the-moon-is-coming-to-me

[the-moon-is-coming-to-me]

Matchstick.

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Hard Edge Clear Petrol Lighter, Tsubota Pearl

[the-moon-is-coming-to-me]

Clear is the bottom of the lake, That mirrors the wistaria bloom; And there in those sunken pebbles I see countless gems.

Manyōshū, Volume 19, No. 4199, Ōtomo Yakamochi viewing the wisteria at Tako where he landed, after boating on the lake of Fusé

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Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?

A Dialogue of Self and Soul, Yeats

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O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

Purgatorio, Dante

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A retrospective on Tumblr in the 2010's

I started using this site about a decade ago. At the time I was in my early teens, desperately lonely both at school and at home, and attempting to cope with my clusterfuck of feelings using a steady stream of media (mainly manga and fanworks) and what little virtual interaction I could get by the grace of anonymous Internet strangers. I stopped using this site sometime in high school, and now, as I'm about to graduate university, I've somehow come back to it again.

I have to admit that it's kind of an odd feeling. Purely from an aesthetic perspective, Tumblr as a site hasn't changed all that much. The buttons and the tabs are where I remember them being ten years ago; the features too are still basically the same. On the other hand, the popular fandoms, tags, and blogs have all undergone relatively large changes.

I can't help but wonder what became of all my old haunts and Internet friends. I remember getting pretty involved in the D. Gray-Man community; I ran a couple art blogs and posted headcanons of my favourite ship on another. I even ended up joining a Skype group chat to interact with other people running similar blogs. (Discord hadn't yet been released.) I remember thinking that these people were so cool. They were all older than me, more experienced than me and so talented in art, in writing, and unlike me they seemed like they had such rich social lives even outside of the Internet. Of course, I didn't mention anything that would give away my own considerably younger age. This was done in part for self-protection (I would strongly advise against anyone giving away their age on the Internet, especially if you're on the younger side), but also in part as an attempt to integrate. I wanted to be treated as an equal to these people I so admired, to receive even a sliver of positive social feedback. At home I couldn't speak to my parents without it escalating into an argument at best and a screaming match ending with them threatening to kick me out of the house at worst. At school I never managed to click with a close group of friends. I yearned for a place to which I could belong, and like a dog begging for scraps I took what I could get from this band of nerdy Internet strangers. And who knows; maybe they could in fact tell that I was much younger than I wanted to let on. At the very least they didn't call me out on it, and they treated me as one of their own.

Although that time was very painful for me and although I would never ever choose to relive it again, I do feel grateful for the small shards of light they unknowingly gave me. I remember that time as fragments of loneliness, melancholy, and apathy tinged with a quiet desperation to grow up and to be independent as soon as possible, to take flight and to leave the boughs of my childhood home and city that had somehow warped into a noose around my neck. I truly believed that deep down, at my core, there was something fundamentally wrong with me, something putrid and despicable and rancid---why else was I so disliked by everyone? Why else did my behaviour push them away? In a way this site and the people on it raised me. Sure, I know that the credit for physically pushing me across the line to adulthood goes to my parents, and for all the problems in our relationship, I am thankful that I have never wanted for anything physically speaking. But (as pathetic as this sounds) I could only turn to the Internet to fulfill my emotional and my social needs.

So now as I'm scrolling my feed all these years later, I can't help but wonder how those kind Internet strangers are doing. I remember one of them worked a restaurant job in Louisiana. Another was trying to learn French. Yet another was worrying about how to cut her hair to look good in the school's yearbook. So many lives, temporarily brought together like a fibres spun into yarn, before fraying and dispersing in myriad unknown directions again.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. I guess I wonder why now of all times have I chosen to come back to this site. A lot has happened in ten years. I have a couple close friends at university, and I get along well with my colleagues at work. My relationship with my parents has eased as they've mellowed out with age and as I've learned how to disengage from conversations that have the potential to turn into arguments. I've also managed to get some internships for which I'm being paid more money than I could ever have expected (though whether I'll be able to get a full-time job is another story with the way the job market is right now...). By all accounts I'm doing well for myself, and much, much better than I was in my teens. I don't need a coping mechanism anymore because there's nothing about which I need to cope. Maybe it could be nostalgia. Trend cycles follow a period of 10-20 years, so maybe now's about the time for me to yearn for my teenage years, though, as I think I've made it abundantly clear previously, I doubt I could ever be nostalgic for that part of my life. Still, maybe there's something comforting about coming back to a place (albeit digital) with which I'm intimately familiar. And who knows, maybe I'll unknowingly cast some of my own light onto someone else who needs it too.

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And like the salt-fires the fisher-girls Burn on the shore of Ami, I burn with the fire of longing In my heart.

Manyōshū, Volume 1, 5-6. When the Emperor Jōmei sojourned in Aya District, Sanuki Province.

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As a wheel turns smoothly, free from jars, My will and my desire were turned by love, The love which moves the sun and the other stars.

Paradiso, Dante

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Nea and Mana Decided to try again with tumblr

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Nostalgia in the house 🗣️

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Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

Stray Birds, Tagore

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Waiting Room for the Beyond, John Register, 1983

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[25/03/29] Composition

Would that I could worship you like the morning sun, That I could feel your warmth against my brow, That I could greet your gaze with my nose and my lips.

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Remembered that I once visited museum of old tech, I know many of you would really enjoy those💙