Each human body contains a complex community of trillions of microorganisms that are important for your health while you're alive.
I'm working on clearing out some old tabs, and ran across this piece from last fall. The short version is that your gut microbiome and other microbes that accompany you in a series of symbiotic relationships throughout your lifetime persist even after you die. While you might assume that these bacteria and other little beings would perish along with you once you're no longer warm and living, it turns out that they shift gears upon your death, being part of the massive effort to return your remains en masse to the nutrient cycle.
There's honestly something rather poetic about that. Here you've spent a lifetime being the center of a holobiont--a sort of miniature, migratory ecosystem. And these many millions of life forms that you have given safe harbor to for thousands upon thousands of their generations are among the funerary vanguard caring for your remains after you're gone. They pour forth from their ancestral lands--the gut, the skin, and other discrete places--and spread out through even the most protected regions of your form.
And then, just as you constructed your body, molecule by molecule, from a lifetime of nutrients you consumed, so do these microbes go through the process of returning everything you borrowed back to the wider cycles of food and growth and life and death. The ancient halls where their ancestors lived in relative stability are now taken apart in the open air, and their descendants will disperse their inheritance into the soil and the water through the perpetual process of decomposition.
I've always wanted a green burial, and I find it comforting that when my remains are laid in the ground, they'll be accompanied by the tiny ecosystems I spent a lifetime tending, and who will return the favor by sending my molecules off in a billion new directions.
"Goddess of Rot"
Watercolor, 2026. For @everydayoriginal
Malenia, Blade of Miquella, Goddess of Rot.
The original piece has sold but I put some prints in the shop!
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I don't think I've ever been more miserable playing a video game than I did with Elden Ring last year because my god I am *terrible* at it - but it was so effing gorgeous and the lore was too delicious, I muscled through it anyway. It was my first Souls game, I intend to play more, but I need a break first.
I think Malenia was the most failed attempts that I've ever had in a boss fight, to the point that I'm still proud of myself for finally beating her 😂
given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that
So glad I chose acrylic for this one bc one area dries as I work on another area and I can probably finish this big ole thing sooner than I thought. I'm gonna bring back the ooze but I just need to fix the faces first
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