The Hollow Oracle

The hollow oracle During the five months and five surgeries in the beginning of the year and after each surgery, I found myself trapped between worlds, body failing, energy gone, mind searching for meaning in the silence. I kept asking the same question over and over: Why? Why the pain, the fatigue, the fog that wouldn’t lift? I turned to everything I knew, science, spirituality, ritual, intuition, trying to decode the message inside the suffering. But every answer echoed back hollow, as if the universe itself had gone quiet. This piece, The Hollow Oracle, came from that place. It’s about the desperate dialogue between human and machine, flesh and spirit, that moment when you call out for help and realize the response might never come. The “HELP” signal flickering in her cybernetic eye isn’t just a cry for rescue, it’s a mirror. A reminder of how, even when we feel most disconnected, something deep inside is still transmitting, still searching for light through the static. In the end, I understood the pain was part of the signal, not a punishment, but a transmission guiding me back to my own reconstruction. The oracle was never hollow. I just had to listen differently. Gifted at Marfa 2025.