Author: Mario Bekes
The Transition I am sitting in the airport lounge, surrounded by the hum of a world that never stopped moving. After fifteen days of walking through the rugged heart of Spain, the noise here feels strange. People rush past me checking watches, scrolling through phones with an intensity I had... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
The System and the Shelter My childhood was written before I even had the chance to live it. During my youth in Yugoslavia, life followed a predictable pattern. My parents worked in the factory. We lived in a concrete apartment building. The script was simple: go to school, get a... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
Introduction When things change inside you, things begin changing around you. Not always immediately.Not always dramatically.And rarely in the way you expect. But eventually, your inner world starts shaping how you experience everything outside of it. That is what happened to me on the Camino Primitivo. Slowly. Quietly. Like morning... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
Living Beneath the Shadow There is a particular frequency to a city living beneath the shadow of a giant. When your skyline is dominated by Mount Etna — a restless, smoking titan that has existed for more than half a million years — you develop a different relationship with time... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
Dispatches from Sicily on history, resilience, and the death of authenticity in the digital age. I arrived in Catania with the “peace of the pilgrim” still clinging to my skin like fine Spanish dust, only to have it violently stripped away by a man on a dented Vespa yelling something... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
Introduction I remember a night in 1993, somewhere in a muddy trench, while the sky above the former Yugoslavia burned with metal and fear. I was in my twenties, the same age as my son is today. But my world back then was reduced to biology and survival, as I... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
Introduction While parliaments debate oil prices and currency stability—like choristers in a poorly directed opera—the real power brokers of 2026 are watching entirely different indicators. Forget lithium. Forget uranium. The most valuable commodity on earth today cannot be touched, stored in barrels, or mined from the ground. Yet its absence... View Article
Author: Amit Pothiwala
The Illusion Stripped Bare For those of us who have served in the military and operated in the grey zones between conflict and diplomacy, a fundamental truth remains unchanged: the most advanced weapon system becomes irrelevant when the individual behind it lacks discipline. I have seen it in the mud... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
The Illusion Stripped Bare The fluorescent lights of a Sydney gym have a way of stripping the illusion from a man. Between the rhythm of treadmills and the metallic clash of plates, I watch people move through their routines with precision—but without presence. They are healthy, safe, and well-fed. Yet... View Article
Author: Mario Bekes
The clock on the studio wall was no longer a tool for measuring time; it had become a taunting predator. 44 hours. The air in the room was thick, smelling of stale espresso and the sharp, metallic tang of adrenaline that flooded my system every time my eyelids grew heavy.... View Article