speaks to the experience of loneliness and rejection.
Noah Berlatsky satirizes faux-human tech support and our efforts to understand our whole world through technology. Timothee Bordenave outlines innovative ways to improve electricity transmission as Abdurofiyeva Taxmina Avazovna discusses treatments for cataracts.
Zarifaxon O’rinboyeva’s short story presents a woman overcoming poverty and grief to become a physician. Doug Hawley reflects on the ups and downs of summer jobs. Turdiyeva Guloyim’s poetic essay shares a complex emotional tapestry of childhood village memories. Rahmataliyeva Aidakhon highlights the importance of grasping folktales to understanding Uzbek heritage and culture. Madina Azamjon highlights the literary importance of Hamid Olimjon’s writing and how he drew on Uzbek folk culture for inspiration. Gulsanam Qurbonova extols the linguistic and cultural education she has received at her university. Ermatova Dilorom Bakhodirjonova explains the intertwined nature of Uzbek language and culture and the need to preserve both.
Mukhammadjonova Ugiloy celebrates her school and the sports and student leadership education she received there. Choriyeva Oynur outlines benefits of integrating technology into education. Abdirashidova Ozoda outlines the importance of encouraging and fostering creativity for preschool students. Nilufar Mo’ydinova discusses ways to encourage second language acquisition at an early age.
Anila Bukhari’s poetry celebrates the creative spirit surviving amid poverty and oppression. Taro Hokkyo’s prose poem details his protagonist’s escape from emotional and spiritual darkness to rise to the heights of creativity. Alan Catlin’s barman odyssey explores the roots of creative inspiration.
Emran Emon speaks to the recent Nobel Prize award for world literature and the value of writing. Abdusalimova Zukhraxon outlines strategies for teaching the Uzbek language to foreign students. Abdusaidova Jasmina Quvondiqovna shares some of her art and expresses her pride in her native Uzbekistan. Jumanazarova Munojot Elmurod qizi suggests ways to help young children learn to tell time. Qurbonova Madinaxon discusses the importance of games and play in children’s education. Hayotkhon Shermatova outlines issues with Uzbekistan’s educational system and how to address them. Azamova Kumushoy illustrates the importance of teaching language students how to analyze literary texts.
Ismoilova Gulmira celebrates the strength, thoughtfulness, creativity and resilience of Uzbek girls and young women. Abduqahhorova Gulhayo’s poem takes joy in the grace and kindness of young Uzbek girls. Svetlana Rostova finds beauty in everything, even ugliness, loss, and death.
Graciela Noemi Villaverde praises the creative insight of her dance teacher. Saparov Akbar outlines his personal quests and passions and his desire to educate himself and elevate his life. Mesfakus Salahin’s poetry celebrates the artistic inspiration that can come from romantic love.
J.J. Campbell details his middle-aged, disillusioned quest for love or maybe just a little break from reality. Donia Sahib speaks to spiritual and earthly love. Teresa Nocetti’s poem urges a loved one to invite her into their life. Eva Petropoulou Lianou shares a tale of lovers in search for one another.
Mykyta Ryzhykh presents a protagonist who explores alternatives and then revels in his ordinary humanity. H. Mar. shares the joy of day-to-day human companionship.
We hope this issue provides artistic, emotional, and intellectual companionship to you as you peruse the various contributions.
Teresa Nocetti was born in Montevideo, capital of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay. She has been a retired teacher for seven years and is a mother and grandmother. She loves to travel, get to know different cultures, read and talk.
Since 2017, she has been a member of the group of international writers “Junto por las Letras,” counting hundreds of participants from different languages to date. In 2018, she published “La visita de Perseo”. She’s published in the anthologies: “Women on the brink of the abyss” (collection), “Vida de Piedra”, “When letters mature”, “A story for a smile” Volume Three, “Uniendo Fronteras” (Bolivia). In 2019 she was awarded a Special Mention from the Outstanding Women in Culture for her cultural trajectory and human values.
As of 2020, her works have been virtual. She continues to participate actively in the Virtual Book Fairs, in the virtual book Immortales, and in all the proposals of the “Juntos por las Letras” Group as Cultural Manager. They will publish her next book: “Sinuous Soul.”
Nobel Literature Laureate László Krasznahorkai and the Light Within Ruins: The Enduring Power of Literature in Times of Crisis
Emran Emon
When the Swedish Academy announces that László Krasznahorkai wins the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, the citation—“for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”—resonates with remarkable timeliness. In an era marked by uncertainty, war, climate anxiety, and the slow erosion of collective meaning, the Academy’s choice of the Hungarian novelist feels almost prophetic. Krasznahorkai, often called the “writer of the apocalypse,” has long been the literary chronicler of chaos—yet he is also, paradoxically, one of its most powerful antidotes.
Born in 1954 in Gyula, Hungary, Krasznahorkai belongs to a Central European lineage haunted by totalitarianism, despair, and disillusionment. He follows the literary footsteps of Kafka, Musil, and Bernhard—writers who dissected the human psyche amid societal collapse. With this Nobel Prize, he becomes the second Hungarian laureate, after Imre Kertész in 2002, whose own work bore the moral scars of the Holocaust. But whereas Kertész chronicled survival under tyranny, Krasznahorkai explores the spiritual desolation that follows it.
His debut novel, Satantango (1985), which took seven years to publish due to censorship, announced the arrival of a writer unlike any other. This postmodern masterpiece portrays a decaying village awaiting the return of a mysterious figure—a narrative of false prophecy, collective delusion, and moral decay. The story unfolds through pages-long sentences, each a labyrinthine reflection of confusion and decay. When Béla Tarr adapted the novel into a seven-hour cinematic epic in 1994, the two artists became inseparable in the public imagination—Tarr giving visual form to Krasznahorkai’s textual apocalypse.
Krasznahorkai’s prose style is both ‘his weapon and his world.’ His sentences are famously long, unbroken, and rhythmically relentless, sometimes extending across several pages. To read him is to enter a current that refuses to let go—a sustained meditation, an intellectual marathon. This stylistic audacity is not ornamental; it is existential. His syntax mirrors the chaotic continuity of consciousness, the endless unraveling of perception. In his world, there are no safe pauses. The absence of paragraph breaks traps readers in the same feverish continuum that entraps his characters. The result is hypnotic—exhausting, yes, but profoundly immersive.
Critics have called this approach “obsessive.” Krasznahorkai once responded by describing his method as “reality examined to the point of madness.” Indeed, his writing feels like an inquiry stretched to its breaking point—a sustained stare into the abyss until form itself begins to tremble.
In this respect, Krasznahorkai’s art recalls Proust’s interior infinity and Faulkner’s density, yet it is distinctly his own: not memory’s labyrinth, but apocalypse’s slow unfolding. His syntax makes the reader experience disorientation as a moral act—forcing us to inhabit confusion rather than flee from it. If one were to distill the essence of Krasznahorkai’s fiction, it would be the persistent nearness of collapse. His worlds are suspended between hope and ruin—often rural, provincial spaces that serve as microcosms for humanity’s larger failures.
In The Melancholy of Resistance (1989), the arrival of a mysterious circus and a dead whale in a small Hungarian town triggers chaos, paranoia, and moral dissolution. The novel’s absurd premise unfolds into a profound allegory about society’s vulnerability to hysteria and demagoguery. Adapted by Béla Tarr into the film Werckmeister Harmonies, the story becomes almost biblical in tone—a meditation on collective blindness and the failure of enlightenment.
For Krasznahorkai, apocalypse is not a future event but a permanent condition of existence. His characters—fallen intellectuals, wanderers, monks, derelicts—inhabit a world perpetually on the verge of collapse. Yet, he resists nihilism. Beneath his darkness lies a persistent belief in the redemptive force of art and moral contemplation. His more recent works, such as Seiobo There Below (2008) and A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East (2018), signal a spiritual evolution. Moving beyond European decay, these texts draw on Japanese and Buddhist aesthetics, embracing the idea of eternal recurrence, sacred precision, and aesthetic humility. Through them, Krasznahorkai seems to shift from apocalypse toward illumination—from despair to the fragile beauty of being.
The Nobel Committee’s phrasing—“reaffirms the power of art”—is crucial. Krasznahorkai’s worldview, though soaked in ruin, insists that art remains the final refuge of meaning. His works argue that literature’s endurance lies precisely in its ability to face darkness without flinching.
In his 2015 Man Booker International Prize acceptance speech, Krasznahorkai said that literature is the last space where “the complexity of the human soul is still allowed to exist.” This conviction radiates through every sentence he writes. His novels challenge a world of simplification and speed—a world increasingly allergic to ambiguity. His art is not escapist; it is resistant. It resists simplification, commodification, the flattening of experience. In that resistance lies a politics of the spirit—a subtle defiance against conformity and amnesia. By making readers dwell in discomfort, Krasznahorkai reminds us that true art should disturb before it consoles.
No discussion of Krasznahorkai is complete without acknowledging his deep collaboration with filmmaker Béla Tarr, whose visual language mirrors the author’s prose. Films such as Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies are not mere adaptations; they are extensions of a shared vision—long takes, grayscale landscapes, and slow pacing echo the rhythm of Krasznahorkai’s sentences. This partnership between writer and filmmaker redefined how literature and cinema can converse. Tarr’s camera, like Krasznahorkai’s pen, denies instant gratification. Both invite the viewer—or reader—to confront time itself, to witness the erosion of meaning and the endurance of beauty in the same frame.
The Nobel Committee described Krasznahorkai as “a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard.” Indeed, Krasznahorkai redefines what “epic” means in the modern age. Gone are the heroes, the conquests, and the gods. In their place stand weary villagers, failed intellectuals, anonymous bureaucrats—all trapped within absurd systems or meaningless waiting. His epics unfold not across battlefields but across the corridors of consciousness, where doubt replaces destiny.
In this, Krasznahorkai revives the moral grandeur of the epic form within the despair of the modern condition. His protagonists may not triumph, but their persistence to perceive—to see clearly even in darkness—becomes its own kind of heroism. Though deeply rooted in Hungarian soil, Krasznahorkai’s imagination is global. His later works draw inspiration from Japanese temples, Chinese landscapes, and Buddhist philosophy. This cosmopolitan evolution positions him as a rare bridge between Western metaphysical pessimism and Eastern contemplative serenity.
Whereas his early novels depict the failure of human systems, his later ones seek harmony beyond them. In Seiobo There Below, art itself becomes divine—a force through which human beings glimpse eternity. The novel’s episodic structure, spanning from Kyoto to Venice, portrays art as an act of devotion, not production. This Eastward gaze expands the emotional and philosophical scope of European modernism. It suggests that the answer to apocalypse may not lie in reconstruction but in attentive stillness—in seeing, in silence, in art.
The Nobel Prize now secures Krasznahorkai’s position among the literary titans of our age. But his true legacy lies not in institutional recognition, rather in his courage to write against the grain of the times. In an age of brevity, he writes long sentences. In an age of clarity, he embraces confusion. In an age of distraction, he demands attention. His art thus becomes an act of resistance—not only against despair but against superficiality.
His readers, scattered across languages and continents, share a common experience: the exhaustion that gives way to revelation. Reading Krasznahorkai is to endure, but in that endurance, one feels the renewal of attention, the recovery of depth, the reawakening of wonder.
The world of 2025—fractured by wars, rising authoritarianism, digital addiction, and ecological grief—may seem far from the obscure villages of Krasznahorkai’s fiction. Yet his novels speak directly to our condition. When the social order disintegrates, when meaning feels lost, what remains? For Krasznahorkai, art remains. The act of describing, of perceiving—of refusing to turn away—is itself a moral stance. His literature becomes both a mirror and a sanctuary: it reflects collapse but also shelters the human capacity for awe.
In awarding him the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy implicitly recognized this truth: that art’s endurance amid ruin is not decorative but essential. Krasznahorkai’s fiction does not escape catastrophe; it redeems it through attention. In every long sentence, every moment of delay, there is resistance to erasure.
László Krasznahorkai is the writer of the end who writes for the future. His Nobel Prize is not only a triumph for Hungarian letters but for the idea of literature as a spiritual vocation. His works are reminders that art’s highest duty is not entertainment but revelation—to confront, to clarify, to sustain. He has shown that even amid “apocalyptic terror,” the written word can remain a light—trembling, flickering, but unextinguished. And perhaps that is his ultimate gift: the belief that beauty endures, even when the world does not. As the great Hungarian laureate once said, “The apocalypse is not coming—it has already arrived.” But in his prose, we discover something else, something the Nobel Committee, too, must have felt—that in the very ruins of language, there still rises the stubborn flame of art.
Emran Emon is an eminent journalist, columnist and global affairs analyst.
