It is common amongst novice learners—acting in both anxious pretension to wisdom and self-serving search for status—to adopt pretty adages about the dangers of superficiality.
You have heard them: Warnings against judging the depths of a volume by the contents of its dust jacket. Admonishments for those seeking beauty, since such petty physical attributes are only epidermal and not innate.
Mmm. Well.
The conundrum of these old saws is that they, too, are shallow summaries of more complex ideas. And yet, it is in their simple brevity (and in their shiny reflection of something true resting in the deep), that they grow powerful; that they last long enough to become real.
And so, let me ask you directly. What is more important: The surface or the core? The skin or the heart? The expressions worn into the face or the subtle shapes of the soul?
There, on the shattered, pockmarked, blazed, twisted, desperate, ugly catastrophe-moon of Sapryc, perhaps you would understand that like Root and Trunk, surface and center are one. That they are doubled emanations of a shared history, as blood out the open wound once pulsed through the chest, as spew lingering on lips came to form in sickly guts.
There is nothing pure inside. There is only more.
Hosted by Austin Walker (@austinwalker on bluesky)
Featuring Andrew Lee Swan, Jack de Quidt, Janine Hawkins and Sylvi Bullet
Produced by Ali Acampora
Music by Jack de Quidt (available on bandcamp)
Cover Art by by Oddesque
With thanks to Amelia Renee, Arthur B., Aster Maragos, Bill Kaszubski, Cassie Jones, Clark, DB, Daniel Laloggia, Diana Crowley, Edwin Adelsberger, Emrys, Greg Cobb, Ian O'Dea, Ian Urbina, Irina A., Jack Shirai, Jake Strang, Katie Diekhaus, Ken George, Konisforce, Kristina Harris Esq, L Tantivy, Lawson Coleman, Mark Conner, Mike & Ruby, Muna A, Nat Knight, Olive Perry, Quinn Pollock, Robert Lasica, Shawn Drape, Shawn Hall, Summer Rose, TeganEden, Thomas Whitney, Voi, chocoube, deepFlaw, fen, & weakmint