On The Process of Fermentation

Hello, my human friends. I have decided to pick up blogging again. In a time where doing anything that requires me to get out of bed is already a daunting task: if i cant grab my brush, the next best thing I can do is put a few words to the things brewing inside of me. It has surely been a while, so i'm a little rusty, please bear with me ! :-)

To those who feel the paradox of restlessness & exhaustion.
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Recently, my days have looked something like this:

My day starts in the dark, no matter the time on the clock. When I wake up my eyes are closed, and i keep them closed for a long, long time, until it's physically unbearable to keep laying still. I dread the eventual wake, delaying the moment when i have to get up, despite it being inevitable. Throughout the day, I rarely set myself up to anything. I lay as if i barely exist, my body tossing and turning from side to side. Sometimes, i decide to get up & sway around, just to feel my own movement through space. But that's it. I feel as though I've lived this same day many, many times by now. I've turned around and noticed myself thinking:
"I have not created anything."

(And believe me, this isn't mainly a complex of productivity. For me, it's the unfulfilled creations that leave me restless. The act itself is what im missing, but I lay still, and nothing of significance occurs.)

But i find that...These days, the most significant things are happening within. My body lays unmoving, yet i travel vast, vast distances within myself. Explosions & contractions, ideas & speculations. I'd describe it as enclosing a wild ocean in a bottle. The bottle itself does not move from its place...But on the inside, there's just about any living creature you could think of, thriving and wriggling! All within this bottle, and what a bottle it is! 

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This description i've made makes me think of Kombucha. I've been brewing my own kombucha at home for a while. It's a simple, yet such a surprisingly rewarding process: you make the concoction, you cover it and set aside in a warm, dark place, for a week or so. That's it. The fermenting process takes place, and you are completely excluded from it.
Inside each jar, live bacteria thrive and multiply exponentially. Acidity grows, bubbles form. It makes me dream, as though every little thing that happens within those jars is the birth of a new star within a vast universe, that is kept inside a glass container.
How do you imagine the healthy bacteria growing and reproducing, if say, for instance, you were to shake the jar every single time you feel unrest, or stirring the contents vigorously with a stick every hour out of frustration? And how do you imagine the Universe would look if God were to force stars to explode when they already beg to be left alone?

Trust me, i've done this and that. I've tried to "rekindle my flame" by listening to motivational speeches, reading books, watching films. And it did nothing. Not because it wasn't good practice: No. It was because they didn't tell me anything i don't already know. It was foolish to act like my fire was put out this whole time, when it was simply dimmed out of the need for stillness, not another stir.

And with all this, I've come to recognize a great wisdom within the noble process of fermentation. 

In these times of stillness...What if all i had to really "do", was to do nothing? That is, to completely remove any insistence on physical action, and let the things inside me ferment in peace? To step back and observe, and not suggest that these miracles happening within...must immediately become something without? Isn't it marvelous? To stay in bed, yet move halfway across the universe, and then open your eyes to find yourself laying in that same spot again. To simply feel the ideas move around like bubbles in a jar of kombucha. 

What if the lesson here was NOT to master persistence & grit, but to actually learn how & when to stop; To master stillness? I recognize that "doing nothing" is actually a skill, and rest is also a craft. Just like any skill, this takes practice. Getting comfortable with seemingly "doing nothing" while all these visions plague you in your stillness...That takes some getting used to! However, by all means, this is a necessary adaptation. Calm your obsession with action. Get comfortable with the quiet seasons of your life. They will come and go, and when they come: Please be kind to yourself.

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In reality: this is not a burial, this is fermentation!
In times where you already feel exhausted from the weight of life itself, you learn to recharge, you learn to leave your insides alone.

And the great ideas, the most vivid of fantasies and most extraordinary dreams? Who knows what they shall turn into? And when did their imaginary potential become more valuable than the joy of creation? Hasn't that always been the most exciting thing about art? The surprise, and not the insistence on the outcome? Perhaps one day, all that potent juice you've accumulated may explode the same as when a match is lit within a room full of gas. Your job? To let go of the wheel and actually let those things ferment in peace.

The creations? In their time, they will all be fulfilled, but with more wisdom and clarity that you've gathered while resting.
They won't disappear, dont worry. They came from YOU, after all !
And you are always here, in stillness or in motion.

(P.S: I don't got much of my own making to show yet, so please have this picture of a green bird wrasse that i very much adore! And, always thank you for being!)

 

Neptune & The Most Beautiful Things

For those that know me personally, I always talk about the dreams and visions I see with deep reverence and excitement. Obscure, vibrant worlds, strange states of existence: My favorite places 2 be !
But a lot of instances of misunderstanding, meaning lost in translation, have me wondering: What place do these visions have in the world? Where to put them?

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It's exhausting sometimes, being a person. I feel like an oddity when I try to describe the inexplicable with words, the daily vessel for communication with human beings. The magnificent worlds i see when i close my eyes: 2 me these are the most beautiful things !!!! There is a passion which cannot help but squeeze itself into every conversation i have: The desire to let humans know of these worlds, of their beauty. 

It's a desire beyond logic; it's child-like, hard 2 reason with.
Yes, there is a possibility that nobody would understand what I talk about when i try to convey it. Yes, there is even a possibility that no one needs to hear this. I know, and i find myself battling with voices that affirm this in my head over and over.

But if i were 2 stop following it: I'd be as good as dead. 

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In one of my most recent dreams, I came from planet Neptune, living in an obscured world afloat in the distant reaches of our Solar System. Neptune does not have a "solid surface", or at least, not the one you'd imagine.
Humans tend to be focused heavily on the physical world around us, on the surface level things; meanwhile in my dream, Neptune was a world devoid of such boundaries. And I was an angel asleep within its blue haze, knowing no separation between the physical and the non-physical. I lived inside visions, inside imaginary towers made of diamonds, the non-physical "dream within a dream"
On Neptune, the boundary between ocean and air did not exist. On Neptune, we still had flowers and beaches; But flowers weren't something you could touch, see or smell. "Flowers" were a concept that you simply knew, and it was enough. Faith in the realness of the non-physical was enough. 

And one day, I fled my home planet to come 2 Earth ! It was bizarre to be able to touch the world around me. Suddenly, formless things took form, developed a "surface" , and i was startled, unable to phase through the illusions.
When i woke up in this world, I found it so strange that i was able to put a hand on my own body: What even was a hand? Is it me, or is it mine? What is this "surface"? ...And then i snapped back into physicality, slipped into these human shoes again :-)

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Conversations like these have very little room in the daily talks (as I had experienced so far) People around me don't seem 2 understand what I thought I've been explaining accurately. Soon enough I started 2 notice that maybe...words aren't sufficient. They're not enough.
But an instance like this had made me reconsider my approach: I must have approached this wrongly, I must have been using the wrong tools! 

I remembered !!!!: Yes! What the hell am I an artist for? I don't have 2 explain, if i can just show you !!! Yes, i remembered the truth that was deafened by the noises of a daily life I cannot help but live: the ultimate power I and each of you creatives hold!! To show, to bring surface-less things into formation !!! It is a process alike to Godhood, creation of something from an idea, a desire, a passion. A process i've finally grounded myself in: And now, things are back 2 how they should be. Heavenly!

I'll admit, For the longest time this year, i really desired 2 feel more human. To have conversations with people instead of isolating and plunging deep into worlds of my creation. I tried so hard 2 share the incomprehensible through the medium that was not fit 4 something as grandiose as what i dream of every night. The most important things need a wider, more capable medium !!!

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I've no desire for making infinity digestible anymore. If it has no place in the "daily small talk", then let it be born through colors! 
So here, you can see my Neptune, floating above Earth's ocean, kindly watching over a lighthouse. Here, i removed the "physical boundary" between my two beloved worlds, I made something non-sensical!
And now, you can imagine it 4 yourself. If even one person can become motivated 2 look into their inner worlds and find this much beauty within, after witnessing my expression? That is worth more than a thousand people "understanding" me through words.
Yes, focus on the heaven within. I dream of the world that is beautified by everyone's expression of their insides !!! And you have a place in this Heaven on Earth. We create it NOW.

Thank you!

The Spheres

I'm sure everyone who walks this planet had their heart cave in deeply when looking at the night sky. We yearn for the vast cosmos, because we once had a home there. Now, locked inside these flesh avatars, we build, we heave, we create, we stretch our capabilities: all to get closer 2 the stars. 

But maybe this whole time, the cosmos was just yearning for itself through us. 

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This piece is titled "The Spheres"

Its creation wasn't anticipated. It was made a month and a half from posting this, Two days before my birthday. Up till that breaking point, I've been feeling something strange, grandiose, and dangerous churning in my stomach. In a time of disillusionment and confusion, I was a danger to myself.

This whole time, the human experience i always adored and cherished...became an overbearing weight. What was it really? Oh, nothing in particular. Just dishes, laundry, feeding and bathing my body. I felt a collapse, as if even this was too much. No, it was too little. In times when all I could do was tasks around the house, My heart yearned violently for something much, much grander. And when things got just a little too quiet, i started remembering what it was like before this. Before "human". 

I recalled many dreams I had, the songs I heard before birth. And one stood out in particular: I once dreamt that I was a planet. I called the vast, vast cosmos my home. I had brothers and sisters, many companions, many-many distant stars calling to me. I remembered what it was like, to be a part of the music of the heavenly spheres. To be everything. Something that I surely wouldn't have remembered if all we humans ever were, was just mortal flesh. I longed to be reunited with the grandiose.

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And in that moment, this longing tore me apart. If i were 2 offer an Earthly analogy: it felt as though I was abandoned as a child in a store with endless isles, stranded and overwhelmed with fear and confusion, i simply collapse to the floor and pray to be picked up soon. "Take me back home, I'm tired of this shell". 

I'm tired. Tired. 

I had read a poem by Dylan Thomas: It became famous after that grandiose film "Interstellar", but I happened 2 come across it way before knowing what it was featured in.
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light"

That alone? That was enough 2 wake something in me that I didn't understand. But it moved me, It moved me.
In that moment I flew off the hinges entirely. I had collapsed to the floor and wailed and sobbed, probably louder than i've ever wailed since my own birth; loudest noise my human body could produce, deafening even to myself. "It" was tearing through my body in order 2 get out. 

What was it really? I still can't find the perfect worlds 2 explain. Before i had noticed, i started crawling. For anything, anything that could tether me to this Earth.
"Why shouldn't i leave now? Why shouldn't i give up my body to return to EVERYTHING?" is something i kept thinking for days, weeks. And now, I was looking for anything that could serve as an answer.
So my shaking, violent hands dug into the cover of a large sketchpad i owned: the largest one. I don't remember having a single coherent thought. I remember my own screaming: "I wanna go home, I wanna go home", that's all. I could barely see in front of me, but my hands were making circular motions on the paper with crayons. Messy, animal-like motions. Observing my own hands move by their will, I was drawing the Spheres. Planets of our solar system.

The cosmos is vast, the human self cannot even begin 2 comprehend how vast. But out of this infinity, my heart had chosen this Solar system. My big brother Saturn, my little sister Venus. The music of the heavenly spheres. They became so dear to me, the primordial emotion was too grand 4 this body.

By the time i wore myself out after hours of breakdown, i was left with shabby circles, crazed depictions of our solar system. That was my attempt at tethering. 
"Why should I stay?" i kept asking myself. There was only one person outside of me that could answer this question in my times of dying.

My sister. My sister who is thousands of miles away, far across the oceans. 

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I don't know what her day looked like up till that point, But i had sent her a distress call.

"Hey. Could you please remind me, what am i here for? On Earth?"
Haha, she instantly replied. She understood instantly that i wasn't joking. She felt distress. 

This she said to me:
"You are here on this Earth 2 experience its infinity, and the infinite love that you could find"

"You are an example to me of a person who will find meaning even in sorrow and carry it with dignity, you know? To me, youre an example of boundless strength"
"You need this experience. Remember everything you love on this Earth, even if it SEEMS like there's nothing"

I was starstruck. How effortlessly she reminded me of all that is well on planet Earth. How dearly i hold her. No wonder she'd been my tether all along: What could possibly keep you on this planet other than Love? It's the only thing worth anything in the end. 
She snapped me out of it, sobered me up.
"You cannot return to infinity until you've experienced your own boundaries"
She returned infinity into the shape of a human being. That's what I've been all along, never separate; that's what everything is: Infinity, expressed through a unique, irreplaceable shape. 

How could i have forgotten? That's what planets are, too. That's the force that births the stars, and brings them to explode. That's the force with which we love, with which we sing; with which we do our, at times, daunting daily tasks, like laundry and dishes :-)

Haha, my sister was outdoors at the time, and though it had been sunny for her up until that point, she messaged me: "Oh, the weather suddenly got much worse, like it was raging with you. I feel you now, and I feel in the weather your wildness and ferocity."
Like storms on beloved Jupiter. She found that signal, she felt me across continents and seas. 

That must account for something. That must mean I'm still worth saving: The human self is worth keeping alive. 

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I laughed lots and lots after this talk with her. My cosmic pain is dwarfed by her love. 
I laughed lots and lots. Then it hit me, and I thought: Oh, no no no ! What are you crying about? How foolish it is to think you're trapped inside a human body at all. How silly, to think that humans are separate from infinity ! We are a result of it, have you forgotten?
How silly & adorable it is 4 the Universe 2 put itself into a shell, and then cry about putting itself in a shell ! Hahaha, this whole time I wasn't separate from it: I was "it" yearning for itself, through an experience unlike any other. A human being on a Pale Blue Dot, suspended in a sunbeam. 
The truly one thing that could not be replaced: Earth. Nowhere is there life like here on Earth. Nowhere else will you find oceans as abundant as ours, songs as earnest and eternal as the Earth's.

Yes, I became this for a reason. To feel the joy! And joy has a habit of returning .

If we are all the Universe experiencing itself, then what a beautiful joy it is: To gaze up at the sky and see myself reflected in all directions. Cosmos looking through the human eyes, cosmos feeling itself through planetary oscillations. Cosmos feeding itself ideas, cosmos finding infinite ways to create. 

Infinite love. 

Creation. That desire drove my body when i let the brakes loose. It's one proof cosmos is still in me: Its purpose was creation. When i look at our solar system, I think to myself: What a lovely work of art!
I am blessed to experience the same force that creates worlds flowing through my hands, extending itself to infinity, adding to the beauty i already admired about this planet. 

When i had put myself back on my two feet, i decided to turn the messy circles and scribbles into something more elaborate, and do it from Joy. Do it from love. I saw myself be born again on the spread of paper: From nothing into something: drawing like looking in a mirror. 
The confusion became something in the end. And that is why you're able to look at what i produced now! This is the exact purpose of this existence.

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I don't deny that tiring days will creep up again. But...Please, if you ever forget why you're here, find something with enough gravity 2 tether you 2 Earth. Remember that you're precious!

Earth, as depicted in "The Spheres", 2025

Thank you!

 

Welcome to Kotobuki's Blog

Welcome, fellow human!! I'm Kotobuki 01. I hope your heart is well , and your star is strong !!! ✰

I illustrate strange creatures & visions from my interdimensional journeys, voyages beyond the physical. Things I experience in obscure states of being, those that no one can explain.  Wild things, radiant light which refuses 2 stay dormant. So it comes through, and turns into Art! And here, blogs :-]

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Long ago, I didn't need a body, neither did you, my friend.
I, we, were infinity undivided. (Do you remember what that was like?) 
Today, I am here in this extraordinary experience of being a human being!

Yet from the primordial singularity, before the (supposed) beginning of everything, there is one fire that still burns in us: The desire to create. It's the thing that brought me here, this planet. Universe clothed in human skin: infinite as 0, 1 and everything in-between. Perhaps, what made you find me was the infinity piecing itself together, reuniting through colors and imagery. Isn't it wonderful?
This is how it tries 2 taste itself: through the creature of Earth that it's gotten used 2 calling "I" . Through what this "I" can create during its stay on this wonderful Pale Blue planet. 
And this "I" that writes this, Kotobuki, offers you the visions it puts to paper.

The same way the Universe creates explosions, stars, songs...Is the way I choose 2 wake up and play. Play !

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For the longest time, I desired words 2 tell someone about what I've seen. Perhaps you've noticed I have a major taste 4 the extraordinary, and i could go on endlessly about what lights my spark. You'll see that a lot in my blog :-] I am anything but brief, and though i try, I can't help the flames from pouring out ! x)
[I don't believe in making myself smaller.]
Just as you've seen me play with colors on paper: Here, I'll play with words and meanings, and the liberty 2 take it anywhere i wish.

I treat this page as a conversation with a lifelong friend, or a transmission crossing interstellar space !!! A cozy living room, a box of trinkets, a seabed garden. A stellar nursery.

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I speak from the wild things, from half-forgotten dreams. I speak from the ancient, divine explosions & heavenly spheres. I speak the things that, for so long, grazed no one's ear, and made no sense to anybody: theyre mine, fully mine!! I speak here, and I wish 2 remind you that YOUR truth is also worth speaking!!!! (Go on, make a blog too)

Whether I dive deeper into the stories and meanings behind my recent pieces, extraordinary experiences, or blog about peculiarly shaped leaves I find on my walks...Favorite artists, music, cinema, and even just thoughts on this strange existence: It all belongs here. 

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So eat me up, Come along now !!!
We are reaching escape velocity soon. Make yourself comfortable ! Or not,,, hhehehhee, get UNcomfortable, get weird, in this special corner of the Universe !!!!!! ✰