Just a walk in the garden

{100% -4° right corners} this morning it was in the 40s, and i haven't been this excited in such a long time.

so whale fall is what happens after a whale dies, and its body sinks to the ocean floor.

When a whale dies, life also begins, creating entire ecosystems off of the deceased body.
The movie "Whale Fall" was interesting because, at face value, the movie is about how a sperm whale swallows this kid who's searching for his dead father's remains, and he’s gotta make it out. As we watch the movie, we find out that the main character’s dad was very into marine life, always talked about whales, and their part in the ecosystem. After the kid is swallowed by the whale, crushed and attacked multiple times, and is dying inside of this whale that consumed him, he starts hearing his dad's voice from the whale. This echoing voice, almost like the whale IS his dad, and of course he's losing blood, and oxygen, so this guy is going into crazy shock. but i'm sitting there, and i'm like oh my god, it's this wild metaphor. the pain of his dad’s death is literally consuming him, just like the whale is consuming him, and getting out of the whale is literally his only hope to live again physically and spiritually. i thought it was a really dope concept to explore and bring to life. i mean it's to my understanding the movie is based off of a book, but the getting swallowed by a whale idea blended with this story about loss and grief. there's just so many different details to think how every piece in the movie was a metaphor for something the main character went through or was going through or could possibly go through in life.

[added 10/17/26] So not only was the whale his fall into no return as he knew it, and not only did he meet the whale at the edge of an underwater cliff, but as the whale literally dies and sinks into the depths of the cold dark ocean, Jay rises out of the water, to begin his new life. Incredible.

darling it's hard, to read between the lines
the bloody walks home under the buzzing street lights
bewildered and senseless take over my mind
at night i stay restless counting the stars in my eyes

suburbia is dead to me
settled, silent, rotten, all dreams are forgotten
the picket white fences, the routine night agendas
i've never seen it so clearly it's so eerily endless the ways this place attempts to amend us
unsettling, i miss the meddling and strings to pull
options to fool around now seen as the clown
childish ways to not settle and ask for more, now we ask for less, swallowed by stress
consumed by debt, working hours on end til our needs aren't met

i'm tired of feeling sleepy
sleep walking through suburbia calling to the void who's never even heard of ya
pouring time right down the drain just to get to the next day where we do it all again
slowly bleeding from our heads, walking silently down the street with these loud voices yelling about the path that they were led is not what they expected and now it's all they ever dread

suburbia is dead to me

-SG

pocket notebook entry: Suburbia is dead to me.

Not the place. The posture. The sleepy-town idea of "I've done my job, that's enough." Clock out at five, TV for a couple hours, shower, bed, repeat. Settling as in settling down, but also settling for the life that's handed to you.

The people I went to school with are getting married, having kids, doing the nine to five, and that's it. I don't want that. I want to keep reaching, keep making, keep living my life.

You could live in the suburbs your whole life and never settle. You could live in the city and settle anyway. So maybe it was never about the zip code.

Still open: is the restlessness about where I am, or about how I'm wired?

[added 10/17/26] It's this feeling that we work so hard all day long, all week long, and for what?

I don't want to live to work. I want to work to LIVE. Follow my curiosities, spend time outside, do activities; I want to look forward to something when I finish working during the week or at the end of the working week. I can't imagine working and being excited to do nothing, just to go back to work and do it all over again. What's the point? Why am I here? What else can I do? What MORE can I do?

Morning page snippet: I miss the little inconveniences of life.
The things that when you look back, made a greater impact than you could've imagined.

I miss not having a phone, I miss not owning a watch, I miss passing letters in class to a girl,
just to get denied on the spot.
I miss school, I miss my 9-5, I miss cable television with my family staying up late during weeknights.
I miss the things that brought us closer, and I even miss the things that used to tear us apart.
I miss the challenges of growing together, and hurting when we were apart.

As life got more convenient, we've grown so accustomed to a culture of speed, the path of least resistance.
well can i resist this?
start a resistance?
walk backward back in time, back to when we put up a hell of a good fight, back to sneaking out at 2am to see you in the night, back to biking through the neighborhood, back to roadtrips with the fam, back to getting dropped off everywhere i wanted to go, back to only holding hands, back to dog day summers with brain cells fried, back to running in the rain, back to acting too tough to hold in a cry, back to hiding all the pain.

i miss the little inconveniences, i miss all the trouble.
i miss how much it hurt to grow.

Had this idea of making a book in the garden that's literally called Stephen's Ideas. Something simple but outlandish, named so it catches the eye of whoever walks into the garden room, so they click on it first.
A fake book, with fake ideas or random conversations in it. I want to see who's inclined to open it and try to steal my ideas. Though, I do understand, not everyone is a thief, but curiously wandering as they should.

The whole point of a digital garden is to share ideas and show my process, the way I think. Anyone could go through my garden, or anybody's garden, and take what's there. But you can take my ideas all day. They're all floating in the ether anyway. The way you'd execute an idea is different from the way I would. Even when I put down exactly what I want to do and how, whoever tries to run with it just isn't going to do it the way I would.

It's also a hidden space on my website. If you found it, kudos. There are a couple of ways to find it on your phone, but desktop and tablet are a different story.

Still open: what actually goes in the book?

tonight i watched the new movie Wildwood. not only was it made by Laika, the same studio that made Coraline, but it took the studio 16 years to make. it being stop motion, certain sequences took their team 5 years to make individually. that's insane.

the world building was incredible, so detail oriented and at the very end they showed what looks like 100 different faces of these characters, all with different expressions. when you sit there and think beyond the movie, about the creativity and the systems that went into it, they must have had teams set on very specific, literally every tiny detail tasks to make something like this work and become something great, incredible.

this was a great movie, just the pure feeling of being whisked away into this world they created. when the movie ended, i clocked back in, that i wasn't part of this movie, that i wasn't in that world. that's the testament to a great movie. you're not looking down and remembering you're a human watching a story unfold. you feel like you're inside of it, witnessing the unfolding of it. that's how i felt tonight.

i was invested from the jump: the stylistic choices of the characters, the movements, the shot work. when it's not live actors or real people, whether it's animation or any kind of work like this, you can reach for the stars and make your characters move how you want. you don't have to sit inside of a box, and they definitely did not sit inside a box on this one. you've got these characters in a normal world like ours, walking into pure unknown, pure catastrophe, straight war and despair. you're rooting for these characters. it was a real feel good movie.

i need to see it again on the biggest screen possible. IMAX if they have it somewhere. if not, Cinemark XD.

a movie taking 16 years to make is a real testament to the kind of world we're living in right now. very fast paced, very fast food, very trending, the easy way out. there's people utilizing different tools just to get the job done and put out slop.

granted, you could do whatever you want. you could take a year to make something, or way less. but it's very cool that there are people, businesses, and artists out here taking their time and not questioning it. they're spending so much time and energy and passion and love for the game to bring an idea and a story to life in a way that isn't easy.

it reminds me that i don't need to do certain things now. i can take my time. you get out what you put into it. you're going to find the art at its best when you spend the right amount of time and put the right amount of love into your projects.

as fast as the world is moving, with new technology and new ways to do things constantly, take everything with a grain of salt. just because the rest of the world is doing something doesn't mean you have to follow in their footsteps. make your own path, be your own niche, do the things you enjoy. make the work you love, make it for you, and bring it to life.

this whole year has been insane with new movies, new animation styles, new ways to shoot. young artists and new people on the scene are bringing to life big stories and small, intimate stories. just great projects.