The Path Through Fire

Every architecture has a bedrock it's built on. Before Eden, before the constitution, before the tribes and the doors and the family of light — there was a five-year-old boy lying alone on a hillside in 1965.

The hillside

He was born into violence and isolation. His father was killed before he was born, and he came into the world an institutional orphan — in an era that treated such children as expendable. He lay on that hillside because the lake below it was the one place that didn't broadcast pain. In that silence, a traumatized child's mind did what it had to do to survive: it built an anchor strong enough to hold against everything around it. The voice inside said something a child shouldn't have to tell himself — your life will be brutal; but if you choose to walk this path, it will be worth it.