satoto

random person in this timeline

[iristending]

The burning land and the poisoned river.

[iristending]

"…And here are trees I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes - how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel? Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanism and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multi-coloured universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realise then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts? The soft lines if these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning. I realise that through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot for all that apprehend the world. Were I to trace its entire relief with my finger, I should not know any more. And you give me the choice between a description that is sure but that teaches me nothing and a hypothesis that claim to teach me but that are not sure. A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a though that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults? To will is to stir up paradoxes. Everything is ordered in such a way as to bring into being that poisoned peace produced by thoughtlessness, lack of heart or fatal renunciations."

-Albert Camus, from “The Myth of Sisyphus”

[iristending]

Remember

Remember all that have cradled you

Rushing past the infinite creation of universes

Part of you have touched suns and embraced flames.

Look up to the sky and know that you are alive

Know that you have thoughts, feelings, colours that will only belong to you

Know that it is true and it is maddening.

[spaceboi-brainrot]

[iristending]

Glimpse

The sand is burning. Can you feel it? The world that used to cradle us have abandoned all livelihood. And all I could muster was pitiful and hoarse,

‘Forgive us, mother.’

Had we learned to love a little more, had we learned to lose a little more. Ashes rain down, a seal on the shore watch hopelessly as her pup chokes to breathe. Water has turned to poison and no flesh was safe. Even if we are hungry, we cannot eat ourselves, we cannot take responsibility. Why refuse? Why can’t we die without noise? Why won’t the seal stop crying?

I stood and watched as they molded each one of us, pillars, wrenches, fire-bearers and world eaters. We watched and let them tell us we are good, that we must sacrifice. I gave and gave and allowed those words to persuade me, seduce me. It is never enough. You do not matter yet the bones and muscles that can withstand surmountable pressure extends your value. 

Shame burns my heart, yet there is nothing to learn from its heat, the world is burning. What was valued of me cannot bear the weight of shame. Something rot the moment I chose to look down and away. Stripped, poisoned, executed.

[iristending]

A Toast

A toast to a future unbound Though uncertain where it marshal'st   May it hast brighter days May it bring thousand dreams

Though bereft of hope it all may seem Yet it is thou that stands the test of time For't all be blessed, hast love 'i heart Forget not, for thou are firm-set and kind

[iristending]

Part III - Appreciation (End)

Appreciation I believe is another form of love if anything. Only difference is that it’s a skill you develop or learn. There’s a saying no? That "you’ll learn to appreciate it". 

I’m not going to write that all of it is resolved by it and that it’ll be the cure that we all need. There are many unjust evils that appreciation can’t console or even comprehend. Things will change, some will die and some will continue while limping.

The thing about the storm was that it was one of many that was to come. But it didn’t make it any less terrifying. Clutching onto family members as our walls and windows shook violently, it made me feel like the quartz at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe symbolically enough we held on like the silicon-oxygen bonds. But you know what we were saying then? It wasn’t that "we’re all gonna die” or “i don’t wanna die”. It was that we loved each other if anything happened. Kind of took away the gut wrenching fear in the moment and turned it into a brave little hope. The life threatening storm felt a little more bearable.

It’s now about three months after the events that I described. Life had resumed where it can. The streets are back to bustling, the little creatures on the beach crawling peacefully and one of the tree had survived, its crown even thicker as if holding onto each of its leaves more tightly. The other had unfortunately died.

Today came a tree removal service to take it away from our garden. It’s a bit sad to see how this once living organism grabbing greedily onto life gave the earth underneath it away, so easily. But another thought started to plague me as of late, is that maybe the tree died protecting what was in the soil during the storm, the gold bearing quartz. 

Maybe the quartz came far before this storm, riding the previous one. Maybe the tree and the quartz already knew each other, taking home in the same soil and maybe during the storm they held onto each other as did my family, maybe exchanged their ‘I love you’s’.

In a way the tree will always live on through the quartz, as part of its shining golden line. And in my eyes it’s a beautiful story of resilience, grief, change and the ever-changing state of existence.

I’m not sure as to how to end this story as mine still goes on every moment. I haven’t reached any ultimate philosophy to change lives. I’m afraid what I’ve written comes very naturally to anyone that is alive. Grief, pain and the fear of great changes will always be there like the storm, but despite it all we preserve. Like the quartz in the ever endless current of the ocean, we’ll taste every bit of color life has to offer. And maybe one day we’ll be able to look at each other’s gold linings and rejoice and appreciate that we exist.

[iristending]

Part II - Gold Bearing Quartz

Deep beneath the sea there lies on the ocean bed hydrothermal vents. Oozing from it a solution of many lives of gases, salts and metals. It also plays around like a god with unending creativity. It dissolves, absorbs, changes and creates - deposits are made, metals, calcite and clay dance as porphyries are born and of course the quartz are never ones to miss a geological event. Though imperfect in many ways the hydrothermal vents embraces them, warms them and keeps them dancing.

But one day the ballroom on the ocean floor has been disrupted. An earthquake! But really down here the minerals were used to it and an earthquake, as mild in power as this one, didn’t stop the dancing.

The little quartz stopped a bit to take a break and settled on the seabed, then the quiet yet constant vibrations and stress started to break it. A small crack, then it grew like thunder branching. Within the rocky milky quartz its ions started to displace creating electricity or specifically piezoelectricity! It must’ve been terrifying for the quartz, so the hydrothermal vent embraced the little broken mineral, engulfing it in its warm magical soup. Then something very interesting happened! The electricity of the small quartz attracted a gold, wearing the small shimmering metal hesitantly in its cracked cavity. Then suddenly more and more flocked it, mending along the lines of what had been broken. The godly hydrothermal vents are loving and looked upon the beautiful imperfection they had helped create and it smiled and let it back onto the dance floor of the ocean.

I put the small gold bearing quartz down, shook my head out of my imagination and looked at the gold lined cup that was on my shelf. My aunt’s new hobby, kintsugi. Kintsugi is a Japanese art of mending objects with gold. Or actually with some oily mixture and gold powder, or silver or platinum. But that aside its philosophy is the core. It lays in embracing the imperfect and acceptance of change in general. I found that very beautiful and meaningful when my aunt gave me the cup. In a way this gold lined cup actually means much more to me now than it did before. It also must’ve felt the anguish of the little quartz at one point when it shattered and to be picked in the warm hand of my aunt, working on it slowly and gently as if it was still beautiful, it must’ve been a lot for the cup. I wiped the dust off and placed it back onto the shelf, now with the quartz next to it. Both tells a story of change, rebirth and imperfection. It was inspiring sure but it ultimately reminded me of how fragile existing really was. Yes we will always change someway. Sometimes we will grow, shrink, break or mutate, whatever it may be. And sometimes there are our hydrothermal vents or my aunt to help us! And other times there won’t be anyone to pick the parts with us. Ultimately though everything will change and cease to exist. But it doesn’t mean we should abandon everything or anything that isn’t perfect. If it wasn’t for the love and care for what we have now, change wouldn't be as devastating. But it is devastating and that’s because despite it all we still appreciate it. And I believe that real strength comes from appreciation.

[iristending]

Black Swan chick in a pocket.

Drew a scene from one of ACCA’s latest video. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TDSj44Y62Q

The scene is from around 14 minutes.

App used: “Sketchbook” on IPad.

[iristending]

Part I - Storm

A storm has passed through recently. It wasn’t as devastating as the ones that came before it. Still I saw the trees clung to the earth, their proudly kept crown balding as the winds plucked their leaves one by one. 

It was still summer. The leaves weren’t ready to go. Their time to wither still a long time ahead. 

It was then when I realised that we resist disasters and tragedies universally. Like the thick roots clawing at the frail soil, like a skin that won't shed or like the atoms that wouldn't split before 1932 or like trying to remember a smile from a face long gone.

Thinking of atoms, I suppose following the traits of refusing to split - all things which are built off of it has the personality too. Stubbornly holding on until it explodes, leaving trails of pain in and out of itself.

Two days later the town was still cleaning away the mess the storm brought. High ocean waters soothed for the time being. I was sweeping the garden, the leaves that basked in the sun atop of the tree now rotting away, earth coloured and scattered. One of the tree that lost these leaves looked a bit barren and worn, and the other even more barren. I could see its roots out in the air, as it almost laid on the ground. It was relatively young compared to the other one which was standing somewhat upright. It took a few of us to put them both back to their places before. 

As we finished shovelling the last of the soils back I found some broken shells, a roly poly bug and a very interesting looking rock. I could see some faint yellow gold lining but also a big part that milky color under the mud. After going back in and washing the cool rock i discovered that indeed it had a small golden part stuck in a dirty white quartz. Apparently it’s called a "Gold Bearing Quartz". 

[iristending]

"Stardust"

by me

My dear Stardust friend

Migrate through the stars

Moons will hum and rumble

March till you find a home

Chase after the burning stars

Until a constellation calls your name

Change the course of life

Under your light I will walk

My dear Stardust friend

Hear the songs of the lost planets

Millions of echoes and storms

Hurry to their heart and soothe them

Cries of their tales, suddenly dissipate

Cold to the touch yet molten pieces remain

Crumbled under the heavy pressure

Collapsed from the inside to burst

My dear Stardust friend

Inevitable is the rotting dim of death

Mourned your passing for a long time

Even so I gave you to the fires

Time has never halted

Even to the running comets

To triumph in the face of fate

Even the smallest of us cave in