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by TAKIA PARHAM Within every atom lie quiet waiting places, where stillness holds what has not yet become. Read the article: https://x.com/realbaroness/status/2115893943871156575 Art courtesy of the artist. If this thread speaks to you, it runs through As It Is Wrytten: The Zine.

by TAKIA PARHAM Heat always travels from fire toward the cool, and in that quiet descent both work and stillness are born. Read the article: https://x.com/realbaroness/status/2115891317725077847 Art courtesy of the artist.

by TAKIA PARHAM Stacked discs of metal wake a quiet current, as steady discipline kindles a fire within. Read the article: https://x.com/realbaroness/status/2115890020439527837 Art courtesy of the artist. If this thread speaks to you, it runs through No Rest In This Skin.

by TAKIA PARHAM Every hue waits inside white light, needing only a prism to be seen. Read the article: https://x.com/realbaroness/status/2115886931854926020 Art courtesy of the artist. If this thread speaks to you, it runs through There's Nothing Natural about War.

Begin with a single atom of a radioactive element, sitting quietly in the dark. At any moment it may give off a particle and become something new, or it may simply stay as it is.

Glass looks empty and still, yet it is crowded with atoms, and each atom holds tiny charged particles that can be set swaying. When a wave of light enters, those particles begin to move with it.

Five gold-lit cards: a winged figure with an open eye above a reaching child, a scribe with a third eye over an open book, a stepped pyramid above still water, a hand lifting bars of gold, and a golden robot with long locs sitting eyes closed before the sun, its body breaking into light. From Dalton's unbreakable grain and the Curies' glowing radium to Einstein's mass as stored energy, the atom keeps its potency hidden within, while the Bhagavad Gita answers that only the sel

Gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from a starry blue wing with a single open eye to a translucent violet robot floating in lotus inside crossing gold orbits. Thomson, Bohr and Pauli find the atom's steadiness in stationary states and fixed places, while Faraday and Braunbek float the materials that refuse to cling. Beneath them runs the Bhagavad Gita, where the wise act without attachment, steady as a light in a windless place.

Gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from a sweep of golden light to a dark robot crowned in gold locs, past an open hand releasing a burst of glowing spheres. Galvani's twitching frog, Hodgkin and Huxley's squid nerve and Lemaître's primeval atom trace one spark from a charged membrane to the first light of the cosmos. Beneath them run the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, where the light of lights becomes many and stays one.

Four gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from a thread of molten gold falling from a brush to a titanium robot seated upright around a single golden line. Lavoisier names hydrogen the generative principle of water, Gay-Lussac finds two measures to one, Pauling's hydrogen bridge lets ice float, and Bridgman squeezes water into five solid forms. Beneath them run the Chandogya Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita, where all is clay and the sea remains

Gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from torn portraits lit in flame-orange to a figure in deep purple holding glowing atoms in each open hand. Newton's prism sorts white light into seven colors, every element signs its name in bright lines, and Bohr's stairway sends out one pure color at a time. Beneath them run Ntozake Shange's for colored girls, the Sat-Chakra-Nirupana and the Katha Upanishad, where many colors become one light.

Gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from an open hand reaching across white space to a bronze robot seated inside two crossing rings of light. Heisenberg's single photon shows that seeing is touching, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen imagine a pair of particles linked across any distance, and Bell turns their question into a test. Beneath them run the Bhagavad Gita and the Apocryphon of John, where the knower of the field simply watches.

Gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from a crowned mind marked with the letters of the atom to a porcelain robot balanced on a single point of light. Prout names hydrogen the first matter, Eddington pictures the stars as crucibles, Lemaître gives the universe a single beginning, and three physicists build the first nuclei one capture at a time. Beneath them run the Bhagavad Gita and the Apocryphon of John, where all these came into being in si

Four gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from glowing singing bowls above a seated meditator to a silver robot resting in a golden breath. Rabi's hairpin loop finds the moment an atom answers, the caesium beam becomes a cosmic pendulum, and the second itself comes to be counted by an atom's steady beat. Beneath the images run the Yoga Sutras and the Gnostic Thunder, Perfect Mind, where the breath, counted by time and number, settles into its o

Four gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from a watching wing with an open eye to a golden robot ringed in light. In a darkened room a painted screen glows, unseen rays pass through a double pack of cards, and Bohr and Moseley read the atom layer by layer, counting each element by the whole number at its heart. Beneath the images run the Katha Upanishad and the Gnostic Thunder, Perfect Mind, where what you see outside of you, you see inside of

Four gold-edged cards fan across a black ground, none shown whole, moving from a crowned map of atoms and mind to a chrome android in lotus posture. Hero's temple doors swing open on warm air, Einstein follows the restless zigzag of molecules, and Rutherford finds a small dense heart inside the open atom. Beneath the images run the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita and the Gnostic Thunder, Perfect Mind, where stillness is a steady pattern held over

Six gold-edged cards fan across a dark ground, none shown whole, moving from a winged figure in stars to a blue goddess seated in red with one palm raised. Night arrives with all her eyes, Death-Night steps into view, and the first black tongue of fire rises from the brow. Beneath the images run the Rig Veda, the Mundaka Upanishad, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita and the Gnostic Thunder, Perfect Mind, where the dark sees, burns, wears a crown and raises a hand.

Six gold-edged cards fan across black ground, led by She's A Deva, tracing growth from a hidden seed to the wave of the universe. The atom shows itself as both particle and wave, dark matter holds the cosmos together unseen, and air, prana, the breath, moves as both science and currency, the coin every sense spends. Beneath the images run the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl, where one reality goes out like a wave and returns.

Six gold-edged cards fan across black ground, turning brush and breath into form. They rest on the Brahmopanishad's teaching of the supreme wisdom of Brahman, in the form of a unity of the Atman of all, founded on the spiritual discipline (Tapas) which is the Vidya or science of the Atman.

The door opens gently: this is a story about bloodline and spirit. It is about names that travel and traditions that sing, and about one painting by the artist that taught her something. There's one thread running through all of it, and it is named now so you can watch for it: the light within.