scintillaywen

[scintillaywen]

you can go deeper. do you?

WinterFox-oc8mo ||| Depths ||| granddad9402 ||| @ynfg-gifs ||| DarkDarkV6 ||| @vesicleofgesticulation ||| w-okami-lf8297

[scintillaywen]

[scintillaywen]

mushroom sketch >:D

[scintillaywen]

time moves forward, always.

theme: clockwork

[scintillaywen]

I am ceaselessly reminded of how small a world we live in—it was only recently I ran into my coworker, half a world away. We were so far from home and yet we still found one another. How strange it is, being able to recognize and separate one face from a sea of millions.

The other day I found a shot from my favorite photographer, printed and placed on a thousand-piece puzzle. Running into familiar things in unexpected places feels as if the world has been shifted—objects and places and things all tumble over one another in your brain until you've forgotten them.

There are over 100,000 schools in the United States. Today I stumbled once more across a video I had watched years ago—slides and slides of places that should not be. In the last moments of the video was a photograph of my old school. It was horribly grainy and compressed—yet it almost popped out of the screen, like a dead pixel. I recognized it instantly. Even so, perhaps the strangest thing was the realization that this video was precious enough to be remembered. Every day I had seen the photo in its proper place, but only after a rewatch did I recognize it.

I am a forgetful person. How my recent thoughts feel fleeting, like I could lose them in the breeze—and sometimes I do. I remember that I have forgotten something. But perhaps an even scarier thought is forgetting that I have forgotten something.

I wonder how many times I've passed through a place I've seen before.

[scintillaywen]

When I was younger, we would host a garden of fungi. They were inescapable, and ever present—somehow, they were affecting me, even as a child. The old birch in the front yard was the ledge atop which I’d stand, observing the gardens we had unknowingly cultivated. And I like to think that when we moved, the mushrooms followed us—they spewed their spores into the breeze, carrying their presence into our new and green yard.

Perhaps, in a way, the fungi are my caretakers. The way their spores defy dimension—how those black circles cling to the windows, evading all attempts to remove them. Maybe they are eyes, watching me mature over the years.

They sprang into our yard like little pests. We called the ancient tree stump in the front mushroom city, the way we could almost see creatures darting about from the safety of the fungi’s umbrellas.

The other day I was on a walk and saw a rotting mushroom, hidden in the tree. Its almost-fur was dark as ash—a single tap, and it fell to the floor. how alien, I chuckled to myself.

I think that if I was on that walk today, like clockwork, I’d say—the way the sun above scintillated effusively, pouring its light into tiny aureate pools. The way it glimmered, encapsulating the failed cap of the mushroom—like clockwork.

Like the golden gears that tune time. Those cogs which glint in the night—how they never fail to make the belfry chime on the hour, every hour. maybe it’s all just clockwork.

How the gills beneath the fungi’s umbrella are like the paths it makes me follow in my day to day life. The gills like the aisles I find myself wandering in stores, my eyes fixed to every mushroom-themed product. how we’re just a system of clockwork, tying each other together.

Isn’t it so alien, to be a creature not plant nor animal? Isn’t it defiant, to spread your spores? Like that rotting mushroom, emerging from that tree. And on that walk, I’d whisper, open your wings. The mushroom’s cap was bent—it was imperfect. I wonder if it ever did get to unfurl its wings, fulfilling the clockwork system of spreading one’s spores. I wonder whose window the spores will cling to. I wonder what it’s like to be an alien.

The next time I leave I know the fungi will not follow. The breeze can only take a spore so far, and the gales will not reach me. I do not know where the next golden cogs will lie, and I do not know if those dimension-defying spores will decorate my windows again. But if I do meet them again, I’d ask, what are you? And they’d only tick in response.

[scintillaywen]

[scintillaywen]

the creatures , they're so joyful and whimsy they're out there,

always remember this

[scintillaywen]

Art is strange in the way it shatters the barriers between worlds, inviting me to the sides of my brain I'm too scared to explore. Art is surreal because of how it can speak in a language silent to our ears, yet can be all the more powerful than speech could ever be. Art is absurd in the way it can unknowingly dictate one's life. It is a language incomprehensible to all but our soul. And it is a language that appears everywhere, in everything, on any given day. It's how I could find solace in my feeble attempt to pronounce 'aureate' and spell 'syzygy'. It's how the light filters through the leaves, and how lanterns glow in the twilight. And there, in the clouds, I saw reflections of my own soul, cast by the art who had known me better than I it for years. Those drawings I found myself staring upon for an unusually long time, those passages I found myself unable to draw myself from, those songs I played on repeat for so long it took weeks to get out of my head. When I tilt my head upwards, I can no longer unsee the impact art has had on me. Those shapes in the clouds shift alongside my thoughts, resembling whatever I want them to be—consciously or not. I hear the hidden music in the creaking of ancient floorboards—it was there all along, wasn't it? how come I only see its beauty now? Sadly, we live in a world where it is easier to destroy than it is to create. I've found myself yearning to toss the ink and paper into the bin rather than appreciate what it truly is. I remember the time I saw the drawing that would dictate my life for a time. I see it appear everywhere—from my rings to the carpet to the fading imprint of the sun upon my closed eyes. Somewhere out there, there is art waiting for you to gaze upon it. And somewhere out there, someone is readying themselves to toss their art into the bin. isn't it okay to make mistakes? i think mistakes glimmer in the sunlight, like the crannies of concrete. i think that when met with the right eyes, your art will outshine its mistakes, and leave imprints on watching eyes.

[scintillaywen]

And now the walls are logs of hickory

And the floor is lined with cedar

Masked by years of muddy steps

And mousy puddles of moss

Fed by tawny droplets

Seeping through the ceiling. ‌

And here the sky is always blue,

And the sun remains as it rains. ‌

And now the moss hugs like a pillow

Loitering like the memories that blend

Into a watercolor of summer daydreams.

And here the sky is always vast,

And past storms drip from trees. ‌

And now there is no red

No spilled blood, no jam, no dread

Because our anger was

Washed away in the rain,

Astray among the leaves,

Bent, like hazy summer daydreams—

Lost. ‌

I wish for my hatred

To be lost along the way.

[scintillaywen]

I want to see more factory seconds.

I want to see more works that embarrass you to call your own. I want to read pages that read like a feeble luster in comparison to the unspoken words that so encapsulated your mind for a time. I want to persevere, even when every paragraph seems as if they were ripped from the author you read last. The boring works, where every word pricked your throat as it exited your throat. Those works written the morning after a cascade of inspiration pours over you when preparing to sleep.

Please, don't stop. Your firsts, the boring works, the embarrassing works—they are always the hardest. But writing them is art enough. Perhaps one day, we will gaze upon our first works and laugh. The sheer amount that we've changed will make us cover our eyes. We look back, and even though every word feels misplaced, we stuck through it all. Even when criticism stuck like a scab, impossible to keep out of our minds. Even when the ripples your work expels are impossible to feel. And in the far distance, we can look back at ourselves looking back at ourselves, and laugh.

We want you to know that you can create art. That whether or not you realize it, you have created something beautiful. That thing, right there? That's art, and it's beautiful. I hope you can realize it soon.