6/29/2023

I wrote again. This time at a newer link aggregator site that's kindasorta like a dying link aggregator site. Someone made a thread asking, "Where ya from?" and this was my response.

TRAPPIST-1e. Southern continent in the southern ocean. It's the only continent in the southern ocean, for what it's worth.

I miss those violet waters and their large waves crashing against the tall shores of my homeland. In what could be considered spring, I become nostalgic for the burst of atmospheric plankton which fills the stratosphere for six years. A little longer than one of your months. Sure everyone wears a mask during that time, but everyone welcomes the coolness from living under that short-lived but beautiful shadow. Such beauty watching scarlet crepuscular rays slanting through both water and plankton clouds, a time to fall in love as your kind are wont to put it.

Many wasted hours have been spent marching through the tall fungus analogues dwarfing your sequoias in height but have a lifespan of a mayfly in contrast. Late at night in the late winter people stay up to hear the first eruptions from the mycelial entwork deep underground, happily hosing down the dirt from the sides of their domiciles considering it to be a good omen. Even though we are a spacefaring race, thanks to the pelagic entities living on TRAPPIST-1f, we haven't let go of the child-like wonders of religion and superstition, we still find those beliefs to be of some comfort and an easy excuse for getting together.

Lately I've been finding myself standing outside at sunset looking towards the west waiting for your star's light to turn the right shade of red, acting as a tonic for my ingrained homesickness. There's no way any of us crashlanded will repair our vessel, it's somewhere off the Atlantic shore in your northern hemisphere, at least in our or your lifetimes. Instead we stick together, share our private ceremonies and speak the language of our hearts for at least an hour a day lest we forget where we came from. Some of us haven't been able to acclimate to your gravity and there's too much nitrogen, but those who remain are tougher than those we left behind. We still scan the skies, listening earnestly, hoping for some word from home but we too are subject to the, as you call it, inverse-square law.

On the other hand, your species are ultimately kind despite your fascination with those who are particularly odious. You have a small talent for war and we admire your restraint, as what our forebears committed would surely make your Hitlers and Pol Pots and Stalins look like rank amateurs but without their atrocities we wouldn't have become who we are today.

If you do want to seek us out, don't. We'll only disappoint you. Just smile knowing you're not alone and somebody from 'out there' cares for you like a kindly, if distant, grandparent.

Just don't expect any large checks in your holiday cards though.

Bought 105 pounds of kitty litter for the cat rescue and it was dropped off Wednesday evening.

Week seems to be going fast, but it's going fast in all aspects not just the work day.

Around 4 a.m. on Wednesday morning I woke, thumbed through Bumble and stumbled upon a thick goth chick who says she lives in Neptune. Two of her profile photos were her wearing a green top, cut up in front to be barely legal for public wearing, in the skeeball room downstairs at Johnny Mac's. She mentioned how she won't shut up about her cat, I mentioned how I volunteer at the cat rescue. Soon enough I was asleep again and she appeared in my dream. In the dream we spoke a bit and it was just very strange. Then again, dreams are strange.