In highschool I wrote a story about a middle-generation of stellar travelers. Their parents were born on earth and left as children, and the middle generation will not live long enough to see their destination. They live their entire lives on the ship and I wrote about them trying to find their place in everything. They will never know blue skies and warm beaches and open fields with warm breezes. They’ll never know birdsong or crickets or frogs. They’ll never hear the rain on the roof of a dreary day. I never could find the right way to end the story. I wanted it to be a happy ending, but I didn’t know how to do it.
I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, it’s obvious now. It wasn’t then.
In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. They’re apathetic. They’re just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.
In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.
And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear “it gets better” and “when you’re older things will be easier” and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.
When I was in highschool I didn’t know how to end the story. I didn’t know how to have a happy ending. I didn’t have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didn’t know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.
But now that I’m older, I’m learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.
You have to teach yourself that being happy is not a radical idea.
Me, autistic: are u telling me u can’t hear this incredibly loud fridge
The lights have sound
Electronics have sound
Appliances have sound
If electricity runs through it, it has sound.
Rarely is there actual silence (and that does bother me due to lack of sensory input).
This is why the barn uses me when they think the horses are reacting to a noise they can’t hear. I’ll likely find it (it’s usually the heating or the electrical box in the indoor).
I also know when the electric fences are on.
For years I was convinced that I was either hallucinating or had hearing damage, because electronics always made this high-pitched whine that was closer to being felt than heard, and nobody else knew what I was talking about.
Then I met other autistic people.
I wonder if it’s an adhd thing too.
I always just assumed it was something to do with my migraines making me really sensitive to sounds other people couldn’t hear, because I can definitely hear things other people can’t seem to. Like the fridge or the tv (remember the old box tube tvs? Those things were loud on standby.) Hell I can hear my phone when it’s plugged in but for some reason not when it’s on a wireless charger. My brother is the same way, but he also gets migraines so we never thought much of it.
A temperature chart for my fellow Americans who can’t do the Celsius-Fahrenheit equation from memory and for people in the civilized countries who’re too busy making fun of Fahrenheit to do the conversions themselves.
UPDATE! Hey everyone! Sorry for the confusion! Here’s more info to explain what’s going on: The anemone retreats once it feels the pinch of the barber slug’s bite. Latching on, the slug is pulled in with the anemone, not wanting to let go of its meal. Once the slug snips off a tentacle or two, it pulls itself back out of the tube and moves on to the next anemone spaghetti dish, while the anemone waits for the coast to clear before coming back out from its tube.
Yikes!
squish dragon
Not squishy enough dammit
❤🐌 Dendronotus nudibranch fanart! 🐌❤
I remember being mesmerized by different footage of this when I was a tiny child and TV still played real nature documentaries.
This is however the first time I ever heard it called a “barber slug” which is really cute because that’s kind of what it does, even if the customer didn’t agree or enjoy a single second of it.
Fancy and I have been working our way through an 8-hour bird video for cats and she especially likes these handsome little guys. I can’t keep calling them LRBs (Little Red Bastards).
I do not know the bird but you remind me of my grandpa. He’s a birdwatcher and he calls all those interchangeable small brown species LBJs (Little Brown Jobs).
I understand that’s the technical term among birders! I’ve heard LBB as well, for Little Brown Bird, but I like Little Brown Jobbies best.
Also the bird is a Eurasian Jay! So handsome!
The Eurasian Jay is simply called the “Jay” by English speakers in Europe. They are a type of corvid, like crows and ravens and magpies, but Jays are quite shy. They are big and anxious, with soft fat bodies that blend in to their surroundings, apart from a sudden flash of blue when they fly. They hide quietly in deep trees, and are usually invisible. They love oak trees particularly, and they hoard acorns like squirrels. They are powerful planters of trees, and can carry acorns for great distances, with each bird able to plant hundreds of trees a year. They hate leaving trees and are basically NEVER seen outside of dense tree cover, so this is probably their attempt at conquering Eurasia by means of forests.
This may be surprising to people who know the Blue Jay. The Blue Jay is a North American bird and was named by colonists after the Jay, though they’re only distant cousins. (still corvids but not close relatives.) They’re a a Big Yeller and just…. very Much, all the time. They are smallish and made out of volume and boldness. They shout at cats and Start Shit and are very brave and clever. They don’t worry about trees half so much.
Biologist Tasha Sturm asked her 8-yo son to high-five a petri dish after he’d spent the morning running around in the garden and playing with the dog; next, she incubated it for two days at body temperature, and this is the result.
[White thingies: staphylococcus epidermidis. Yellow thingies: staphylococcus aureus and micrococcus luteus. Orange thingies: rhodotorula. Other white thingies: unidentified bacilli.]
“Being exposed to stuff like this is part of a healthy immune system. We’re exposed to this every day and unless you’re immunocompromised you don’t really have much to worry about. Just be smart and wash your hands.”
I haven’t even gotten around to posting the story about the dead body yet.
The dead body isn’t even the most exciting part of the story.
PLEASE elaborate, my gods
So I want you to know that I’ve been sitting on this story for about a week and a half now because the amount of work drama is sometimes so intense that even the interesting parts of my job have to be shelved for the sake proper emotional processing.
But this isn’t about that. This is about milestones.
