Do You Have A Favorite Planet Adam? I Feel Like Nobody Asks You About Your Interests Anymore

Normally I’m a spacekaiser shipper but I love your interactions with Nigel sm I kinda hope he’ll stop obsessing over Will. Especially because that’s a losing game once Hannibal is involved.

I am afraid I did not understand the context for half of what you wrote. But I am glad that you seem happy with the status quo of this blog.

I don’t think love should have to be a fight.

If it is, maybe it’s not love, it’s just war with different rules.

But I think some things stay even when you stop fighting. Probably not everything, but the important things. Thats how I see this. Maybe one day you feel that you won’t have to fight anymore.

Good evening Nigel,

I was at the National art gallery with Beth this afternoon. I saw Botticelli’s ‘Venus and Mars’ there, it is an absolute study in paradox!. About forces that should collide yet instead settle into something resembling harmony. It reminded me of space in that way. Mars, the god of war, lies unconscious, unarmed, seemingly at peace. Venus, the goddess of love, seems watchful but unaffected, an island of serenity beside him. She has not conquered him. She has not subdued him. And yet, in her presence, he is still.

Many people would assume that love triumphs over war, that beauty tames violence. But I think Botticelli offers something more intricate. Venus does not demand change. She does not impose softness upon Mars. She simply exists, and in doing so, creates the conditions for stillness. Mars, so accustomed to unrest, is given a rare and unfamiliar gift—the absence of conflict. And he does not resist it.

The tension here is not one of struggle, but of transformation. Venus has not altered Mars, she has only revealed what he is capable of being. I imagine this as love at its most potent—not forceful, not possessive, but a quiet invitation to become. There is no battle between them, no need for submission or control. Instead, they are two opposing forces that, for a moment, find equilibrium. Together.

This is the paradox I was speaking of : not that one must destroy the other, but that they can coexist. In Metamorphoses, Ovid describes their relationship as both passionate and volatile, yet Botticelli captures something…subtler. Venus does not try to change Mars, nor does she fear him. She understands him. And understanding, more than any weapon, has the power to disarm.

I remember Beth asking ‘Why does Venus choose Mars? Her husband Vulcan presents as a more fitting counterpart, someone more aligned with her nature’. I answered that, perhaps love is not drawn to reflections of itself, but to contrast. To the possibility of transformation. Venus does not force Mars to lay down his weapons. He does so on his own, because in her presence, he does not need them.

There is power in that, in my opinion. A kind of power that does not shout, does not demand, but simply is. Not dominance, but invitation. Not submission, but balance.

And it reminded me of you.

Well, shit… you’ve really got me here, don’t you? Never thought I’d be sitting here, having someone talk to me about love like that, beautiful. It’s funny though. Mars? Peaceful? Never thought I’d see the day.

An invitation, huh? Not a fight, not a conquest, not a struggle to win someone over. Just... being. That’s a new one for me. Love makes me do some fucking crazy things, but never like that.

If I’m being real, I don’t know if I believe in that kind of love. The kind that just fucking is. Hell, I’m not sure I’ve ever let someone just exist if I really loved them, or that I've ever felt like I can let myself relax that way, or if I even can. I’ve always thought that if you don’t fight and keep fighting to keep what you have, you end up losing everything.

Maybe you’ve got a point, Adam. No one’s ever said anything like that to me before.

I’m glad you thought of me.

I haven’t had the chance to look for raccoons yet, but there are squirrels in a park nearby.

I don’t like the filter Beth put on this picture, but the squirrel was fascinating.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

I feel like I walked into an entire play where everyone else had the script but me. And now the show’s over, the audience has left, and I’m just standing here, still trying to understand the plot.

Intuition is mostly irrational, but if I were to believe in that sort of thing, I would describe having a strange feeling about tonight.

The Pleiades

whats your favorite constellation? mine is boötes!

Lyra. It’s small, but distinct. The brightest star in it—Vega—was once the North Star, and it will be again in about 12,000 years. The sky shifts in ways we barely notice.

It’s named for Orpheus’ lyre. After his death, the gods sent it to the stars. A consolation prize. A memorial. I like that—how something once full of music is now silent, but still luminous. Still present.

Boötes is a good choice. The herdsman, always watching over the bears as they circle the pole. There’s something steady about it. Something patient. If Lyra is a lingering echo, then Boötes is the figure who listens to it, night after night.

thoughts on the planet ceres?

A dwarf planet trapped in the asteroid belt. Too small to be a proper planet, too large to be just another rock. Suspended between definitions, never quite one thing or the other. It holds more water than any world in the inner solar system apart from Earth, but no one really talks about that. No one really talks about Ceres at all.

It was the first asteroid ever discovered. They thought it was a planet at first. It lost that title when they found others like it, but for a while, it was something more. Something significant.

I think that’s a shame.

M94, Starburst

tbh with all this chaotic back and forth I think you and Will should just say ‘fuck it’s and get together.

You’d at least make a pretty couple.

I am unsure whether this was meant as a joke or a serious proposition. If it was a joke, I have to admit—

it was actually quite funny.

How could I not hate myself for the blindness that led me to believe she might ever have loved me as I am?.

Surely, I must despise myself as I do her. In the end, we both betrayed me.

Beth always hated the idea of this blog. She didn’t want me posting as much so I didn’t.

All this time I tried so hard to make her happy. I stopped interacting with people I like because it made her uncomfortable, I stopped talking as much because it made her uncomfortable, I stopped behaving like myself because it made her uncomfortable.

I hate her and I hate myself.