At What Age Does One Start To Feel Nostalgia? Because I Am Not That Age; Not Nearly, And Yet That Is

`` Existence, Really. . ``

Existence really is wonderful.

We exist on this planet and we can think and sing and laugh and create. We can learn and explore and dream. We can *live* and that's a concept that is kind of hard to grasp, really. But maybe that's the point, maybe human existence is so complex and emotional and simply amazing that is is beyond words, beyond comprehension, even

And it really is wonderful, isn't it?

So you see, I have a problem with letting things die.

I love you dead punctuation marks.

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

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.

Reminding myself to (attemp) to draw this later!

`` War. . . ``

We talk about war a lot.

We talk about war, racism, poverty. We talk about death and every negative thing about history. And that's important. If we didn't remember it, we would be doomed to repeat it, wouldn't we?

But it seems we never talk about the peace.

We don't talk about times of peace, of comfort. The soft moments. The other half of what makes us human. We don't talk enough about art, about life. What was an average person's life like back then? They had families and favorite colors. They were just like us. Human.

Yet all we talk about is war.

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

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

More than 10 for me though

10 years from now ill be in a white coat with a stethoscope and this past week MIGHT have been worth it 🙏

I don't like it when things end.