Per aspera ad Astra,

Through difficulties to the Stars.

This four word phrase defines who I am. It has defined me since I was little (even though I did not know it at the time). While other kids were watching cartoons or doing whatever else “normal” children do, I was watching documentaries. From documentaries about the cosmos and the unknown to documentaries about natural and artificial disasters, all of them fascinated me. I had a hunger, a need to understand everything around me, and exactly how it worked. Why was the sky the color it was? Where did the water come from in the taps? Why did earthquakes happen and what were they? For whatever reason I needed to understand these things.

My understanding of the world is how I perceive the world. And without this understanding I am blind. When I was about 8 years old I went to the children's museum in downtown San Diego. There was an exhibit called the Wonder Sound. It was a maze of wooden rooms stacked on top of, and next to, each of them weaving together to form a network of passages, some hidden or secret, some obvious and large with tons of little nooks and crannies and secrets to discover. There were carvings on all of the walls: stories, poems, fables, artwork, etc. Over all of this there was a beautifully composed soundscape, This fabulous architecture, writing, sound design all coming together to form one experience. I was crawling around this maze of rooms. I found a seam in one of the walls when I pushed on the seam it revealed a secret doorway that blended perfectly into the walls. It was nearly flush. After jiggling the door I managed to pop it open and I discovered a secret passageway. This passageway lead down into a room.

This room was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It had this beautiful swelling base-heavy soundtrack that was playing throughout. It was completely dark, except for a few salt lamps scattered around the room. There were hundreds of spoons hanging from the ceiling all of these spoons jingled and vibrated to the base of the soundtrack and reflected the light from the salt lamps creating a beautiful scene. This place was completely hidden. I discovered later on that the theme architect of this exhibit designed this space for only a few curious people to discover. It was not part of the main experience but a special offshoot for those explorers. It was completely quiet. I felt like I had discovered an alien realm, something wholly unique and completely mine. That's when I put the puzzle pieces together. That's when I understood what my reason was. I did not know it yet but that was that four-word phrase: Per aspera ad Astra. It was discovery, it was exploration, it was what gave me purpose and the high in that moment has defined me since. And hundreds of other moments like it, hundreds of other moments of real happiness that defined my purpose. Only later did I realize that this fever dream of a room was hidden by the architect.a place meant to be experienced but only by a select few with the explorer's spirit.

Since then I've been chasing that feeling, that wholly unique thing that I've seen in very few texts. Some people describe it as a nostalgia for a time or place that's never been. That's really the closest thing I can get to grounding it to any other common emotion. I used mainly personal projects to understand now. As my understanding grows more complicated, so do the topics that I study. I wanted to know how weather satellites work so I got a radio receiver and transmitter and started talking with one. I established a Down link connection with my ham radio, and my computer. I was seeing what the weather satellite saw. I was able to download telemetry from it and other information and I learned so much in that process, in that Journey after all, that was the point of the project that is the point of all my projects.

I get that same feeling from fictional universes too, they are just as fascinating to me as the real one. All of these fascinating concepts and ideas are completely unbound from the limitations of reality. From the Dunes of Arrakis to the vast seas surrounding Calypso's Island. This exploration has inspired me whether it be exploration of the fictional the real or of my own creation it is what defines me. Per aspera ad Astra. That is my definition.