Review by alioth
Mar 16, 2024Sweet story, full of word play, growth, change, and lessons to take home.
Quote line---
you must understand that this is a tale about people who are both what they seem and not what they seem. Simultaneously. A story of contradictions. In other words, it is a story about human beings.
(Worry, it might be said, is the carrion feeder of emotions. Drawn to other, better emotions like crows to a battlefield.)
One of the great tragedies of life is knowing how many people in the world are made to soar, paint, sing, or steer-- except they never get the chance to find out. Whenever one does discover a moment of joy, beauty enters the world. Human beings, we can't create energy; we can only harness it. We can't create matter; we can only shape it. We can't even create life; we can only nurture it. But we can create light. This is one of the ways. The effervescence of purpose discovered.
She should have planned. But plans...plans were things for people who didn't exist yet. And Tress existed now.
memories have a way of changing on us. Souring or sweetening over time—like a brew we drink, then recreate later by taste, only getting the ingredients mostly right. You can't taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.
What else would she have never known about herself, if she hadn't left her home island? Worse, how many people like her lived in ignorance, lacking the experience to fully explore their own existence?
Tress settled down, thinking about people and how the holes in them could be filled by such simple things, like time, or a few words at the right moment. ... What, other than a person, could you build up merely by caring?
I love memories. They are our ballads, our personal foundation myths. But I must acknowledge that memory can be cruel if left unchallenged.
Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. ... If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past. ... Do not let memory chase you. ... Enjoy memories, yes, but don't be a slave to who you wish you once had been. Those memories aren't alive. You are.
Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don't recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we've been told to inhabit.
We can keep going that way for a while. We can pretend we fit that jug, awkward nooks and all. But the longer we do, the worse it gets. The more it wears on us. The more exhausted we become.
Even if we're doing nothing at all, because simply holding the shape can take all the effort in the world. More, if we want to make it look natural.
In the land where everyone screams, everyone is also slightly deaf.
Sometimes the moments in our life pile up and become an unstoppable force that makes us change. But at other times they become a mountain impossible to surmount.
Everyone misses shots now and then. But if you become known as the person who misses—if you internalize it-well, suddenly every miss becomes another rock in that pile. While every hit gets ignored.
...he wasn't so boring after all. Secretly, I'll tell you that you aren't either. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to lower your value. Don't trust them. They know they can't afford you otherwise.
Sweet story, full of word play, growth, change, and lessons to take home.
Quote line---
you must understand that this is a tale about people who are both what they seem and not what they seem. Simultaneously. A story of contradictions. In other words, it is a story about human beings.
(Worry, it might be said, is the carrion feeder of emotions. Drawn to other, better emotions like crows to a battlefield.)
One of the great tragedies of life is knowing how many people in the world are made to soar, paint, sing, or steer-- except they never get the chance to find out. Whenever one does discover a moment of joy, beauty enters the world. Human beings, we can't create energy; we can only harness it. We can't create matter; we can only shape it. We can't even create life; we can only nurture it. But we can create light. This is one of the ways. The effervescence of purpose discovered.
She should have planned. But plans...plans were things for people who didn't exist yet. And Tress existed now.
memories have a way of changing on us. Souring or sweetening over time—like a brew we drink, then recreate later by taste, only getting the ingredients mostly right. You can't taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.
What else would she have never known about herself, if she hadn't left her home island? Worse, how many people like her lived in ignorance, lacking the experience to fully explore their own existence?
Tress settled down, thinking about people and how the holes in them could be filled by such simple things, like time, or a few words at the right moment. ... What, other than a person, could you build up merely by caring?
I love memories. They are our ballads, our personal foundation myths. But I must acknowledge that memory can be cruel if left unchallenged.
Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. ... If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past. ... Do not let memory chase you. ... Enjoy memories, yes, but don't be a slave to who you wish you once had been. Those memories aren't alive. You are.
Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don't recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we've been told to inhabit.
We can keep going that way for a while. We can pretend we fit that jug, awkward nooks and all. But the longer we do, the worse it gets. The more it wears on us. The more exhausted we become.
Even if we're doing nothing at all, because simply holding the shape can take all the effort in the world. More, if we want to make it look natural.
In the land where everyone screams, everyone is also slightly deaf.
Sometimes the moments in our life pile up and become an unstoppable force that makes us change. But at other times they become a mountain impossible to surmount.
Everyone misses shots now and then. But if you become known as the person who misses—if you internalize it-well, suddenly every miss becomes another rock in that pile. While every hit gets ignored.
...he wasn't so boring after all. Secretly, I'll tell you that you aren't either. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to lower your value. Don't trust them. They know they can't afford you otherwise.
