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in edinburgh during a rather busy time of the day, we passed by many people holding ice cream pops as we drove and it was about 16 degrees C. it was a warm summer for them.

among these people were young boys and girls, a casually strolling couple, businessmen, and people nearing the age of retirement. i thought there was little difference between how they looked, or that it didn't matter how old or young they were, or what they did for a living. they were keeping themselves happy with an ice cream treat.

wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone had a stick of ice cream in their hands

(for the lactose-/milk- intolerant maybe sherbet?? fruity popsicles?)

internships/careers masterpost(???)

> National park service internship
  - conservation? wildlife management? patrol?

> National Geographic internship (but sadly i'm gonna get very little chance of getting through unless im a US citizen or a journalist/photography/social media student?? u_____u but there's geography too so that's almost OK)

man all the results from google are giving me US-based internships what;s this

> horticulture/biology research intern

> marine biologist (BUT LIKE MY SWIMMING/PHYSICAL SKILLS MPOK bismillah bismillah)

may lead to antarctic conservation and research if i want/could

>http://www.ies-uk.org.uk/careers some reference videos for future careers

> this is not really an internship point but i'm gonna consider being an environmental advisor/consultant in some area or sth because it's actually pretty interesting

> humanitarian projects manager (career) omg this is beautiful but i'm advised to learn languages and i can't even speak my native tongue ;_______;
> environmental journalist, if i could find a way to continue actively writing w/o taking english in AS

bismillah.

(list might expand later)

This is an allusion to The
Butterfly Effect:

Mama said,
"All life is precious."
As a child, I
picked the insects on the leaves
and gave them such affection.

Five squeezes.
Ephemeral wings underneath
the hungry cave of my swine fingers:
shadflies;
     ladybirds;
          crickets (they cry at night,
because that is the only way they know
how to sing);
and butterflies, whose flight might
have spawned a typhoon, not far
from where we slept,
where the sun rises--or when it doesn't;
an accidental killer.

Mama looks at the remains,
(of the paper wings, because now
the body was underfoot)
and tenderly I straightened her curls,
only this time I couldn't see
the outline of her face. Her ice
was raw, and weeping.

All life is precious.
The woodlice squirms below
the end of my pen, a silent death,
but the butterflies will come later, so I let it go;

The dynamics of life,
and all that is held sacred. and laboriously tended
within equilibrium,
can be purposelessly chaotic.

OH DAD I WANT TO

• study animation and the arts and maybe work with some grand film company (Pixar? Dreamworks? Disney? WarnerBros?), but this is very unlikely because of combined circumstances and my own ineptitude
• write an article for NatGeo one day; and in it I would have gone to a country I would never have imagined going to before, and maybe I would have looked at the social situation within that country, or its environmental concerns, or have done some scientific research relating to the climate or some extinct specimen etc etc
• Work for National Geographic. (amin)
• study environmental sciences and biology (but what kind?) as I have so frequently pressed on doing so but there are other majors too!! like the social sciences + anthropology, combined with philosophy
• study physics and its philosophies as well because i do enjoy learning all about the different theories, only i'm not very good at it so i guess that's out of the question???
• teach people in doing something i love
• be a student all my life and spend my whole lifetime taking all the college courses i want to, just for the sake of learning (i guess this is pretty unrealistic if we are to be concerned with finances & MATTERS OF CONSEQUENCES but let me be as wistful as id like)
• not become a petroleum engineer.
• do something for the rest of my life that i will enjoy, insyaAllah

but the last point depends on how well and quick i decide what i want to be, too

please God, let me discover something soon, and guide me there where i'll be happiest (amiiin).

oh man dad came in today and told me to look at all the universities i'd like to apply to in the UK if I haven't already done so, asap. because i'll be keteteran if i leave this decision to later years (and because we might be going to england someday soon to look at the colleges, insyaAllah) - but i don't even know what i want to be ahahoo

but im definitely gonna be

happy, amin & insyaaAllah YuY

---
this took a lot of time off my mocks revision to write, ugly laughter

You asked me why I try to ruin everything.

When I did not understand your question, you snared me by the arm to present me before the unrecognizable interiors of your ribcage, sprawled among a wilting bed of arnicas. I remember distinctly the arnicas, with their bloodstained yellow crowns, because you showed them to me once when you managed to induce the both of us with poison. Your heart remained beating on the silent earth.

You asked me the question again, and this time we both looked up. We were standing beneath an abysmal void of blue that seemed hollow without the presence of a cloud. The Sun was at its threshold above us, presently waiting on its celestial throne to shine bleak light upon its absent subjects. It all seemed awfully picturesque in our eyes. This you pointed out to me in enraged bursts of spits.

 For I knew how much you loved overcast weathers. I knew how much you loved thunderstorms; how it pleases you to watch the skies grace the earth with relentless whips of lightning, scarring your world, berating it with clamors of thunder that always seem to resemble a cacophonous orchestra of kettledrums. I knew how, when the clouds begin to roll, you would push me aside like a piece of furniture and escape from our embrace, only to run outside and thank the rain for offering you solace in light of all your sufferings. I had known all of this, for I have engraved your entire intricacy in the veins that intertwined across the backs of my palms.

So why have I come to spoil everything for you? If I had loved you, why did I ask the storm to cease, and for the Sun to exhaust its futile rays on the two of us?

And you were the cave that sheltered us both from the very same storm you loved. When the seas grew tumultuous, you were the tormented waves that swept inside of our safe, drowning us in the engulfing darkness with your malevolent tides.

We were both left afterwards in an unsightly wreck. You told me that I had done enough – it was time for you to leave. Exhaustion and the pathetic remains of my love for you kept me rooted in my position. I have learnt better than to interfere.

You left, saying you needed a place of your own to grow. You were tired of these long summers.