DEAR READER, 

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as you enter issue 04, pay attention to every little thing around you that resembles life, every little intonation of voice, every flicker of the eye, every slight disquietude in the seemingly stable passage of time, every fighting struggle against the crushing forces of existence as each living creature hopes to cure themselves of mortality’s curse. our stubborn desire to live, our refusal to yield to god’s reckless rolling of his dice, can be observed from the moment we depart from our mother’s womb, or from a lightless, fractured shell, as we step out on trembling legs.

 

humans are born with incredible luck, needing not to worry about surviving the next ten seconds as we are naturally embraced and protected by motherly arms, sheltered from the biting reality of an apathetic universe. for other species, survival is their involuntary instinct—any split second wasted, even the smallest of errors or unexpected falters could forego future years of living. it takes a miracle to stand steadily, to escape indiscriminate predators, to arrive at safer shores. nothing is given freely without return; altruism is an overpromising ideal connived by the devil; even human philosophy cannot lament this state of affairs. these liminal experiences have trouble finding a place in our systems of words and sentences, of rational deliberations, for we humans have spoiled ourselves with the ide that we are beyond nature’s power. 

 

so it seems that when something seeps through the cracks of the earth, a fragment of a fully inhaling-exhaling being, all other creatures that hunger for survival have one of three options: observe motionlessly, sacrifice one’s own energies to aid it, or seize it of its oxygen to supplement one’s own capsized lungs. we are given that choice, in relation to other creatures and man alike.