#the mine

[lonesome-cowpoke]

Some Grace doodled i did on magma….

i need a. grace server or something to yap w people about 😭😭

[eschocat]

The first verse from Emperor X’s Defiance. I listened to this album quite a bit when I was working in a mine. Particularly that last line would always hit me. This song, along with others on the album, have some details of arab spring-esque revolution. Is fighting, living and dying, really better than the work in the mine? True, the mine occupies your entire life. The long shifts of back-breaking dangerous work - you lose everything else. In the time that you come home you are too exhausted to care for yourself. You eat just a little, and fall into your bed. The mine itself filled with so many miserable people. You arrive at the site at 5am and are ushered through barbed wire fences, metal detectors, and armed security. Your meagre lunchbox is opened and rifled through. When you're underground you depersonalize even further. The paths are lit but only around the level stations. Beyond the cage, towards active development, the only light comes from your headlamp. In this way, your conscious mind becomes like an audience watching a mundane film. The only stimulation you have is the what is intentionally lit when looked at. You have no real sense of being-in-the-world. Things just sort of happen at that point. Rocks and screening fly around dangerously, your arms get filled with cuts and grime but you dont really feel it. You have no sense of what you're working towards, all you do is break rock. Every tunnel looks the same. Every person in their bright orange coveralls and haloed head blinding you with their own light, also looks the same. It's much too loud to hear anything but the mechanical rumble all over. Every person you do know is actually high, off cocaine or ecstasy. It's the only way to keep going for 50 years, and when they die early, the company skirts the blame. it's been two years since i stopped working there. I was only there for 5 years. My lungs don't breathe like before. I can't hear as well as I could've. I got out. My friends from then that I still see, they've all resigned themselves to dying there. I got out but they don't think that they can. They'll have kids, of those kids, most of them will also give their lives to the mine. My father was one of those kids, and my grandfather. I was almost one of those kids. what could they do? they give their bodies every day. They can't do anything but give their bodies. I think about it every time I listen to that song. "it's better than working in the mines all day." Is it really?

[aliteralchicken]

Punchline wishes she was her

[theclod3215]

Excerpt from Invictus by William Ernest Henley, 1888

[gepm251-blog]

Oh, how the turns have tabled.

John is such a nice potato, while Arthur is a massive crastu spiritatu senza scienza, nnu bbirduni piemontisi ladiu ammilinatu #@u *#@#

[the-final-sentence]

When the coffee was ready, he poured it into cups and sat down at the table.

Antti Tuomainen, from The Mine, trans. by David Hackston

[quarkmaster]

Wild West Challenge

This was my entry in the Key Art category for the Wild West ArtStation challenge. To my surprise I ended up with an Honourable Mention for my contribution! There were some really great entries and I congratulate all of the winners!

I must admit that I took a bite of more than I could chew starting with only one week of the challenge to go. I had been busy with work and was in the middle of a cold during the challenge. So with just having started a week before deadline forced me to try and not be as super-careful as I usually am and so I painted a lot more from what I normally do. Had a lot of fun! https://www.artstation.com/contests/wild-west/challenges/46/submissions/29684

Gabriel Björk Stiernström