“I seek love, yet I hide from it when it reaches out.
I seek the warmth of a lover but cower when it surrounds me.
I seek the words laced with honey but accept those filled with poison.
I seek eyes filled with adoration but find an empty space in front of me.
I seek someone in my sheets, my hands roaming to find someone, but only stumble upon blankets and cold sheets.
I seek a smile but find myself drowning in tears.
I seek a life filled with love but find myself running away when it finds me.
I wish upon the stars to find what I am seeking to find me before I yield and cower again.
I pray there comes a day where I’ll stumble upon all the things I yearn for and that the warmth, the smile will grab me with so much strength that I will have no choice but to accept it with everything in me.
Because for once, I’ll allow the love I run away from to fill me up with everything I wished upon the stars, and for once, I’ll smile without any fear.
It’ll look me in the eyes and tell me that what I had been seeking was just waiting for me to accept myself and be free of the chains.
The smile and the crinkle beside their eyes will tell me that I was everything they too were seeking for, and they were glad we found each other in a place that had no place of running away.
I seek for you, and I pray you also seek for me.
I wish upon the stars that when we find each other, it will all be enough.
Because baby, you’re all my wishes upon the stars.”
These are some practice and experimental things I’ve put together over the years. Not quite up to my current standard, but I wanted to remind you guys that I’m not abandoning this blog, and more stuff will be up soon. I’ve just had a lot of things to worry about lately.
I’ve seen people refer to the Traveler a few times as ‘ours’ or how the Hive tried to ‘take it from us’. Which would follow, since that was pretty much the reaction of the Vanguard in-game and the angle Bungie took with the marketing for the expansion.
The Light isn’t ours. Nor is the Sky. Nor is the Traveler. Merely because the Traveler chose to make her stand at Earth does not give humanity the ultimate right to make decisions for the Traveler or to exert our control of her. The Traveler giftedus the Light, it didn’t swear to be ours and ours alone.
Consider the wager. The Sky stands as gentle complexity. A good kingdom ringed by spears, where the strong defend the weak and life blooms in multiplicity. The Deep stands as the blade edge, the kingdom of war, that eliminates all life until there is only the last man standing.
By that Wager, the Traveler gifted us the Light. Upon us were weighed no demands and restrictions were not emplaced. The Light is to do with as we will, because it is willthat the Sky loves. Choice and the freedom of it. When warlords rampaged in the Dark Ages - did the Traveler chastise them and tell them no? When Rezzyl Azir threw down his burden and turned his face from the Sky, did the Traveler yank hard his reins and tell him ‘no’? When the Iron Lords slaughtered the warlords, when they crushed ghosts underfoot to break the cycle of violence, did the Traveler chastise them for not finding another way?
What we do with the Light is what is meaningful. For good or evil, right or wrong, each action and choice we take is precious and so the Traveler cannot, will not, speak. To speak would be to influence us and tarnish that precious choice.
By contrast the Deep commands. Though it gave us stasis, it constantly speaks to us, gives us hints, eggs us on, teases and leads us. It has demands of its own and what we want is not secondary - it is immaterial.
This may seem an aside, to explore the purpose of Deep and Sky, but I am illustrating a picture.
The Sky wishes for rich life and vibrancy of disagreement, of concord, of strife and peace. The Sky wishes for life, in all it’s beauty and pain.
When we claim the Traveler as ours, when we claim the Light as ours, when we look at the Lucent Hive with trembling limbs and curling lips and find palms on stocks and blades aquiver, we are asserting the Deep claim.
We are saying that “We alone are right. We alone are mighty. We alone may be the only Shape.” The Deep demands a single champion, the Light cherishes a billion. For us to jealously hoard the Light and the Traveler is to make us into the only champion of the Light. We are perverting it’s purpose.
Does it mean it is wrong that we fought off the Fallen, that we warred with the Cabal, that we threw down the Osmium Dynasty?
No.
For that is the freedom of choice the Sky desires for us. And besides - they wanted us dead first. It is never morally wrong to fight for your life.
But the Traveler is showing us a truth. We are beloved, we are precious - and so is all life. Perhaps humans did indeed have a spark that caught the Traveler’s eye, all those centuries ago, which is why She laid down here to fight.
But it was hubris to ever think that the Light would be ours alone. Ghaul was not deserving of it, because he demanded it, because he tried to steal it, because he impugned on free will.
Savathun chose to die. She accepted her fate, she took all her cards off the table, she threw them away. She wanted the Light, yes, but she did not demand it. She did not hold the Traveler at gunpoint, she did not try to tear Light from it’s body. She asked, and she died.
At the end of her long, long life, Savathun finally had faith.
Now the Lucent Hive are blessed. Truly blessed. No tricks, no stealing, no magics. And we war on them.
Again, that is not inherently wrong. The Light is freedom. For us to clash is natural. But the other side of the coin demands recognition too. The Lucent Hive are just as worthy as we to wield the Light. So while we may fight and while we may be at odds, the day will come when we must expect, and should expect, not to be. For the Light is not ours, and it is not theirs. It is the Light, it is given, and none can claim it solely. To do otherwise is to mantle the Deep, and that is a path none should tread.
We were asked to survive the truth, and it was not what was implied. The truth to survive was that all things change and that our humility should be reminded to us. The truth that our precepts were wrong. The truth that we always knew, but maybe had set aside.
when i was a teenager and i learned about how light pollution and a certain billionare’s satellites obscure the night sky and all of its glory that humans have looked up and admired for hundreds of thousands of years, i always kept the mantra ‘they would steal even the skies from you’ hidden deep in my gut like a warning
but now i’m in my 20s and in the midst of a plague, having to watch corporate entities like space x and jeff bezos scramble for a piece of the infinite vastness of our universe while we’re all down expected to toil for their gains, live in an age of widespread sickness where we can’t be granted healing or rest without a profit, have every single piece of our lives cut up and dressed for sale like a butchered animal, from basic human needs to human expression. and now that same mantra comes to mind, but now instead of a cautionary warning it sits in my chest and my throat bc it has gone from a warning to a certainty. they willsteal even the skies from you.
