tesserae
For Aster Lit Issue 15: Tesserae, we’re interested in the memories, actions, and experiences that make up our lives, that make us greater than the sum of our parts. Whether interpreting tesserae as the building blocks of life, entry tickets, or acts of piecing the broken back together, we’re looking for art and writing that fragments, that gives meaning, that brings us into the parts of life that create you. Keep reading to see ideas and quotes related to tesserae!
tesserae
noun, plural
1) small tablets (as of wood, bone, or ivory) used by the ancient Romans as a ticket, tally, voucher, or means of identification
2) small pieces (as of marble, glass, or tile) used in mosaic work
kintsugi
Centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery. The kintsugi technique employs a special urushi lacquer, made from tree sap, dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The cracks are then filled in with gold, transforming the piece into something new.
vignettes
Small illustrations or portraits that fade into their background without a definitive border, blurring the lines.
Brief, evocative descriptions, accounts, and episodes that make up your life.
The pictorial part of a postage stamp design as distinguished from the frame and lettering, traveling on a journey to its recipient.
Gaudí’s trencandís
The famous Catalan architecture movement was developed by Antoni Gaudí, who used broken ceramic to create patterns, particularly on curved surfaces. Coming from the Catalan word “trencar,” or to break, each shape is irregular and often
read the editors’ reflections
What does tesserae mean to the Aster Lit team? What images, ideas, and emotions does it invoke? Read our editors’ reflections on the theme here.
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Submit to Issue 15 here.
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color pixels
RGB color pixels demonstrate how any color can be created from a combination of three primary colors – red, green, and blue – in varying luminosities and proportions, a testament to the infinite possibilities of combination.
Haruki Murakami
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
Jorge Luis Borges
“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
Han Kang
“Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person.”
Donna Tart
“Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”
Virginia Woolf
“The past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
Derek Walcott
“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”
Aristotle
“The totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts”