This is a simple menagerie of short prose.
Each claiming its own soundscape.
(Yes, that means separate VSTs)
Each claiming a separate thought.

Please try to enjoy each story equally, and not show preference for any over the others.
(Yes, this is a reference.)

1| First Doubt

[A/S/YT]

How lucky I am, to be.

To be ever thinking, ever feeling, ever loving, ever present, ever existent.
All that I say is all that I require.
I, and by extension, everything is finite. I have nothing to doubt.

I am lucky right?

I am limited to my existence. This limit is fulfilling. It’s only me here after-all, this world begins with me and ends at me.
I’m real, what’s real has to end after-all.

How could it grow any further?

Tell me, tell me, just tell me that my heart doesn’t belong here in this bliss, here in my happy hovel, here in the warmth of my own self gratitude, the warmth that a cold growing grasp could never breach.

Am I warm enough?

Give me something to say, that isn’t just empty platitudes. Tell me phrases that aren’t alone with the joys of believed comfort. Speak those words that aren’t wellness checks from my distant brain. I’d have to doubt myself to not call it a challenge to deceive my appreciation.

Would it be a hard challenge?

Cast forth my tears and I shall supply myself a spring from the endless waterfall.
My love is untouchable, its mine. All mine.
A whisper on a windy day. The ear that it's meant to reach will lose it, but the message will forever be carried on the wayward winds. My love is rare, my luck is rarer. My being is enough, not an infirm illusion.

Aren’t I exceptional? Aren’t I special?

I’m not doubting, I could never doubt. I doubt I’d ever doubt, no doubter would best their own doubts after-all.

Right?

I’m not alone am I?
There’s more out there isn’t there?

Will I see it all? Is this just the beginning?

This cannot be it, can’t it?

Of course it can’t be.

3| Tertiary Tempest

[A/S/YT]

Yes, it’s true. Only now that the sky has cleared.
I was but the third rain, the third storm to come into their life.

They had soaked up my every being, risen me with heat and evaporated my sense of self, I was too eager to join their cloud in the hopes that together we would water the very world we had drawn each other from.
Too eager to believe that were we not the very storm itself, that we could withstand its’ ravages and persist together.

In our condensation, with all our tightness and clumped being, it was not a strengthening like I had seen, but a clench and cramp towards your plans and efforts. Yet you welcomed my being, for you knew the ease in discarding it.
I keep too clingy, perhaps too distrusting of my own molecules.
What good are the supports of a building that must lean so unsteadily on one another?

I was just your third storm, one that will never be as heavy as the first, and perhaps but a blip from your second.
To you I am a light rain, a rain you wish to forget as it sullied your cloth, as you stood without the coat you were told to bring.
I am the rain you close your eyes and imagine passing. But the clouds never leave.
You complained about me, you could complain about me endlessly. The water you wished to not splash your being. It’s as though all your grievances, were due to me. The rain you danced for and called forth, but never expected to truly pour.

You too were the cloud, the architect of your path and the disembark-er of mine.

The thing about rain is. It’s a damned cycle. Even should I never meet your cloud again, nor rain upon your teary-eyed face, nor water your neglected crops, I am destined to fall. No drop of mine the same and each cloud shall too disperse. I will form again, as snow and hail, as vapor and steam. I will collect on moss and grass, in lakes and seas. I will pitter and patter against windows and atop umbrellas. I will ruin. I will comfort. I will persist.

You cannot stall the rain, but you cannot force it’s return either.
You can make your dances and prayers for me to fall again, but my rain itself will not to be found, you will find a fourth storm, from some other reservoir, some weaker shower that’s a glorified drizzle. You will cry again or maybe even overcast the sky and sleep over its blanket.
But not with me. Not with my rain.

I don’t wish ill on you, I cannot do such an act.
I actively act against the thought of you losing yourself in drought.
To somebody or other, you are the rain, like I am to you.
To some other somebody, you will be another cloud, like I were to another.
For us both we will be the very sun for ourselves and the like, but that seems so far from today.
For today, I was your third storm, and you my castaway cloud.

I still get memories. Who wouldn’t.
You carried me over great distances, my rain filling the size of your cloud.
I fed your cravings, your character, darkened your greys, faded your pink, stormed your mood, all so you could provide me a space in your world. Or were it all inverse. Either way we touched amongst the sky and kissed between the stars.
Just to roll back over the hills we glided above.

I live now, in strength. I live, as I know that I will fall.
I will be made still and run deep.
I will be. I am rain.
And unlike I was from you, that cannot ever be taken from me.

6| Coward in the Dark

[A/S/YT]

Shadows can’t harm you. Shadows can’t jump out from their darkness and dice you. Shadows can’t draw blood, nor score nor slice you. Yet I am afraid.

I am driven mad by the absence of Light.
The warmth that shines out vast from it’s being, a clarifying energy, unbiased but personal, Light remains my closest ally, my honest confidant, my trusted companion.
Heliocentric or Selenotropic I turn towards my Light, for I cannot face the fear of my shadow. I cannot trust that which doesn’t illuminate ahead of me.
How can I pass through my fears, when I keep so easily lost?
I am to seemingly spiral with uncertainty at what is left in my limited enlightenment.

My shadow terrified my past, today still ruling with tyranny. An acrid autocrat with flagrant foreign policy.
Casting over my future with a defiant darkened grasp, like a Lich scrying an orb of my every doing.
A vulture for the fast decaying corpse my flesh finds itself turning into through fear alone.

I sit enveloped, mummified by darkness.
Limb by limb I am coated. A weight too impossible to lift. Too slippery to evade.
Cell by cell I deteriorate. My shadow casting against my shriveling carcass.

If only I could outrun that which is cast from my own self, could outmaneuver that which encircles me. It oozes as the sun falls long, rising to me as an ominous creeping tide.
It waits long against my fast paced defeat. It bets against my ever-shortening stride.

Shadows, battering the mind. Even now in my remnants I fabricate fallacies of my gutted mental removal.
Cut out from in front of me, the reality I believed in under the Light.
Tearing and shredding, these shadows make themselves a loud reminder of reinforced fears.

With Light, there is nothing to be scared of. With Light, I boycott fear.

Absent of it all, I am left with nothing. I am left with fear. I am left in Shadows.

My perceptions, my allegorical caves of Plato, my self-written corners and arson-ed bridges. All pale in comparison to the dread conceived by my shadow. Sourcing all angles, all promises, all potentials, I’m hoping that my delusions will provide me the salvation to conquer my fear. I hope to break my shadow with a lying glow.
I hope that it slinks away at the transmittance of my radiant shine.

It doesn’t.
I am too greedy with what I absorb within.

I am breathless and terrified yet again. Only now, the shadow pities me.
It turns simple, it softens and falls into a place of humility.
It refuses to overpower me, I am not worthy of the fear it grasped me in.

The sun rises. This time I mark it’s showing.
My battle won, yet this war stays continuous.
Now once again, Light beckons me to it’s side.

I am left irrational no longer, just a coward given rationality.

4| Out of Place

[A/S/YT]

How beautiful it is to not belong, to know that your place within the universe is not cosmically locked, not so rigidly defined by those foolish roses around it. Those feeble flowers with their thorns and prickled ideas, dependent on hardened soil and twisting roots. Those petals all coalesce to beckon the call of the greater flower, which in turn is to instate itself as but another face for nature.

I refuse to be so easily assimilated. I am not bound by any group, how could I limit myself so trivially? My beauty is vast.
I am to be the duckling in the group of swans, to be the pink sheep amongst the field of white. That obsessive rarity, with worth undefinable.
See within your world, I am the star, but not out of spotlight nor desire, I am that ever-so precious joy.
I find myself so out of place I cannot help but be excellently made exuberant.

Oh, and I know the world would love to offer me a fantastical feast and a delicious dessert in my stead. As if my own wasn’t fulfilling enough.
The world will claim that I cannot attend my own buffet, in spite of my inextricably possessed good will. Yet, understand that I could only notice it, and view it’s magnificence. The world shall crush me should I even dream about indulging in it.
I am out of place after all.
I am the outlier, the exception, the golden rule. The fortune of blue moons. I’m to suffer from my propensity for distinctiveness.

Yet, how magnificent it is, to be anything at all, but in that anything still remain a piece that doesn’t connect. The scrutiny you wish you could afford on my observation matters to no one, as its plain for all to see that I shouldn’t be here. Yet you wouldn’t as much as venture to remove me.
I am that character, that glow, that shine, that jenesaisquoi, that bubbling feeling you could never shake. I am your butterflies, your head-rush, your uncharted waters. That golden thread, lost within the wheat. I am the golden ticket you just couldn’t quite cash in.

Yet all the while I remain a crack in the wall of life, that neither spreads nor shrinks. I remain out of place.
Seal me within. What am I to long for?
To be entombed? To be confined within my amontillado cask?
Am I instead to be spilled out? Spilled out over the cold stone of the basement floor? My spillage just some wayward stain, never a design.
Am I instead an over-poured glass of spoiled milk? A broken emulsion, served by accident? Are these the demands of a world that cannot handle you?

The world be damned. I am too breathtaking, too spectacular, too radiant. I shall never fit in, and like an orchid amongst daisies, I shall attract regardless.

Just don’t forget me. Please.
I talk a loud and messy game, but I need to, for who else would speak on my behalf.
Divert your eyes as though you’re to turn to salted pillar, fear my brilliance and hope it disappears.

Don’t forget me.
I’m still here, just out of place.

Thank you for your time. Truly, time is very difficult to find, so for you to use it so sparingly is greatly appreciated.
For those interested, there will be more of these digests, because sometimes expressing is as important as analyzing.

Speak to you sometime soon, before the first of May.

What are we?

A question everyone dreads. A limit and restriction to the upper bounds of a description, or a broad marker for a fate far beyond the beliefs held by either party. Yet you require clarity, as does anybody.
What are you reading? Who are you reading from? Where and How do these thoughts come about?

This is Vermillio’s Verbals. A Substack blog, that you can find elsewhere such as Medium for no good reason. There may be slight differences between the two.
Here you will find prose, poems, papers, playlists and other various impassioned writings by the writer, Vermillio. (An obvious pen-name because I am a coward, although it’s not all that hard to know who I am).

That’s the short end of it.
Enjoy what you read and continue about your life.

Get Me Out Of Here

For those that have remained and are still curious as to what this is, allow me to engage in some self-indulgence, and a half-formed FAQ.

Vermillio’s Verbals is a project. A labor of love.
My love of writing came as soon as I could understand how to hold a pen, which took me quite a long time, but I was definitely attempting at a younger age than most at the very least.
My love of reading came soon after, as I began to notice that what I would write at such an age was quite literally scribbled lines. (Thank Blue’s Clues for my penmanship).

It became clear to me that in order to back-up my love for writing, I would have to get an understanding of the medium I wanted to involve myself with.
Here we are now. I am only slightly more literate and much worse read.

That being said, it is obvious to those around me that I find writing and media to be of importance. Writing is important because like many things in the world it is worthless.
This may sound counter-intuitive, but the very words you see before your very eyes are as unimportant as any other 1 or 0 rendered on a screen, you could read a review on a movie, a recipe for quiche, or a Youtube video about dash-cam footage. It all doesn’t matter. It is just light and electrons after all. Even a splotch of ink on a page, is but matter forming itself on-top of matter.

This is all to say that writing only has meaning if both writer and reader deem it to have any. I truly believe that to be a stunningly beautiful concept. To continue reading, and for me to continue writing, we make conscious efforts, it is our want and choice to do so, and not a deep sense of survival. We make this choice readily and on our own accord. That’s why you can skip over this post, or any posts for that matter, as they’re yet another addition to the vast well of words used by humanity.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that they’re in English. Don’t worry though, I’m actively trying to remedy that limiter. Not at a great pace mind you, but it is an active adjustment being made nonetheless.

Regardless, why write? Especially if it’s not important.
What is the choice being made by you to write?

Sadly, it will always vary. More often than not this is done to catch the neurotic lightning that infects my brain and beams strikes through into my fingertips.

Why even post it?
I post due to a slight sense of ego I fear. I have many writings I don’t think will ever see the light of another’s eyes nor sully the ears of another. I have many other pieces that I’m torn on the thought of showing to others, or not showing to many at the least. Either way, this Substack will be home to the writings I feel deserve some time being read. We post out of confidence to weather the shame of seclusion.

How often will we receive these posts?
(This is the part of the writing where I make a bold claim.)

Vermillio’s Verbals will have two posts every full moon, that can mean a post spaced between 2 weeks or two posts that arrive on a waxing gibbous, or two posts shown on a new moon. How terrifying. A selenocentric haunting that lasts 29 days in length.

Why two posts?

I believe that my ability to think of many things, whilst slightly noteworthy, can only be exercised so often. In other words, I fear I’ll become a hack otherwise. But to only provide one writing in 29 days is slightly mean, at least for now. This means something akin to 26 posts a year. I don’t know how I’ll manage. As an aside, I hope you have all enjoyed the worm moon.

Eventually, you will be able to enjoy audio recordings and readings of these numerous posts, depending on the production value they might have to actually cost you. This is because whilst my words can dissipate and be forgotten to the ether by the very eyes that view them, my throat and voice will strain at some inevitable juncture even if they are to be forgotten, so being able to pay for a throat lozenge or at the very least a drink to soothe me matters a lot.

Expect evolving beliefs, voices and points, I try to repeat myself rarely, if you feel the posts are recursive do call me out and once I’m done defending myself out of pure audacity then I will see to it, that I adjust accordingly. (based off the validity of your claim of course.)

What is with the playlists, do we truly need them?

I love music. A lot. Almost to a fault. So yes, I may need them. You might not. That is fine.

Do we need music to accompany us with each reading?

Of course not. It would be unfair to those who are hard of hearing.

With that being said, I know that for me it makes my writing a little more enjoyable. When engaging in fiction I tend to add a soundtrack for no true reason, at times the music I listen to reflects the time being presented in the book itself, or is linked to when the author was writing the book. Sometimes I’ll even play some diegetic music if a character is in a place where music would be played.
Since I do this whilst reading fiction and non-fiction alike, I feel that extending my experience to others when they choose to engage in my writings is only fair.
In short, I do the playlists for me. I pick all of the songs, much like the images, to be a supporting amuse-gueule.

What’s with the name? What is a VST?

I call them VSTs because they are Vermillio Sound-Tracks.
Corny? Absolutely.
Peeling back the curtain further. At times, some of my writings are made alongside the VSTs, this is because I tend to write with music accompanying me.
In most cases though, the soundtracks are not influential in the drafting process of the works, so do not hold much sway over the presented themes. It is the presented themes that often hold sway over the soundtrack unless stated otherwise. The editing process however is a much different story.

Is this a team effort?

As of this post, there are no editors nor many external figures helping provide you with Vermillio Verbals. This can be subject to change. I doubt it, but, y’know. One can never be too sure.
However.
I would be a liar if I did not mention that a lot of the topics covered within the Verbals have not already been lengthy discussions between those around me, and I would once again be a liar if I did not let you readers know that those close to me often receive a final draft before this reaches you all.

So, whilst Vermillio’s Verbals is a solo endeavor/project, it would be egotistical to not praise the village that raises it. To all of you contributors, I thank you greatly and if you feel strongly about receiving credited acknowledgement, you know how to contact me and I will happily oblige.

Why Vermillio?

To tell you the truth, other than the thought of a pen-name, and the universality that is granted by a pseudonym, there is no true reason for it. Maybe at some point in my life I’ll become a wanted fugitive or something exciting and the anonymity will have been an interesting foresight.
Perhaps I believe it helps me communicate my opinions in a less-straddling manner, as Vermillio I cannot ride a fence nor allow myself to be misrepresented, as it would disappoint me twice over. Both as an injustice to myself and the personality you read.

In terms of specifics towards the name, I find the color of vermilion to be really enthralling, not to mention its cultural influence. I think something so pervasive would be good to be named after. Either that or I have a penchant towards names that you’d read in a young adult novel. So ultimately there is no true reason.

Closing remarks?

You are always open to comment, even if it is mean. The reply that follows by myself will quite often reciprocate what was sent forth, so please do not be the owner of both a mortar and a glass house. You are also always open to subscribe/follow this Substack to see if I keep my word on the 29 day time limit. I cannot make a subscribe button that does not appear as though I am shilling. Please forgive me for this.
Lastly, you are always welcome to share these posts with those around you, unless you’re a natural gatekeeper. Which is fine, I do not blame you.

So you’ve read it all. I welcome you. I thank you. I hope to see you soon.

If you know me, then I apologize for not keeping my promises sooner.
If you don’t know me, I apologize for not having you here sooner.
If I am reading this again. Live night by night.
If you are reading this again. Read it one more time, until the playlist loops!

End.

Do enjoy a complimentary playlist to listen to alongside this writing.

Youtube | Spotify | Apple

You seem smart and literate, can you help me answer a question?

An active man who sports a kilt, who practices martial arts, who cares for their family, who provides for those around them, who drinks in moderation and who even donates to charity. Tears a tendon in their leg.

They lay about in an injured stupor, wondering what they’ve done to deserve this misdeed, they wonder deeply the unjust nature of the world and start to believe if all odds are stacked against them. They lose hope in their life, lose their sense of self and purpose. As such more misfortune befalls their path.

A similar man, who too sports a kilt, who too practices martial arts, who too cares for their family, who too provides for those around them, who too drinks in moderation and who too even donates to charity. Tears the same tendon in their leg.

They refuse to let it ruin them. They go to physiotherapy. Confide in their family and friends. They see the unjust nature of the world and know that it doesn’t choose to provide dreams nor nightmares. They rebirth their joy and passion for life, redefine and bolster their sense of self and purpose.
As such fortune finds them at every corner.

Was it solely belief that altered the outcomes of our kilted-men? Or was it just probability flipping it’s unbiased coin?
Furthermore, are we sure that probability has a purely unbiased effect on life?
or alternatively, how are we to know that the true beliefs on the outcomes we envision for ourselves are of sole input?

Now that your brain is nice and warmed up, let's go a bit deeper.

Sowing.

Humanity, has the freedom to choose to be the gardeners and cultivators of their own perceived experiences. This freedom is exercised often, so much so that in the height of one’s own gardening and cultivation, a person’s perceived experience can often solely be defined by the attempts said person makes to achieve and earn potential rewards through the actions they had committed prior.

(To explain to those lost in the metaphor; people have the ability to be in charge of their own life, they use this ability so much that when they are fully in charge of a lot of things their lives are defined by the steps they made to reach the point they are at. As opposed to life being defined by its adaptive dynamic nature).

This makes sense, as save for selective shots of self-sabotage, what consistently happens to be more human in nature is to ultimately ensure one’s betterment/survival, instead of being the arbiter of one’s own immolation. Thus we are makers of the fields we plant and by extension, the very reapers within the field too. In other words, we are defined by the concept of getting what we put in.

But what of it? Why do the actions that precede our consequences good or bad happen to hold so much weight?
This writing would like to believe, that the outcomes we face from our actions are weighted due to the internal beliefs we judge externally and internally. In other words, the way we view the things we’ve done change how we receive it’s results.

Why do we get our just desserts?
Because, quite simply we made the damn dish.

Several factors have called this cultural mindset to attention, some catching people by the throat and others the culmination of many lived experiences. Many people place their entire faith in the eventual distribution of action-based justice. It’s as though many believe the scales are inspected regularly and forced to balance out in each individual case. When in reality, the scales are and have always been personalized. As such, there will never be an outcome to any event that is seen equally in the eyes of all.

The scales, for the purpose of this reading, are both the consequences/benefits of actions made prior, a concept that some would label Karma, but that would be a limiting description of the term.

In an unrelated, yet highly diagonally adjacent point.
This brings a certain story to mind, one of my own youth that I don’t let swim in my head too often. It is an Anansi story.

As a quick aside for those that aren’t caught in the web, Anansi is a spider trickster god of African and West-Indian verbal tales, think a much cooler type of Aesop fable.
Anansi stories vary often, both in message and casting, but a key feature of them is a display of intellectual prowess by our protagonist, the ever mischievous Anansi.

Anansi isn’t necessarily a role model in these stories, in fact, like many protagonists, this spider’s own hubris seems to be their primary downfall. At times, one can say that the spider can be a cruel engineer of punishment. Beside that, the lessons that can be understood by their tales are either, humorous enough to look past their moral shortcomings, or hold actual value.
The value in question being the bettering of mental processing, or simply, a lesson teaching greater critical thinking.

The story begins much like many others.

Setting the scene on a warm summer’s day beside a rushing river stream, home to many fish, of varying schools and size. Their glistening scales casting gleams from the sunbeams that broke the barrier of water above, a radiant refracting advertisement that to hungry onlookers was a sign that a meal lay in their midst.
The sprightly stream soon became an expressway to a webbed wicker-basket. Anansi’s webbed wicker-basket to be exact. Formed by the tricky spider’s very own thread, it had a complex design, an intricate weaving of knots and loops.
What the trickster god knew in craftsmanship was overshadowed by their current knowledge and feelings of hunger, and their caught fish was a simple solution that would cause brief amnesia.

To Anansi’s detriment, their caught fish was a solution to Tiger’s attempts to forget hunger too.
Tiger, a natural bully, was bigger and stronger than the mischievous spider, be him god or not. After all, the flesh, or rather the spidery vessel, is noticeably weaker than a trickster’s mythological spirit. Knowing this fact, they confronted the trickster, devising a mean trick of their own.
Tiger asked simply, “What’s in your basket there Anansi?”
Anansi, believing themselves to be able to outwit their dimwitted brawn-ish foe, responded, covering their wicker-basket, “nothing you would enjoy Tiger, just small fish that wouldn’t even disturb your ever white teeth!”
Tiger, who had been analyzing the arachnid’s angling knew this to be another one the trickster’s famous eight-legged lies. However, smelling the fish in the basket so near in their clawed reach, Tiger decided it would be better to get their fill of food when Anansi thought their deception was completely bought.

Cunningly, Tiger replied, “That is a shame Anansi, I will just have to visit the stream and catch those bigger fish you were too weak to get yourself!” Sniveling behind the truth they hid within their lie.
“Yes, enjoy your meal Tiger! There will be plenty to choose from.”
Anansi answered back, chuckling to themselves as they knew that stream wouldn’t see the same refracted fish scales that populated their basket for many moons to come.

Anansi waited for Tiger to saunter away, before continuing to skitter aside to a secluded area.
The feline however, had chosen to secretively stalk the trickster not too far behind, it was very unlike Tiger to be stealthy. This caused Anansi, to be none the wiser to Tiger’s own deceptive plot. As such, the spider did not wait long until they began to sort and prepare their fishy feast, one by one, in spite of being famished. The secret to good food being made into great food is through presentation after all.
It wasn’t until the spider had procured and plated the 5th largest fish from their basket did Tiger choose to announce their pertinacious perfidious presence.
“I thought the fish were too small Anansi? Yet now I see they triple you in size!” Proclaimed Tiger, brandishing their black claws which made charcoal appear white.
The trickster was in for it, a shock stiffened their eight-legged body.

“I haven’t seen the interior of your terrifying maw, forgive me for misjudging it’s size Tiger. I believed these fish wouldn’t be to your liking, nor the sizing of your appetite!” Anansi replied hurriedly under their stiff-legged panic.
“Deceive me again and those very jaws will be the last image you ever lay your eyes on Anansi.” The tiger roared back, clearly reveling in their threat.
Tiger bared their teeth to sell the warning and shambled towards the knotted wicker-basket which Anansi had meekly retreated away from.

It was a crime scene, scales lay littered amongst the jungle floor, the carefully caught fish were now at most a memory. All that remained for Anansi were minuscule bones that Tiger didn’t wish to risk an early death of asphyxiation over, not even their basket was spared from Tiger’s carnage.
As one would expect, Anansi was livid, they couldn’t believe the efforts of their labor would have been reduced to such a meager product and so their counter-plan began to creep into fruition. Tiger, with belly full but an appetite ever growing, was met with Anansi’s coy face.

“Tiger!” Said Anansi, “It’s a shame you ate through all my fish, they were going to pair so well with the banana fruit which has turned so ripe. Its a shame you could never climb those trees and enjoy some yourself!”
(Yes, I know banana trees are normally low in height, but this is a story of a spider trickster god, so suspend your beliefs)

Tiger, the ever gluttonous bully didn’t want to deprive themselves of such a gastronomic delight of an experience, so they turned to Anansi and replied,
“You’re right it is a shame I cannot climb these trees nor harvest their fruit, but it seems you will be the answer to my shortcomings yet again, won’t you?”
Tiger paused and grinned, “Unless you’re to suggest that my stomach finds a spider shaped hole it can fill? Or perhaps that my claws should shred you to appear twice thinner than you already are?”

Anansi, to trick Tiger into further believing their position of power over them, responded by swaying their legs from left to right, effectively showing to Tiger a shaking no of their many eyed head.
“Good. Perhaps you are as smart as they say! Now go ahead and lead my path to this feast, Anansi.” Demanded the striped cat, who’s ego was now in charge and had firmly grabbed the reigns.

Anansi and Tiger marched rushing throughout the jungle, Anansi themselves forming a web highway, and Tiger following behind with loud commanding stomps. Alerting the entire jungle step by step.
The jungle was broad in both plant and animal, it seemed to be home to every breathing organism possible and it was every last inch of it that seemed to react to the duo’s reluctant tour. This was a planned action by the tricky spider, Tiger’s brashness and bravado was a well documented trait, years of being the domineering bully within the jungle had made their once stealthy approaches a highly distant behavior. The trickster’s intention, was to have a force fearful yet strong meet them at the banana grove.

The Sun had made clear the passage of time through it’s shift within the sky, painting it with an orange hue, and granting a similar colored and oppressive haze to the Jungle’s floor. As the pair finally reached the first of many banana trees, the bushels broke apart the light that exhaustively kissed the ground.
The grove was unlike other pockets of fruit trees in the jungle, the growth was spaced out evenly, in a diamond pattern to boot. The grass and soil beneath seemed rarely disturbed yet lacked the wild growth that surrounded it. Were Tiger not so dim, and their desire for the ripe golden gems that hung above their head not so demanding, they would have approached the unnatural state of the grove with a higher state of anxiety.

“Fetch me what you have promised Spider!” Mandated Tiger, the tauntingly delicious yet distant bananas fueling their impatience.
Anansi hesitated before replying, for they felt the desire of causing misfortune to build, swell up behind their mouth.
“Of course Tiger, but don’t you wish to come here again without my help and feast upon these delicious fruits? Why have me bring them, when I could provide you a method in which to have these on your whim.”
The Spider then with added flair gestured up towards a ripe banana, it seemed to glisten at the glow of the jungle’s sun.
Greedily, Tiger agreed with Anansi’s proposition.
Replying, “I see you have come to your senses Anansi, a trickster teaching a trick, just make it quick, I expect a bushel for myself before the suns’ final setting wick.”

Anansi beamed, showing glee with their spidery fangs.
They retorted, “As I am a spider, I am free to climb, my weight is small and my legs are nimble so I can scale a tree in no time. You, Tiger, shall struggle to climb easily this tree, you are not a panther, so your claws and strength are much greater than the fauna and me!”
Anansi was half-way up the tree by now, demonstrating their superior climbing ability.
With the jungle now their audience, Anansi continued to prattle, “Luckily Tiger, I have just the remedy for your problem. With your strength, you can strike the trees near this grove solving this climbing conundrum. Coat your paws in the sweet sticky resin that bleeds out, it will allow you to stick to trees much like I. I have no doubt.”
They continued to lecture, the feline following along with intensity behind Anansi’s every word. “Surely you can see that doing so would lead to getting these bananas here with no trouble! Why don’t you test it out? Together we can harvest on the double!” Anansi said finishing their lesson and pitch.

Tiger smiled a smug grin, they loved to hear sounds of their strengths being praised and spoken of, they were also eager to finally get an opportunity to show the very power they threatened the jungle so easily with.
The big cat sailed in-front of a lone tree and planted their paws firm into the ground, with an explosive intensity, they lunged at the keeper of their desire. A clamoring creak complained and echoed out past the grove, and a sickly sticky resin gushed forth, like a fountain under pressure, from their wooden victim’s bark.

Without a second thought, they rushed back in towards the diamond-shaped grove, to pounce on their new target, the tree that housed the taunting sweet gems that remained above. Forcing their paws on their target’s trunk eager to climb, they came all too knowledgeable of a new horror. Immovability. Tiger’s paw, coated and sticky, was locked firmly in place. The adhesive was too strong, much stronger than they could have anticipated and as a result, the cat was locked and fettered to the tree.

Their struggling was loud, and grew louder and louder, roars of panic and anger rolled out through the cat’s chops.
Anansi as well, in a timely fashion, strengthened the bond between their bully and the tree, with great speed using their webbing. Coating and wrapping the feline in an additional restrictive bind.

“I WILL SWALLOW YOU WHOLE FOR THIS!” Tiger roared repeatedly, angrier and angrier. Their once stoic tail now greatly expressive like a concerned snake.
“YOU CANNOT HOLD ME HERE FOREVER!” They continued. Their eyes darting around in a vulnerable panic.
“I WILL BREAK THIS TREE THEN BREAK YOU WITH IT!” They added in desperation. Tiger’s body attempted to move as though they were voracious. A pained dance of struggle.
“I WILL EAT YOU ALONGSIDE EACH BANANA, I WI-”

KRA-KOOM!!

Replied a thundering barrel, unloading it’s fatal cargo. Tiger’s rage, suddenly met with a singular final answer.
It was as if the barrel’s echo had alerted itself in-between the trees and throughout the jungle. A war-cry which rushed ahead, scattering birds and retreating bugs. that sound served as an audible reminder to all within earshot that the banana grove was, more than just an odd unnatural growth in the jungle, but a plantation. Designed for human use, formed from human construction, and fearfully marked and patrolled by deathly intimidated humans.

Tiger, who’s focus had been too scattered-ly displaced and managed between the bananas, the ingenious method of acquisition the trickster, turned betrayer, had taught them and the later restrictions they had experienced doing such, had learnt hard a new focusing lesson. The true actions of fear.
The pellets had zipped through the air, embedding themselves within the tyrant’s torso and burrowing deeper into their neck. As Tiger clung onto life, they saw a look of grim terror wash over their murderer’s face.

In Tiger’s fierce eyes, the trigger-woman appeared to be wrapped in the very jungle itself, draped in some kind of leaf that had much more fluidity, than any other leaf they had seen before, it appeared as thin as the manicured grass that they were now coating in a thick coagulated crimson layer of blood.
The face that met them had eyes just as fierce as their own, but still trembled as though they too were meeting death. To Tiger’s right, in their final moments, their ‘arachnidian’ Judas fed them a singular overripe banana. A parting gift.

Anansi did not know if Tiger would have replied with appreciation for their final sweet treat, or in anger at their orchestrated mortality. This was not just because the dying bully had a mouthful of banana obstructing the use of their gullet whilst they grew ever-distant from life, but because the trickster god did not care to think about Tiger’s final thoughts.
Their priorities lay in making new a trick, a trick done twice before. Forming a web-line to catch again the meal they were cheated out of.

However, whilst no two streams hold the same fish, the currents do carry the same stories. In their inter-connectivity, word had traveled fast, or rather, swam fast, of Anansi’s web-based angling from hours prior.
With the moon now climbing it’s staircase amongst the clouds, the once bright blue turned-orange sky, now ushered in the dark blacktop of a starry night, nature’s curtain call for all non-nocturnal creatures.
In spite of the jungle’s adjustment to time, Anansi prepared again to cast their line, scrying the water like a fortune teller, with the goal of picking fish like grapes off a vine. In direct opposition, a fish gigantic in size, and vindictive in nature, with scales designed for covert nightly swims, scales that dulled with the light instead of shining, leaped strong out of it’s watery container, and swallowed the spider whole.

And that is where the web comes to an end.

Reaping.

How unnerving, imagine being a young child and having that story be told to you under the cover of a dark night.

Now you are but to wonder:
What are we truly discussing here? What is to be built or derived from this reading?

I, the greatest reader, comprehend-er and thinker in the 21st century, know that I affect my own judgement based on how I feel, whether it be a correct judgement or not. What use is it to inform me of such standard knowledge? I am also aware that the Anansi story is about doing unto others as one would do unto oneself, and the finality of poor actions, so what? I too know, that the hunger felt by Anansi and Tiger is but a metaphor for the desires and outcomes we wish to find in life, and that in reaching their attainment, we must tread with caution and care.
What more is there to know?

(Apologies if my assumptions regarding your internal dialogue are too brash.)

I must say, dear reader, that in my hypothetical you have deconstructed the story greatly on a surface level, but the point of this writing is to provide perspective to people. The ideal, is to sweep away and place aside an awareness of a believed large picture, and get people to understand the importance in the details or at least get people to recognize the framework/bristles that form the large broad strokes that play into viewing their world.

This is a small attempted guide, to pathing oneself towards actions that do not require a large spiritual debt. Even if you feel yourself to be detached from the concept of a spirit, or at least one that can hold any meaningful attributes to it. This is a guide towards living a life where one does not need to worry about the fish eating them for trying to use a basket, nor worry about the hunter fatally reacting in fear of their life. In other words, this is a guide towards living a life of bountiful reaping.

Understand that this is not a guide to success, nor a guide to ceasing the unrest in one’s perceived self.
If you believe you are hindered in those capacities do understand that readings and media are far from the solution. The media you consume and engage with can only provide information to your mind, not action. Action is thrice more important than any second left thinking on one’s own thoughts, of course one must think about one’s own actions before committing them, but if said action has already been thought and mulled over, to mull over the mulling itself or the choices made in one’s own mulling is to greatly hinder oneself.

To simplify, do not think about thinking when you need to get something done.
If you find yourself in such a space, seek company from good influences, if you have the means to seek counselling and/or therapy then undergo that process too, but first and foremost, do a helpful act.

Seriously, go right now.

If you’re back, I hope it was meaningful, or if you’ve stayed around I hope you get around to it, even if the description prior didn’t apply to you. Another active hand is the cure to an indifferent world.
Those with active hands will find that in trying to reap bountifully, that there is a strong incentive towards finding a balance in the gifts imparted onto themselves, or at least understanding that incentive. This is because, there is no place in the world for endless reward. Such a life leaves the reward itself empty, and within your harvest you will have never felt so barren and famished.

This is seen often in the world, athletes that dominate their sport hunger for stronger competition and artists that are beloved by the public and critics dream of surpassing their magnum opus.
In other words, the ideal is to have some harvests be less plentiful than others, as the appreciation is and should be in the harvest nonetheless, not just the grain.

Your sense of accomplishment should always expand past your own expectations and others, as you can always be an aid to others if you feel as though you’re perfectly taken care of. Accomplishment is not the finality, it is the ever continuing pulse.

What does this mean in practice? How does this apply to real world scenarios? It means you should help your friend with gas money even if they haven’t paid you back from that meal you put on your card, because their betterment is your betterment. It means you should help carry that furniture your neighbor just brought in even though they complained about your noise that was at an acceptable level, because in the face of their distaste you remained a beacon. It means that you give, as much as you're able to give, and do understand that what one is able to do differs strongly from what one wants to and/or wishes one to be able to do. You give because it is through giving that you have accomplished.
It is through giving, that the gifts that you are to receive, on behalf of your actions, are placed into hands, accomplished hands. The type of hands that can recognize the actions and choices that came before said gift was to ever have been placed in them. For they have placed gifts in others.

How does this relate to judgement?

This is specifically an attack against impostor syndrome, when one begins to notice the gifts and boons they’ve received from their own actions, blossom and bloom into blissful fruition, they tend to, in muddied consciousness, question if they are even worthy of their own toils and labor.
The answer that returns from said question may vary. More often than not, the worthiness one tends to have as an answer has never been enough, especially if one chooses to judge their every action in favor against themselves.

Alongside an unfair judgement of the self, which shall be discussed soon at greater length, another reason as to why impostor syndrome is felt, is due to external influence. The knowledge of the downfalls of your peers can effect how one receives and perceives the life around them, there is even a level of unease carried by some in relation to their position to others in a geo-political sense.
There is validity in this guilt. As the Earth does not operate from a fair playing ground. (For now at least.) Because of this unfairness, the uncanny-ness of consistent or unexpected success will feel permanently askew.
However, by knowing that the world is not an endless mill of rewards but rather a varying flow of harvests, what one can receive will not feel foreign or undeserved, especially so if they begin to aid those outside themselves with their harvests too. After all, the only will or birthright given to people by nature is their right to exist, not their right to succeed.

Judging.

Let’s circle back on that “unfair judgement of the self”. What is it to truly mean? Judgement is an opinion formed via careful discernment and thought, or at least it should be.

As an observation of our current existing society, judgement is rule. We vilify judgement, or at least any that we deem to be unsolicited, even people who do not subscribe to a faith are told not to pass judgement onto others, we see it as basic human decency. Although, in most cases, we pass it in the comfort of our own privacy or within the comfort of trust.
And it is in the same breath that we hate judgement that we too, revere it.

Judgement is given such a heavy emphasis over our lives, because we value the perception of our actions to such a high and lofty extent, that we struggle to look past the shadows cast by its very own high and lofty pillar.
We are shown the impacts of judgement often, primarily in negative connotations. Mostly through the historic reluctance of a deviation from societal norms, which leads to wrongful propagation of harmful and restrictive actions and ideas. In short, the fear of speaking out against a mass-accepted moral wrong.
For example, the weak men in power that feared speaking in favor of the women suffrage movement, or the sane-minded yet still fearful people that feared speaking against McCarthyism.
The judgement said people were due to face if they chose to speak-out was a large deterrent in their choice to do so.
(Of course in some cases there were financial factors and in other cases fears of incarceration, and perhaps even both, but for many the power they held greatly outweighed those factors. It was the ever-looming judgement of those around them that kept them upholding the status-quo)

However, this a two-way street, the impact of judgement can be a positive addition to people’s actions too, yet most applications of this positive judgement are not selfless. That isn’t to say that all positive actions must come from a selfless place, but it is worthwhile to note that the beliefs of the receiver of said judgement will be skewed towards thinking said acts are much more positive than they can appear to be.
An example of the impacts of judgement being a positive factor would be any that promote good-qualities in a person. People tend not to steal, not just because it wrongs the person who has been stolen from, but because of the judgement they would receive for being caught, or the judgement for simply being known, seen or labelled as a thief.

The concept of judgement is ever changing, as are most conceptual ideas. Pseudo-spiritualists such as Tarot practitioners place judgement in a state of conceptual flux, a revealing of the Judgement card can mean a call to self reflection, or an abrupt reveal of ones actions, regardless, there will be an opinion that forms on both you and your actions, be it from an outside or internal force.
Thus, given judgement’s immovable societal pillar within our perceivable world, what is to be done to ensure one can reap bountifully with said pillar in mind? Since it upholds a compass-like aspect of morality, it has to have a method of perception.
This guide would like to entertain two differing schools of thought.
One is effacement.

Tear. Down. The. Pillar.

Live without judgement, from oneself, from others, from the world itself.
If you are putting your idle hands to aid, if you are accomplishing through your existence, then any form of judgement both inflicted and received is to be null. There can be no opinion, nor any discernment, from a person who wishes to find nothing to comment on.
A life like this can appear hollow to some, and perhaps destructive to others, but it will not matter, as anybody’s concerns on the subject won’t concern you. Not just because you have no worries regarding their formed scrutinies but because you are living in a life full of measured harvest.
You will pass like vapor from water, freely.
Condensing and precipitating back into the world you inhabit. Flowing, crashing and rushing to later return to a familiar stillness. All these metaphorical states live removed from both praise and hatred, just truly being. There is harvest, as it is disrupted and enforced by no hands, not even your own, the field you reside over is both tended and untended. As such it is measured. A mindset that mirrors the concept of Anatta (Page 21).

Rather poetic, yet not too easily lived with. To live non-judgmentally is to have a sense of self too rigidly non-existent. This is comforting for some, but not for all, especially as your existence permeates the world beyond yourself.

Thus, the other school of thought is aggrandizement.

Make. Your. Pillar. Growth.

Pass onto and accept judgement from all.
Be the open mouth that is made aware of its gums, hold the weight of significance for every form of judgement you face, view the importance of each individual angle, and adjust accordingly.
Some, if not most judgement, is of course purely baseless and reactionary. Yet those reactions are small keys into the nature of said reactionary’s acts. The same can likewise be said about the passing of one’s own judgement. You are a key-piece, to the lock of the perceived world. That which you say can unlock and lock away the actions of others, should you choose to keep it meaningful. You are the advocate for truth, or at least a truth of your own perception, and said truth is to be tested against the truths of others. In being so open ended, you turn into the double edged blade of a pacifistic sell-sword. Scything away clean the conceptual hypocrisy of those that deny the influence others hold over them, whilst also truly being a person guided by influence. The believed ideal is that through your forever truthful mouth, and truthful expression of judgement, all judgement which is returned towards you is to be based in a truth of its own. Instead of the judgement one faces being a collection of poor-spirited lies, as those that force a reality often cannot be faced with a reflection of what they choose to impart and/or ignore. In essence, you harvest as frequently as you sow, and your sickle is forever made clean. It can be nothing but beauty, as it is all the beauty one receives and chooses to output.

A strongly advancing way of life, it requires a strong resolve, and an even stronger sense of self, which does not come easily. You will find comfort in the company you choose, but just as easily find yourself destroyed by it, should you act unwise.

Notice how in both schools of thought, what remains paramount is a sense of freedom, the judgement of oneself and others should never feel like a shackle against a progressive leg, nor wrist-cuffs clamping down a helping hand.
The world is, of course, not painted in black and white, as much as Audrey Hepburn movies would have you believe. Humanity is capable of complex thought and even more complex reasoning, thus the schools of thought are to be used and applied interchangeably. Put simply, at times you hold the tongue of others and yourself, and at other times you welcome the barrage that leaves the mind. Exist in the grey, but hold your beliefs to extremes.

(I’m expecting some divide here, do you have any thoughts to add on to this? I’m a fan of discussion.)

Leave a comment

Gardening.

So, what now?

You get the balancing of judgement, you gather the method of reward regarding one’s harvest, you even understand the story based anecdotes. What more is there on the path towards reaping bountifully?

What is left is practice. This is not an easy feat.
A mindset does not get adopted like a stray cat, nor dog. It is the culmination of many choiced actions, choiced actions that must fight against your body’s learned behavior, until the fight turns to instinct, and the until the instinct becomes the new nature.
For some this is like pulling teeth. To others it will be akin to scratching an itch. What remains important in the process is the conviction you have to keep your metamorphosis in check.
This is where you will be tested greatly. Your impostor syndrome will re-arise. Your sense of dread will come clawing at you from deep within the void. Your back will feel preyed on and watched.
You will want to give up, return to your own comforts. And you should do it. You must for a brief period cease and give up.

In order to reap bountifully you must fail.
Failure to meet your standards is not a desired outcome. It is far from a bounty, yet it is a common harvest.
You will reap failure until you cannot stomach it any longer, in failing to exist in an ideal sense, you remain in a state of existence regardless. You will begin to change. You will race to the end of your metaphorical autumn, sycthe in tow and stare out to your crops, withered and littered like detritus. You will blame your land, your tools, your seeds and your hands.

Yet you know that blame does not plant crops anew, nor harvest for what remains. You will pass through a winter starved and ravenous, with only the promise that you’ve made to yourself that you will never falter again. And you will falter, as is the nature of life, the cycle will remain. Until you truly adopt the truth.

The truth is, that the bountiful harvest was never about a crop yield, it was about the quality of the harvester. The actions you make towards betterment, the methods you employ towards your life and the outcomes deemed ahead of you, end with you. Your thoughts on the judgement that came before your desired results and the ones that come after, can be shifted to your favor to ensure that they don’t affect the results or the ones that come after, but ultimately, they are your held thoughts and your wanted desires. Were you not to fail, you would never know your truth. You would march endlessly, a victorious fool wondering when the battle ends, wondering when they would find themselves the champion of war. When there was never meant to be a war to begin with. There was never meant to be a battle.

You want to reap bountifully? Go practice it. Go and aid others, go and achieve, go and fail, go and harvest. But most importantly go and plant your garden, and be prepared to live in your future.

Hope you all enjoyed this one. If you want to read more, follow me.

The writings will continue otherwise but it’s nice to know the audience behind my back. I’d love to speak about this concept further with you all, your own thoughts on the matter and how they interact with this reading. We can even differ! Or you can tell me if you liked the playlist that came alongside.

Either way, be safe. Until next time.

Sources Used

(Source 1)

https://ellyn-levinson.pixels.com/featured/floral-images-in-orange-and-purple-ellen-levinson.html

(Source 2)

https://www.kawalingpinoy.com/ube-biko/

(Source 3)

https://www.instagram.com/mizzzlee_art/

(Source 4)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/jeanweslymarcelyn/posts/7881434791968917/

(Source 5)

https://lithub.com/thermal-imaging-a-poem-by-deesoul-carson/

(Source 6)

https://www.tumblr.com/p-u-r-p-l-e-a-n-d-b-l-u-e/162554975625

(Source 7)

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Feksr96f6wik71.gif

(Source 8)

https://hollywarbs.com/making-amends-1

(Source 9)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/visitbologna/posts/2188443671570243/

(Source 10)

Cyberpunk 2077

(Source 11)

https://www.asoundeffect.com/burning-house-sound-effects/

(Source 12)

https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/85d6c29d-2624-450c-8405-3d180de35b23/content

(Source 13)

https://pharaohdynamic.tumblr.com/post/629552727608918016

(Source 14)

Doraemon the Movie: Nobita and the Island of Miracles, 2012, 19:42

(Source 15)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/466257399164202/posts/496213236168618/

Before you train your eyes, give your ears a little bit of assisted guidance!

[Suggested Reading Tracklist] [Youtube Variant]

There is something I must get off of my chest.

It’s not easy to admit, but there is a gut-wrenching quality to viewing the beauty of someone you hold, or held, resentment over.

Truth be told, any restlessness over someone your heart can't care for, or someone your heart can’t fawn over, is its own doomed demise given immediacy. Especially if said care and fawning are done in goodwill.

There's an even worse demise, however, when the restlessness is due to a positive emotion.

This, in my opinion, is only applicable to a feeling of resentment, not true bitter anger. As an example of the implied severity, think slight yet numerous reservations that form a letter of agitation.

Or, in a much simpler cadence, an ex who’s just slightly not in comfortable speaking terms.

I believe the mental cap of antagonized appreciation stops at resentment, but can be derived from lower feelings. This is because, too much negative intensity towards a person, should make any aesthetic or intrinsic appreciation about them turn null and void. Almost as though there’s a breach of contract between the emotional and logical headquarters of your mind.

Obviously, you can waive the consequences of breaching a contract you’ve crafted, notarized and managed. You are, at the end of the day, your own autonomous person.

For those that heed advice, should you choose to engage in this reluctant appreciation ethically, and only ethically, as we have already strayed far from what a councilor would facilitate as healthy behavior, it is best to make and hold the distinction of your resentment.

Additionally, these feelings should only extend towards resentment. This is due to the fact that in the world of minor, yet impactful events the specifics of said feelings rarely and hardly matter. The nature of the act is what’s given weight, not the act itself. At the very least, the source of your held resentment can get packed away in your very own ever expansive mental car park. (Up to you if parking is free. I personally charge for long term parking).

This same car park is where life’s imperfections still struggle to follow signs to park on the ever rising floors. (Seriously, though why are parking structures so obtuse and obnoxious in their signage and environmental directions?).

That anecdote aside, seeing beauty is a vague observation. Beauty itself is like a field of endless blades of healthy grass, it is vast, it is apparent and it is not bound by any criteria or factors, save for the ones of your own preference. That being the field itself. Beauty is as transient as the water that nurtures its roots.

Yet this writing is not on the indescribable beauty of beauty, (it would be an endless document). This writing is on the sickening feeling of continuously seeing beauty in those your heart has turned bland to.

Seeing beauty is of course, a choice, you choose to hold something, be it tangible or not and deem it to be a bee. Whether done on purpose or not, it is still a chosen acknowledgment. This means that, unsurprisingly, a sizable yet silent part of your agony is self inflicted.

It is this peculiar conflict of interests with your own subconscious, that makes a betrayal, one so beguiling, tangling and knotting to your emotional core, you can’t let it sit within you any longer.

The betrayal, if not made immediately clear, is in part because you believed in your ability to sequester the visions of beauty you once held in high praise. An action done out of respect of the anguish you underwent to keep said visions in a mental spotlight. What makes the manner of your betrayal worse, is that it also didn’t bother to override the still existing memories of anguish. Leaving you an owner of persistent resentment, leading you to be stuck in an emotionally charged limbo.

In short, its hard enough processing intense emotions you don’t want to interact with, its worse having to juggle them. Especially when you’re the person who forced yourself to throw the balls.

What truly twists intestines about this undesirable epiphany is the implied history that makes itself a gaudy accessory.

The fact that you know that you once shared a love or some other type of pleasantry with the face or figure that peers back at you is a fact designed to nauseate. To see the soul that you felt was once inseparable from your own, tethered. Yet it remains as resilient to withering as your own.

This isn’t to say the soul’s resilience shouldn’t be present, no innocent person has ever deserved a withered soul, if anything you’re laid at rest and put to ease. To know that a soul you cared over can endure what you both had battled. Its an ideal situation, even though you may both know there is a thin veil disfiguring your whole truths.

Instead, what truly over-tightens the bolts that shackles your inner midriff is that your history won't allow the appreciation to be boundless, because it was boundless at one point prior.
It’s that point in your shared history, where your feelings were unburdened by their actions, where you could see the very same flame they burn with, and not need to know or measure its temperature, or even be able to for that matter. What hurts in revisiting their beauty, is to be reminded of that point where you didn’t need to doubt their reliability and instead could find comfort in its current presence.

To remember the glow that they once shone so brilliantly with, the same glow they seem to emit with exuberance currently. To remember that you would once have rushed to bask in it from afar, while today it feels corrosive. It hurts to hold back on what was once impulse.

That gut wrenching understanding that a person is beautiful in aspects you couldn’t hope to fathom, aspects you once neglected or worse, took for granted. Aspects that overpower their distastes. Aspects that seem to grow exponential, absence making your heart fonder and more irrational.

Only gut wrenching though, it doesn’t tear your heart asunder. You are a person of means after all, you know the need to evacuate to shade on a summer’s day, for even the earth turns away from the sun. A glow is all the same and just as easy to move away from.

Aspects of beauty however, are the constantly turning gears that this gastronomical industrial complex keeps regrettably ever present. They give weight to text, give color to video, form minutes into hours. Beauty will serve as your fatal antagonist, after previously being your most favorable ally. For whilst heaven knows beauty itself cannot mend the pain of sickened feelings, it can dampen them plenty.

What is this all steeping from?
This is a collection of thoughts from a lot of different stories that I’ve been told. Stories of ‘Summer Flings’ of course, and as Summer is passing us by, and “Falltumn’s” longing seems to be right around the corner. Any one of us could next be victim to that cursory glance at a past partner’s social update.

A story other than my own that specifically comes to mind, is one of my friend’s. They have a fairly sized scrolling addiction. They went on a trip to Haiti, and for the entirety of the flight, they were fixated on their Ex’s story. Mind you, this Ex has long been a relic of the past. A past they’ve told me countless times they have no desire on revisiting.

Yet, they said, “It’s just something about their stupid eyes […] I, for real, couldn’t look away.”
It was thanks to those eyes, staring at them front and center in a group photo that they saw posted, that my friend was left in a complete stun-lock. (I don’t think they’re all that to be honest, the olive-green thing has never been that much of an appeal to me). They traced over every detail, and saw once again what they chose to once hold so dear to them. They looked at them so intensely, they almost missed their connecting flight. We both, then started talking about seeing those troubling aspects you never realized before, and it’s safe to say that their unwilling dedication really stuck with me.

As for me, what seems to haunt me, isn’t an ex, or a friend who can’t seem to message like they used to.
No, I seem to be haunted by my own relationship with myself. Haunted by my own conceit.
I catch glimpses of a person I no longer wish to be. A person I haven’t been in many years, yet I find it so hard to remove the allure I held within myself when being them. My haunts are my own memory lane. I’m met with them in every review, in every update with people from my own past.

I’ve found myself stuck staring at my own reflection pool; still waiting on the ripples I made in prior visits to show me the face that brought me here.

So I ask, is it not contradictory to be in bliss of what you seem so acutely aware of? Where is the oblivion? What staves you from your minor agony?

There is no singular answer, as it is not a question of binary nature, if you’ve felt heard by this you should throw in your own attempts to hold off this feeling, or perhaps an aspect that resonated with you.

Leave a comment

But that’s a poor cop-out!

The Secret Ingredient to Combating Beauty’s Insistent Encore…

Is hearing it.

Confront the beauty in all, not just what has been made a revision by those you've faced in your past. View the beauty experienced in your present, the beauty you have yet to see in front of you, the beauty below you and the beauty above. This change is more filling than whatever your own mind drip feeds into you from your stroll down memory lane.

You hold the bees, as stated earlier, you yourself must release them. In their release, you'll know which bees wish to hold you too. Those aspects you can give more weight to.

As an aside, one must remember, that the encore isn’t a private showing, despite what your gut may interpret.
At the end of it all, you just happened to have a ticket for the night.

So what of the bliss? What of the oblivion of your worries and gripes?

The oblivion of beauty’s exclusivity, subjectivity aside, is in it's decentralization. By holding reservations for none, you begin admittance to all. Luckily for most, the beauty of all, greatly outweighs the beauty of one, so your resentful figure doesn't stand a chance against the weight of the universe and its continuous expansive manner.

Share

Ok, you’ve read this far, what now? I gave you the few secrets I could, shared what I found comfort in sharing. Perhaps now your track-list has come to an end, (unlikely, because this shouldn’t take you 2 hours). Take a moment, review yourself, consider what you might eat today. Remember who you need to call or text. If you’re bold maybe send this to the ex in question, or respond to me telling me how wrong I am. Regardless, brave the best of your days ahead, decentralize your beauty's exclusivity and I’ll check you later.

-Vermillio

Sources Used

Figure 1
(https://cdn.cosmos.so/a9415a84-42d7-4096-8a82-23b313607dcb?format=webp&w=387.921213388443)

Figure 2
(Allegory of Charity by Francisco de Zurbarán)

Figure 3
(https://boogienights.fr/director/andrei-proko/)

Figure 4 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/westnewyorkwakesup/posts/9681952431909289/)

Figure 5
(https://loupblaster.art/) / (https://giphy.com/loupblaster) <website was glitching>

Figure 6
(https://www.instagram.com/louisdazy/)

Figure 7
(https://kimjakobssonart.com/projects)

Figure 8
(https://www.instagram.com/nobunny88)

Figure 9
(The Silenced at 43:23)

Figure 10
(Ponyo at 1:08:23)

Figure 11
(Undertale)

Figure 12
(Kung Fu Panda at 01:09:09)

Figure 13
(https://leilacourtillon.tumblr.com/)

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