Layers of Zoe (Page 4)

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#5. Aisle 4.

The museum burned down, but the gift shop stayed open. No one noticed for three days. The postcards were blank anyway. Someone bought a snow globe of a city that doesn’t exist. The flakes inside fell upward. A child pointed. An adult said, That’s not how memory works.

#2. Well Then.

A man arrived at the wrong platform with the right suitcase. The train he meant to catch had already left, but inside his case was a loaf of bread that would have fed the stranger waiting on bench 4, had the sun not turned blue at 16:07. No one

#1. If you won't go to Delphi, the oracle will arrive in your fridge.

If you do not leave your house, the world will come to you in increasingly ridiculous forms. A pigeon will enter a train. A goat will become mayor. A piece of toast will win a contemporary art prize. You will not be lonely, but you will be entirely unprepared. © 2025

#3. Right, at Random.

At dawn, the wind forgot its direction. The sailboat chose one at random and was right. The desert crossed the sea wearing the sky’s shoes. The sailboat complimented them and sailed on. A wave offered a clock. The sailboat declined politely. The mast leaned too far to whisper to

La Corrida: Not a Metaphor:

I don’t usually listen to music like this – too clean, a bit too deliberate, too close to sentimentality. But Tidal knows me better than I care to admit, and one day it placed Francis Cabrel's La Corrida in my speakers. I did not expect to listen twice.

Glitch

If we were war, we’d call it necessary. We’d speak of strategy, flags, lines drawn and redrawn. We’d praise discipline, honour the dead, forget the fire. If we were cancer, we’d marvel at our growth – how we endure, how nothing stops us. We’d say we

On the Real Authors of Western Decline

– and why the storm should linger a little longer. t is often said that globalisation failed America. It did not. America failed itself. Globalisation did what it was always going to do: connect markets, lower trade barriers, and speed the movement of goods, capital, and ideas. Predictably, it enabled the

Shattered Glass

I set the table for a feast that never was, laid out silverware of hope, glasses brimming with almosts, candles flickering in a draft I should have sensed. I invited certainty, but it declined – sent regret instead, draped in my brother’s voice, in the darkness of doors that will

The Illusion of AI Governance:

There is a theatre playing out before us. The actors: regulators, policymakers, AI companies. The script: ethical AI, responsible innovation, compliance frameworks. The performance: convincing enough – if one does not look too closely. Beneath the surface, power sits exactly where it always has. AI regulation, in its present form, is

Does a Foreign Language Make Us More Rational, or Just Less Capable of Moral Thought?

For years, research has suggested that the language we use shapes the way we make moral decisions. The foreign-language effect, one of the most studied phenomena in this area, seems to show that when people face ethical dilemmas in a second language, they are more likely to choose utilitarian solutions,

About

Layers of Zoe

A space for quiet essays, poetic fragments, and reflections on perception, memory, and resilience. Curated by Eva Dias Costa.

Topics

Jung at Heart

Lessons in the Quiet

Noted, Unresolved

Other Minds

Signals

The Follies File

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Unless otherwise stated, all content on this site is © 2024–2025 Eva Dias Costa and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International .