Dawn found her on the boardwalk, where the lake breathed a faint exhale into the cold. She had already circled the water by bike, a ritual for days when the stakes pressed too close. Her legs still shook with the ride, her lungs open from the arcs of Qigong, the silk fan in her hand still warm.
The water whispered beneath her, urging her to begin. She closed her eyes.
The first figure came as herself one year older—straighter in the shoulders, touched with gray at the temple, a looseness in her face as if she had stepped through something hard and left it behind.
“You did it,” the figure said.
“I honored myself,” she answered. The words felt foreign, but steady.
The other only nodded, touching her sleeve before vanishing into the early air.
Next came a woman ten years further on, with the posture of someone who had lived in many cities but belonged to none. She carried a photograph: herself before a golden temple, cherry petals turning in the wind.
“Do you remember the settlement?” she asked.
“I remember the fear,” the present self said. “And how it left me in one breath.”
“That was the day you learned change waits for you to show up.” She pressed the photograph into her hand before dissolving like a reflection disturbed by water.
Last came the oldest version, white-haired, her eyes calm and sharp at once. She leaned on a carved cane, flowers etched as if the wood had grown them.
“Do you regret the path?” she asked.
“No. Only the years I wasted doubting.”
“Doubt makes you gentle,” the elder said. “Courage makes you wise. Remember this morning—the bike, the air, the way truth turned the hinge of your life. That was the beginning of what I love most.”
The cane struck the planks twice. Then the elder bent close. “Tell the child you once were, and every self you carried, that you did well.”
Silence fell, seeded and deep.
She opened her eyes. The boardwalk was empty, but the words lingered. She lifted her bike and rode toward the courthouse. On the way she passed a vertical garden, planters spilling with mint and jasmine, lanterns strung between them like small moons waiting for dusk.
By noon she would sign the papers. By evening she would walk under those same lights, their glow trembling in the leaves. And when water caught the sun again—whether in Austin, Kyoto, or some other city she had not yet seen—she would carry the voices of all her selves forward, into every year still waiting.
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Arrival Hour | A moment outside of chronology when a crowd gathers not to witness but to be witnessed, waiting for something that may never fall. |
| Cane of Blossoms | An elder’s staff that grows as both root and record, carrying wisdom in living wood. |
| Consciousness | The shifting field of awareness where perception, memory, and meaning converge into the experience of being. |
| Crucible Moment | The instant when structures, stories, and selves collapse into revelation, forcing a choice between ruin and rebirth. |
| Dawn | The threshold of first light when the world inhales, carrying both endings and beginnings in the same fragile breath. |
| Echo Lanterns | Paper moons that carry voices from past and future, glowing with unspoken memory. |
| Lady Bird Lake | The wide, restless heart of Austin, a man-made river-lake where festivals, protests, and blooms of algae ripple against the city’s reflection. |
| Lake Exhale | The felt breath of Lady Bird Lake offering quiet forgiveness that loosens the day. |
| Library of Renewal | A sanctuary where stories and spaces themselves invite the rewriting of one’s inner narrative. |
| Paper Lantern Weather | The drifting atmosphere when light itself seems to hang in fragile vessels, swaying between celebration and remembrance, guiding travelers through thresholds of change. |
| Petal Settlement | The fragile peace made when fear dissolves like blossoms falling into water. |
| Planterns | Planterns are whimsical upcycled creations—paper lanterns transformed into one-of-a-kind planters. No two are ever the same: each Plantern carries its own identity, tied to a unique ID that connects it to specific digital media such as Organic Fiction narratives, recorded music, and other creative works. The soft glow and airy shape of its former life remain, now reimagined as a home for trailing vines, succulents, and blooms. Made from reclaimed materials, Planterns celebrate renewal—giving discarded objects a second chance and your plants a distinctive stage to grow. Part art piece, part living sculpture, a Plantern is both physical and digital—a tangible vessel for life linked to a story, a song, or a world you can step into. |
| Seeded Silence | The fragile peace that grows in the pauses between people, fragile yet nourishing like bread with tiny seeds of memory. |
| Storytelling | The act of weaving memory, place, and imagination into living threads that reshape both the teller and the city, turning narrative into a tool of survival and renewal. |
| Threshold Breath | The inhale that suspends time, opening the passage between selves. |
| Twilight Accord | The agreement struck across generations of the self, binding doubt to courage. |
| Vertical Garden | Dive into our Vertical Garden section where creativity meets sustainability. This is a celebration of the innovative approach of integrating plants into urban environments in a vertical format, a testament to human resourcefulness in the face of limited space. Here, you'll discover a vast array of ideas on how to transform would-be waste materials into sustainable, beautiful, and thriving gardens. From DIY guides on upcycling aluminum cans into modular planters, to detailed articles and SolarPunk fiction exploring the transformative power of these gardens in various settings like Austin's schools and cityscape, the Vertical Garden category provides a deep dive into a green future. Through the articles and stories in this section, we share and explore concepts, techniques, and innovations that align with a sustainable, circular economy, which views waste as an asset rather than a problem. Whether you are looking to start your own vertical garden project or just enjoy immersing yourself in hopeful visions of a green urban future, you're in the right place. Join us as we explore and reimagine our relationship with nature and urban space, one vertical garden at a time. |