Making Mistakes

This looks like how I saw those crushed up plants I put in bowls outside when I was 10. . . This looks like my childhood, and I wish I could still just go outside and pretend to make potions with the 'magical herbs' I crushed up in the mortar and pestle I got for Christmas. But no, because that's 'weird' and not something a normal high school student does in their free time.

Middle eastern spices market

At what age does one start to feel nostalgia? Because I am not that age; not nearly, and yet that is all I feel. I feel nostalgic about things I wasn't even alive to see, about places I've never visited, about people I've only met in passing. And maybe it isn't nostalgia, but I don't have a better word for it.

`` A Letter to Time ``

Dear Time,

You remind me of the Sea. Unable to be restrained. Unable to be controlled. Unable to be contained. You are merciless, yet your movement is necessary. You steal away our precious moments before we are ready to let go, just as the rising tides carry away the forgotten toys of young children. But in the moments that we need to escape, to move, you are calm, gentle, and slow. When we are like a sailboat in a windless sea, you choose to quiet.

I understand though, Time, that you might wish to slow down just as much as I wish you would. The Moon controls the tides, so tell me, who controls you, Time? Perhaps we are the ones that make things seem too fast, or perhaps it has always been like this. Perhaps you wish you could slow down the good moments, cradle us in your arms, and tell us you'll make it last as long as we'd like.

Perhaps we are your children, Time, and it pains you that we think you cause our suffering.

With all the love and forgiveness in the world,

a young human

Procrastination is my enemy, Time is my mother, and Curiosity is the one common denominator of Humanity

"You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you if you work hard enough."

`` Can't I Have Both? ``

I want a big life.

I want to be a doctor, and I want to save lives. I want to laugh loudly with my friends and take up space and explore and run. I want to be a bit too ambitious and I want to be productive. I want to live big and loud and happy.

But I also want a small life.

I want to wake up early and drink tea. I want to sit by a window where I can look out over the forest as I read cozy mystery books. I want to bake my own bread and make flower crowns. I want to live small and soft and happy.

Can I have both?

`` Everything . . . ``

I want to learn everything.

I want to learn the secrets of the galaxy and the mysteries of the ocean. I want to know all the ideas that could become the technology of tomorrow and all the thoughts that shaped our past. I want to learn every language, both alive and dead. I want to play every instrument, I want to read every book, I want to listen to every song. I want to learn every intricate equation of math and every technique of physical art. I want to write and draw and sculpt and dance and sing. I want to talk to people from all around the world, learn of their cultures and their lives. I want to go to medical school, law school, culinary school, and trade school. I want to work small jobs and large jobs. I want to save lives and preserve them.

I wish I could do everything. . .

i know your blog says finnish grammar but honestly I have no idea who else to ask. If I wanted to learn more about Finnish mythology, what's a good place to start? I'm specifically trying to learn about Tellervo if you could help me out there.

Thanks so much :)

Sadly, there's very little sources even in finnish about finnish mythology. The christians spent over a thousand years painstakingly scrubbing out any trace or knowledge of The Old Pagan Habits of the common people, so everything that's left is a fraction of a fraction of a remnant of a trace. Researchers specialising in finnish mythology have occasionally resorted to comparing their sources with the mythologies of other peoples of common ancestry, such as Estonians, to see if there are similarities and which old details and traits were probably shared and original.

The finns didn't have a written language before the 1500s, and the first finns who could read and write in their own native languages were priests, determined to teach christian teachings to the peasants in their own language. Figuring out what old finnish folklore and mythology was really like is a lot like figuring out what dinosaurs looked like. The best we can do is look at the traces that remain and make educated guesses about it.

I don't like it when things end.

I don't know what to add to this, I just know I need to save this Lol

In the ruins of Pompeii, there is a room inside a house where two men were painting on the day Mt. Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.

The master painter was at work on the fresco itself, twining vines in green, men and women looking out of the image to one side. His partner, probably an apprentice or lesser, younger painter, was laying down fresh plaster nearby. We know it was fresh because the pumice left significant pockmarks in it as it dried that we can still see today.

There are holes where a shelf stood holding the different colors of paint, in the wall just below the unfinished fresco. We found jars of paint on the floor - red green blue white yellow black. We found his tools, the brushes and the pot of lime that kept the paint wet.

He spilled lime on the painting.

We can tell that, too. It is caked clear as day over the unfinished work.

In a documentary I am watching, an Italian anthropologist discussing the moment of eruption looks to the cameraman and says, with real sincerity, "We found their tools, but we didn't find them. We hope that they ran away, that they survived."

Next door, a baker left his livestock behind when he fled. We found the skeletal remains of the animals who helped to move the millstone, but we did not find the baker.

Not that we are certain of, anyway.

I just wanted to take a moment to think about a modern Italian anthropologist looking at unfinished paintings and bread turned to stone by ash and time, hoping to himself that those people made it out in time.

We are separated by almost two thousand years, but we still have empathy for lives facing terror beyond their understanding. We still hope against hope that two painters ran out of town and made a new life somewhere else, that they escaped before the final pyroclastic flows descended.

We hope the baker moved to another town.

We recognize ourselves in what was left behind, and hope that these people - who could have been us, but for a trick of time and place - had a fighting chance to survive.

I just.

Sometimes, I love people.

I love us.